The instructional staff custom design lessons around common themes relevant and common to inmate student experiences. The staff frequently asks students what they feel that they need and want to learn. They take that information, along with the academic competencies that need to be met, and custom focus lesson plans. For example, CRCI has an educational unit on money management. In that unit they have inmates write personal money plans, budgets, figure percentages of their income that they spend on each item, and write financial goal plans.
Instructors continue with credit lessons and lessons on how to be a smart consumer.
The lessons incorporate writing, reading, math, problem solving, and interpersonal skills. Teaching the basic skills inmates desperately need becomes relatively easy. Keeping students engaged and focused in an educational environments focused on real world issues has significantly reduced the number of dropouts and repeated re-entries to the program, increased the number of positive completions, and increased the average scores of the graduates. Teachers and inmate students alike feel the curriculum has much more vitality and is more meaningful. An additional outcome for the department is considerable.