Ramiro's Story
“Education, to me, is about creating the space where students have the resources and the abundance to actually explore the talents they have. ”
I have been a volunteer tutor with the Petey Greene Program since my freshman year at Swarthmore College. During my first semester of tutoring, I sometimes questioned whether I was really making a difference by tutoring these students, and whether my actions really had the power to create change in a world where it is so easy to drown yourself in the injustices people experience on any given day.
As tutoring ended for the semester, I found myself looking forward to the correctional facility’s graduation ceremony. Several of our students were graduating with either a GED, a flagger certificate, or an air conditioning technician certification, and I was excited to see them walk proudly across that stage to receive their diplomas. I looked around at the people sitting in the audience. I saw mothers, sisters, brothers, aunts, uncles, grandparents, and friends all throughout the room. I saw the look of pride in each of their faces. I saw their eyes tear up as the person they were there for was called up to the stage. I stood and yelled my lungs out each time one of our students was called. The graduates were able to hug their guests for a few seconds as they walked back to their seats, and I could feel the love and the pain in each embrace. I felt an immense sense of pride and happiness knowing that their hard work had paid off. For a short moment, the inner turmoil that had plagued my mind for weeks was calmed. In the chaos of bodies that occurs after every ceremony, one of my students came up to one of my fellow tutors and me. I wasn’t sure what I was expecting him to say, but his words will remain ingrained in my mind until the day I die: “I couldn’t invite my daughters to come because they weren’t in the area, so I wasn’t expecting anyone to be here for me. I got so happy the moment I saw you two, and I just want to thank you all for the hope you guys have given me every time you come to tutor.”
““I couldn’t invite my daughters to come because they weren’t in the area, so I wasn’t expecting anyone to be here for me. I got so happy the moment I saw you two, and I just want to thank you all for the hope you guys have given me every time you come to tutor.”
As the graduation ceremony at SCI-Chester came to a close, I began to really see the power of education as a way towards freedom. I thought of the times when my students would share, when we would arrive in the classroom, their drawings they created or poetry they wrote and I was struck by their talent. I could see that they had talent that they were never able to explore. Education, to me, is about creating the space where students have the resources and the abundance to actually explore the talents they have.
Part of this story appeared in Swarthmore Voices, 2019.