The mission of corrections education at Wildwood Correctional Center is to provide adult basic education, GED, life skills, and vocational education so that individuals can improve interpersonal and academic skills, to successfully function within the institution, and to enhance community integration and economic self-sufficiency upon release.
With the mission in mind, we then look at the needs of individual prisoners. Common needs are the ability to read, write, and compute at a literate level, social skills such as communication and anger management, basic living skills including budgeting, finding resources, and job finding and keeping skills. Responsibility and self-control are additional common needs, which we address in all classes.
We have one education coordinator who is responsible for the program in the three areas of the Wildwood Complex, and contract instructors and inmate tutors are employed to round out the education program. Prisoners work as tutors for basic literacy, English Second Language, and GED students. They enhance the program by many more hours than the education coordinators could devote to one on one tutoring, and thereby expanding the program beyond what would be possible otherwise.