From her earliest jobs – first as a camp counselor, then as a daycare worker and school teacher – Subini Annamma always liked working with the so-called “difficult” kids.
“I didn’t find them difficult,” said Annamma. “I thought they were funny and interesting, really engaging. They were just kids.”
As a special education teacher in middle and high schools in Oregon, California and Colorado, she started noticing that some of her students would disappear for stretches of time – to juvenile incarceration facilities, it turned out. In part for more insight into their trajectories, she decided to “follow” them and began teaching in youth residential treatment centers and prisons.
Annamma, now an associate professor at Stanford Graduate School of Education (GSE), continues to pursue a deeper understanding of the relationship between special education and youth incarceration. Examining the policies and practices that have led to students of color being disproportionately represented in both settings, she explores what education does – and could – look like in a place designed largely for punishment.
This year, with Stanford Law School (SLS) Pro
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