Curriculum
Every year in the United States, more than 700,000 individuals are released from prison into a world that drastically changed during their sentence. Our students are a skilled population with untapped potential, often coming from underserved communities that don’t have access to high-quality business materials and resources.
That’s where Resilience Education comes in. It is our goal to make high-quality business curricula more accessible in order to reduce re-incarceration rates and combat the collateral consequences of mass incarceration.
Through our relationship with the Darden School of Business, we train MBA volunteer instructors to teach university-quality coursework focused on Entrepreneurship, Financial Capability, and Business Foundations. These courses give our students the opportunity to acquire the skills, confidence, and practical knowledge they need to chart a future outside prison walls.
Using Socratic method, case-driven teaching, we challenge our students to situate themselves within a business, educational or personal challenge that the case protagonist faces in order to analyze the situation and arrive at a workable solution. In this discussion-based classroom environment, our instructors require full student engagement, facilitating a dynamic back-and-forth dialogue that results in the delivery of key educational concepts.
For more information on our curriculum and partnership opportunities, please contact Isa Bittencourt at Isa@resilience-education.org.
Achieving Success in Personal Finance
Course Description: Resilience Education’s course, “Achieving Success in Personal Finance,” introduces students to the topics of personal budgeting, credit cards and loans, medical and life insurance, and how to pay for large, long-term goals like buying a car, a house, or even an education. It is designed for students with little to no prior knowledge on these subjects, and requires minimal knowledge of math. The eleven cases in the curriculum offer real-world situations portrayed in narratives that feel both urgent and accessible. The course is designed to provide students with key concepts and practical knowledge to manage their financial lives.
Financial Capability
Course Description: Resilience Education’s “Financial Capability” course introduces students to key financial terms, information and the tools necessary to make sound financial decisions. After completion, students will have a firm understanding of how financial services companies operate, and how to positively access financial services and products. Students will also develop a personal financial plan to establish goals, actions and a budget that will further their financial security. The 18 cases in the curriculum create real-world situations for students to consider in order to learn these concepts.
Entrepreneurship
Course Description: Conceived and designed to provide offenders with an opportunity to learn about entrepreneurship, this flagship program began in the spring of 2011 with twenty inmates at the Dillwyn Correctional Center for men, Professor Fairchild and four MBA student volunteers from the Darden School. Participants complete 32 case studies to learn about the process, challenges and techniques of starting a business, leading to the culminating project: writing and presenting a business plan for their own venture. Graduates of the program receive Certificates in Entrepreneurship from Darden. Resilience Education offers this program curriculum and Socratic method instructional training to any institution interested in replication.
Foundations in Business
Course Description: Resilience Education’s “Foundations in Business” course builds on the base established in the “Entrepreneurship” course. It is designed to present more complex situations, with factors including human resource and ethical challenges. The 25 cases in the curriculum offer real-world situations portrayed in narratives that feel both urgent and accessible. The negotiations within these cases do not have a clear “correct” answer, instead they encourage students to consider many potential solutions and the pros and cons associated with each.
Math Review
The Math Review casebook is structured in a way that refreshes the participant’s prior knowledge in specific math concepts through case studies and practice problems. Each section is comprised of: 1) a real life example, or “case” at the beginning to reacquaint the participant in the math method of attention at this point in time: 2) examples to practice this method; and 3) additional resources, or “practice problem worksheets,” which dive deeper into these math methods to solidify learning/refreshing.