Gina Lobaccaro

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Media & Technology Specialist
Delaware Department of Education Prison Education Program, Sussex Correctional Institution, Georgetown, DE
ALE Wiki Area Leader, Correctional Education.

I began my career in Special Education in Salt Lake City in 1981. In 1988, I "came home" to southern Delaware. I worked in a middle school for three years, and then I was hired by a local technical school district to start a pilot special education program for adult incarcerated men (18-21 yrs) at a Sussex Correctional Institution in Georgetown, DE. I started a very successful inmate/tutor program over 12 years ago. We started the program with three tutors. Two were lifers, and are still here. One is still tutoring. The third man was on death row. He was a tremendous help with our younger students. He was executed many years ago. It was a difficult time because I had not anticipated that it would really happen. We now hire over 20 inmates to tutor for the various education programs at SCI. I continued with the pilot progam and helped build the James H. Groves Adult High School at SCI. Groves is Delaware's adult high school program. I taught night school (ABE level) "on the outside", taught distance education classes for Delaware's Diploma at a Distance program, initiated the first college classes at SCI and taught a few and facilitated some video courses. Five years ago, the technical school district relinquished the administration of the prison education, and the DE DOE hired me as the Media & Technology Specialist. Since then, I have continued my education - mostly in Education Technology -- and taught college courses now offered regularly in all four of the Delaware prisons. I am facilitating a new Family Literacy program at SCI, and I am leading a research project related to training new & existing tutors. I am interested in educational technology, family literacy (particularly in corrections), literacy training, and adult professional development. I have always described myself as a "schoolaholic".

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