AmeriCorps with Paws (Part 2)

I’d been searching for an internship to complete my master’s degree in counseling therapy and one-by-one my prospects were falling through.

Then, one morning, I woke up thinking “Americorps?” I got online and sure enough there was an upcoming service year opportunity with the New Mexico Corrections Department teaching a cognitive behavioral education program to inmates as part of their reintegration preparations.

The school approved it as an internship, and I rushed to apply. It was the summer of 2012, and the program was to begin in September, but the magic of AmeriCorps must have been with me because the next thing I knew I’d joined the rest of the service members for two weeks of training at the penitentiary in Santa Fe. There, we learned about the prison system, prison culture, did all sorts of wacky team-building exercises, trained to facilitate the CBT program “Breaking Barriers” and learned about the nuances of teaching adults versus children.

I’d never worked in a prison before so I took all the warnings and caveats to heart, but I also knew we were well supported, and I was just really excited about teaching this program.

My co-facilitator “Miss B” and I were assigned to CNMCF in Los Lunas, Level I, where we would have two groups of students each day, one in the morning and one in the afternoon, for eight weeks at a time. When those students were finished, two more groups would begin.

During that year, I think I learned as much about life and humanity as my students did, starting with the somewhat unnerving experience of looking out into a sea of orange jumpsuits with numbers stamped on them like UPC codes, and behind that façade, finding real human beings. Their senses of humor kept us laughing, their resilience was inspiring and the hunger in their eyes to learn a better way to live gave our work meaning.

As usual, my passion for animals and nature naturally revealed itself. We had a “bug cup” in our classroom for trapping crickets that were constantly hopping into the room. Sometimes an inmate would get up, trap a cricket and release it outside without even interrupting the class.

When Carl, the well-loved compound cat and inmate mascot fell from the razor wire and sustained a bad cut on his side, we all (including staff) went to great lengths to try to help him, which wasn’t easy because Carl was an independent sort.

We never did find out where he disappeared to for two weeks, but when he came back he was good as new. When our service year ended it was hard to say goodbye. With my internship hours now completed, I worked temp jobs while I studied for my license.

Serendipitously (or maybe not) I attended a job fair one day and noticed a table from CNMCF — they were hiring therapists. Once again, there was a bug cup in my classroom, and one day two inmates I didn’t even know knocked on my door with an injured bird that either Carl had gotten hold of or had fallen from a nest. Together, we boxed the little bird up and I brought it back to the city to a rehabber. But perhaps the most far-reaching impact of that year began when I arranged for members of the Southwest Canine Corps of Volunteers (sccvtherapydogs.com) to visit with my addiction recovery class. It was absolutely wonderful.

Everyone showed up, and while my students interacted with the dogs and their owners I overheard staff saying, “We should have a dog program here!” and “How do we get a dog program here?”

At the time I was also volunteering at the Valencia County Animal Shelter, so I introduced key players from CNMCF and the Southern New Mexico facility’s PAWS program to the shelter management. It took a while, but sometime after I’d left the prison the dog program manifested and is still active today, benefiting dogs and puppies, shelter and prison staff, and inmates. If Facebook posts are any evidence, people who’ve adopted dogs from the program are really happy, too.

The trickle-down effect that AmeriCorps had on me, thousands of other service members, and those whose lives we’ve touched, cannot be measured in dollars. President Bill Clinton had a vision when he created AmeriCorps in 1993, and the current government’s desire to dismantle it can’t erase that.

Neither, I trust, can it destroy the passion and desire for service in the name of humanity that its members possess. Long live AmeriCorps.