Jaime's Story
“Every time I go to volunteer with the Petey Greene Program, I just feel really settled in myself. I feel really present and I feel very sure that there’s no place else I’m supposed to be except for right here with this person. If only I could live my whole life that way - just where love, care and presence are so alive. It’s pretty special.”
We know that our high-quality volunteer tutoring and education programs support incarcerated and formerly incarcerated learners in their skill and confidence-building journeys. But we also know that the experience of tutoring with the PGP can be just as transformative for the volunteer. Jaime Drucker has volunteered with the PGP for multiple semesters and describes it as “surely one of the most meaningful and purposeful things I’ve ever done in my life.”
When Jaime was a middle school teacher in rural North Carolina, she had many students who were impacted by the criminal legal system through their family members. “This was something that was part of their reality, every day, and it had been deliberately separated from my life. I began looking for ways to go inside a prison and learn and be supportive where I could.” The experience of going inside a correctional facility was in itself eye-opening for Jaime. “Everything from just the pain of the transportation to different facilities to having to wear certain things that won’t set the metal detector off.”
While she was eager to engage with students behind our prison walls, she had no idea what was in store. She taught a World Religion course inside MCI-Framingham and MCI-Norfolk and found both classrooms to be stimulating and academically rigorous. “People had varying literacy levels, they had all come from different life paths, but they came excited to engage with one another because of their ideas. I would get such specific and thoughtful questions about what they were exploring on their own in between classes.
“The class at Norfolk was actually one of the most rigorous academic environments I have ever been in. People had varying literacy levels, they had all come from different life paths, but they came excited to engage with one another because of their ideas. And I would get such specific and thoughtful questions about what they were exploring on their own in between classes. I loved watching, listening and being around the men in the classroom and to see the way they carry themselves with such self respect, curiosity, care and this belief that they can understand themselves and others. I was always struck by the unbelievable curiosity and kindness of the people I worked with there.”
Her advice to other prospective volunteers is to “bear witness to the spectrum of human experience and allow yourself to be moved by it without an agenda. Just go in open-hearted to infuse care.” Jaime intends to continue tutoring, even after her graduation from divinity school which initially brought her to the program and now encourages other people looking for meaningful volunteer opportunities to check out the Petey Greene Program through her role as City Director of Boston at Repair the World.