“Be prepared to realize that you were wrong.”
For Marycolleen McAllister-Fry, an educator and mother of five living just outside Washington D.C., the path to volunteering in the carceral system wasn’t born from a single dramatic event. Instead, it grew from a seed of curiosity planted decades ago by a book. She recalls reading a work by Wally Lamb where he taught an English class at a women’s prison and compiled his students’ essays. “It stuck with me,” she says, noting that the image of those women’s stories stayed with her for years. “And through my teaching years, I had students whose parents were in and out of prison systems. I just see the impacts of it, and that’s how I landed here.”
Marycolleen represents a specific kind of supporter in the Level community: The Bridge. She has a master’s degree from Johns Hopkins and spent a career in a large public school system. While her professional life was dedicated to early childhood education, she harbored a long-held curiosity about the humanity hidden behind the bars of the justice system.
Her motivation is rooted in a personal philosophy of empathy that she actively passes down to her children. “I try to teach my kids that every person’s always carrying something, and you don’t always know what that is,” Marycolleen explains. “Recognizing that if you are in a position to right now be reaping all of these benefits, then you have to use them. You have to know you are in this position right now, but one day you might not be. For Marycolleen, volunteering is a deliberate act of choosing a stranger as a neighbor, viewing those behind bars not as abstract “criminals,” but as individuals who “look just like everybody else.”
Through her interest in the justice system – and the experience of a family friend who was wrongfully incarcerated – Marycolleen caught a glimpse of the “educational desert” that defines prison life. “When I talked to him about it, he stayed busy with the library system,” she recalls. “It’s a lot of time where there’s not always a lot to do.”
As an educator, she recognizes how society manages to keep this population “incredibly siloed.” She noticed that while some learners are very bright, others clearly “fell through educational cracks when they were in childhood.” Without intervention, these minds are often “shut down” by a system that offers little in the way of consistent resources. “People always think about ‘criminals’ and people breaking these laws and ‘crime in the city’… but there’s a whole other side of people in the prison system and there’s nothing ‘scary’ about how they look or act. They’re educated, they’re smart, and they’re in the same place.”
Marycolleen needed a way to serve that fit her reality as a mother with five children. She had previously tried volunteering with Courtwatch, but the rigid requirements were impossible to maintain alongside school drop-offs. “They wanted you there at 8:30 in the morning,” she says. “I just can’t always do that.”
She discovered Level, which offered the accessibility of remote volunteering. As a transcriber and reviewer, Marycolleen became a vital link in “paying it forward in knowledge.” By reviewing and correcting the transcripts of learners’ work, she ensures that their efforts are recognized and that their educational journey continues. Level provided the bridge she could cross from her own home, allowing her to contribute meaningfully even when she only has a single hour to give.
You’ll notice, as you’re doing the work, that people are excited to learn and to have something to focus on. They’ll write ‘thank you’ six, seven different times… they are so happy that anybody is interested in giving them a resource. You’ll find that they are very similar to you. They have the same desires to succeed and the same gratitude for an opportunity.
– Marycolleen, a volunteer with Level’s prison education program
The impact of Marycolleen’s work is reciprocal; she is as changed by the interaction as the learners she helps. Through her transcription work, the most moving part is the unprompted gratitude that bleeds through the pages.
“You’ll notice, as you’re doing the work, that people are excited to learn and to have something to focus on,” Marycolleen shares. “They’ll write ‘thank you’ six, seven different times… they are so happy that anybody is interested in giving them a resource.” This experience has challenged her own assumptions. “Be prepared to realize that you were wrong about what you thought the people that you were going to be working with were like,” she advises. “You’ll find that they are very similar to you. They have the same desires to succeed and the same gratitude for an opportunity.”
Marycolleen sees her work as part of a larger effort to ensure that there is a “life at the end of this” for the learners she supports. She has witnessed them using the Level guides to actively plan for their release, asking for next lessons and leaning on new concepts to build a different future.
“They are looking forward to things… they are trying to plan what will happen when they are released,” she says. By acting as a bridge, Marycolleen helps provide the intellectual stepping stones that prove to the world that a person is more than their past mistakes. Her hope is that more people will realize that volunteering isn’t just about giving time; it’s about recognizing that every person – no matter their situation – deserves the chance to learn, grow, and return to a community that knows their value.
