Kyes Stevens is an Alabama native and an Auburn graduate, so she knows what she’s talking about when she says the relationship between The University of Alabama and her alma mater can be polarizing.

“I am completely steeped in the Auburn-Alabama sports rivalry. And I get it, and I understand it,” Stevens said.

But in 2001, Stevens, director of the Alabama Prison Arts + Education Project, started teaching poetry in a federal prison in Talladega, Ala. In 2003, she started forming a program that would become the Alabama Prison Arts + Education Project. In 2007, she partnered with the University to provide graduate students with the same teaching opportunities she had.

“What I love about our partnership is that we are breaking down that polarization and building a community of people who are invested in educating others,” she said. “And that is amazing.”

Stevens described her experience teaching in the prison as challenging, powerful and educational for her.

Alex Chisum, who is beginning a third semester teaching poetry through the program, said the experience has been overwhelmingly positive.

“I’ve found the students to be incredibly engaged and gracious,” Chisum said. “They’re active learners who are grateful to have instructors willing to take the time and effort to challenge them intellectually.”

Kenny Kruse, one of two current recipients of a fellowship to teach with APAEP, teaches literature and creative writing once a week.

“They’re the best students I’ve ever worked with,” he said. “I know I’m in prison, I see all the things that say I’m in a prison, but I kind of forget I’m in a prison.”

Education is a part of the prison system on many levels. Both Stevens and Kruse teach classes where students who never completed elementary school sit next to students with master’s degrees.

“That’s the thing about prison,” Kruse said. “It’s the entire range of experiences.”

Stevens said flaws in the K-12 system let students fall through the cracks. What waits for them on the other side can be incarceration. Once in the prison system, though, education can be a powerful part of the rehabilitation process.

“Education impacts the system. The more education someone has while they’re incarcerated, the less likely they are to come back,” she said. “To me, it’s a common sense thing here. … Why not invest in helping them do something different with their life?”

As a result, Stevens said, APAEP offers as many classes as it can fund in topics from women’s studies to engineering.

“Our classes teach problem solving, critical thinking and communication skills,” she said. “And that’s what individuals need for employment.”

Kruse, who is in his second semester with the program, said rehabilitation is not an explicit goal of his literature class, but can be a result.

“When you read fiction or poetry, you’re reading the world from someone else’s perspective. I think literature helps improve your sense of empathy,” he said. “I think that kind of understanding is part of their rehabilitative process.”

His time with APAEP has driven Kruse to consider prison education as a career path. As a result, he has created a film series sponsored by APAEP and the University’s department of gender and race studies. The series will show monthly documentaries about prisons, two of which are about prison education. Students who will be seeing the film, Kruse said, are not only taxpayers who fund the system, but also leaders-in-training who can affect it.

“The vast majority of people in the U.S. don’t have to think about prisons,” he said. “I think educating people who are future leaders about prison is really important.”

According to Kruse, the films chosen provide balanced viewpoints on the challenges of prison systems, debating not so much the existence of prisons as their development.

“All the films that we’re showing walk that line,” he said. “The films all are nuanced.”

The first film shown will be “Concrete, Steel, & Paint” – a documentary about a mural in a Pennsylvania state prison created by men in the prison alongside victims of crime. It will be shown in Smith Hall 205 Wednesday at 6:30 p.m., accompanied by snacks and discussion moderated by Stevens; Trudier Harris, a UA English professor; and Joshua Rothman, a UA history professor.