Years ago, when I was living in Seattle, I took on the task of teaching a “college-simulating” class for people who had been recently released from jail. They had signed on to an individualized “community re-entry plan” with parole or probation authorities, which in their case included enrolling in the local community college for the next semester.

I took on this role on a contractual basis for an agency that provided and monitored after-incarceration support services. The idea behind such a college-simulating class was it would enhance chances for a successful college adjustment; that it would be a dress rehearsal of sorts. It turned out to be much more than a dress rehearsal, though. It turned out we re-wrote the play.

I designed a course one might find in a college catalog at the 101 introductory level. It involved reading, discussing and writing about short stories I selected for being accessible, interesting, and of some literary merit, with a particular eye for stories that spoke to some of the students’ own experiences.

Early on with the first class of students, I could see that though I might be teaching with a good deal of zeal, I wasn’t getting much back. I once heard a playwright say they could “hear a click” when their work engaged an audience. I wasn’t hearing many clicks. I knew I wasn’t a perfect teacher, but I also knew in my gut that the problem went beyond that.

One of the obstacles was there were some guys who were presenting problems in what we called “conduct” or “deportment” when I was in school, and were pulling the rest of the class off-center with them. The class was co-ed, and the distractors looked to me to be classically showing off to, in their scheme of things, impress the females.

I tortured myself somewhat trying to figure out how to deal with what was being presented to me.

I was aware of the educational background of the students. A number of them had gone to school under duress when they were younger and had dropped out when society allowed them to do so without truant officers chasing them around. They’d passed GED tests to earn high school equivalency diplomas while incarcerated.

It hit me that my class was not simulating the college experience in one important way. Attendance at my class was mandatory, at the risk of students being considered to be not fulfilling their community re-entry contracts. Their motivation for coming to class could be no different than it had been when they were younger — the long arm of the law was forcing them to do so. The actual college experience, however, did not involve such legal coercion.

I decided to talk to the folks from the agency with whom I’d contracted. I wanted to see if they would go along with my making class attendance voluntary, with letting students not come to class and face only the repercussions they might face as traditional college students — lower grades or course failure.

The students who chose not to go to class at all could discuss their dropping-out with the agency’s counselors and figure out where to go from there. Perhaps they could work through things so they were ready to accept classwork when their actual college semester began. Or perhaps it would be agreed upon they work for a time, take a “gap year,” before starting college. If they thought there was something I was doing or not doing teaching the class that was problematic to them, I could look to adjust if called for, but no such complaints about me or my teaching emerged. The important thing to me was whatever was decided as a course of action, there be no punitive repercussions from the criminal justice system and no one was left behind in terms of their optimal path to successful community re-entry.

I was given the green light to make class attendance voluntary.

I announced the new rules (or, perhaps more accurately, “non-rules”) at the next class. You could almost reach out and touch the class distractors grappling with their new world order. When coercion was taken away, replaced by volunteerism, so was their longstanding, ingrained rationale for being oppositional to the learning experience. The role of Peck’s Bad Boy had been written out of the play.

While not everyone chose to stay with the course, the large majority did. They embraced the chance to take ownership of their education as something they wanted, not something being forced on them by authorities, and they were free to focus without clamorous sideshows. I was hearing clicks all over the place.

The late 19th and early 20th century psychologist and philosopher William James believed “the greatest discovery of my (his) generation is that human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind.” At a crucial juncture in their lives, my students had the opportunity to discover the truth of that belief for themselves.

We held a graduation at the end of the class at which students were awarded “certificates of completion.” Family and friends were invited and refreshments were served.

A number of students came over to say goodbye and thank me, causing me to feel a bit like “Mr. Chips” in their lives.

I liked the feeling.

Amherst resident Richard McCarthy, a longtime columnist at the Springfield Republican, writes a monthly column for the Gazette.