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Ian Sethre: Eight Years of Teaching Inside San Quentin

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In February 2025, Mount Tamalpais College Communications Associate Bonaru Richardson, an MTC alumnus, had the opportunity to sit down with longtime faculty member Ian Sethre. Ian has taught history and political science at the college for eight years and helped organize a mock election at San Quentin during the 2024 presidential campaigns; he is also a Professor of History at the College of Marin. In this thoughtful conversation, Ian reflects on the unique dynamics of teaching inside a prison, the deep intellectual connections he has formed with students, and the broader implications of education within the carceral system. 

What made you gravitate towards teaching at San Quentin? 

Many years ago, I tutored in a GED program at Cook County Jail in Chicago. I was in college and out of my element because I’m from rural Colorado. Still, I recognized, even at that point, how education and access to education can empower people, or– it is a critical piece that gets overlooked– can also perpetuate division. 

I know what you mean, but please give me an example. 

For example, on the extreme, elites in this country often attend exclusive schools like Harvard, Yale, or Stanford because their parents did, and that perpetuates a class system and a degree of wealth and power. Of course this happens throughout the four-year system. And then you look at people on the other end of the economic spectrum who are held back by unequal access to resources and economic barriers. They might see an ad for a for-profit university on television promising they can become a nurse or web designer in two years if they just pay this much money–and then they end up in deeper debt. That’s predatory. It’s a cliche at this point to say that education empowers and provides opportunities. It can, but it doesn’t always work the way it should.

How does your teaching at San Quentin differ from the College of Marin?

Often, the students in San Quentin have self-actualized in ways that younger students on the outside haven’t quite yet. Generally speaking, they’re older and more experienced, so they’re more aware of their strengths and weaknesses. That level of motivation in the classroom in San Quentin translates into more consistent, reliable, and quality participation. 

Have you had interactions with incarcerated students where they put up a brick wall?

As a teacher, you can’t let one person – and I still make this mistake; I’m preaching something that I have a hard time internalizing – you can’t let one person’s disposition shape the entire class dynamic. It’s a matter of making sure that all of the students maintain a culture of the classroom that’s empowering and collaborative, and also recognizing that, while this one person may be resistant or skeptical, on the whole, they probably want to be there. In that case, it’s a matter of time and persistence, and allowing those particular students to find their place and comfort level. And it’s a mistake for anybody to go in there and feel that just because they maybe have good intentions, they’re automatically going to be trusted by the people that they’re trying to reach. 

What would you like to prioritize in your classroom? 

Being able to relate to each other on an intellectual level. There is a socialization piece. I think that everybody in there feels that this educational enterprise is making them a better person.

The experience of being in the classroom, which has to be a deviation from the unpleasantries of so many of the other carceral settings in this state, hopefully, makes people feel that they have a more enriched existence. 

You don’t just teach, you go outside of your realm of teaching and run extracurricular activity classes. What motivates you to do this? 

I don’t mean to be trite about it, but I have discovered a real, genuine learning community in San Quentin. And that exists on a few different levels. The students themselves value that community and they perpetuate it. They’ve defined the culture of the place, and I like being around that energy. I respect their motivation, resilience, and dedication. So I guess a shorter answer would be to say I like to be a part of something larger and contribute what I can that may be of value to it.

I heard you play in a band. 

Music has been an outlet for me for most of my life, and it’s another social opportunity to be part of something bigger, fun, and invigorating. I’m in two bands, actually, and we play at various bars around the Bay Area, usually about once a month with each. Soulbillies played a really fun show in the chapel at San Quentin about five years ago. 

How do you see the future of education in the carceral system evolving? 

For about a decade, there’s been increased popular consciousness about mass incarceration. There was the Ava DuVernay documentary, 13th, and several others, and Ear Hustle has done a lot to humanize incarcerated people. Unfortunately, the crisis of the COVID-19 outbreak drew a lot of attention to the prison system, especially here. Black Lives Matter and the awareness of police brutality. I do think that there’s more attention and expectations perhaps of change. 

I’m hoping these reforms don’t stop with San Quentin, because it is treated like the crown jewel, when it should be a model for what these rehabilitation centers–if we’re going to use the term–are supposed to be. 

Due to their circumstances, sometimes the people I’ve met inside seem to have done more soul-searching and coming to terms with who they are and who they want to be than a lot of people on the outside have.

I’m not even going to comment on that. 

Well, I mean, maybe you don’t agree. I respect that. 

Well, I’ve been incarcerated, so it’s going to be biased. 

That’s another important point. I’m aware that I’m working with a very small segment of the incarcerated population who have self-selected out of the general population. I have to be careful about what I do when I’m outside of prison because there are a lot of ways that I feel like information gets misinterpreted. One is that some people want to hear horror stories. They expect to hear that prison is a scary, violent place. I’ve been asked if I wear a sidearm in the classroom. I’m also uncomfortable with the whole concept of altruism–the whole white savior complex and “isn’t it great what you’re doing?” because that’s simplistic and unhelpful. 

I don’t like that either. 

That’s something that we need to be very conscious of. The reality is that the system has been structured in such a way for so long that sometimes it’s white people of privilege who are in a position to do something, but there has to be a self-awareness that comes with that. And that’s a hard thing to teach.

There is a quote attributed to Nelson Mandela,

“…no one truly knows a nation until one has been inside its jails.”

That sentiment resonates. And the guys in there? All “People of California vs.” whoever, and we have an obligation to know what is being done in our name. And if this is about correction and rehabilitation, we should be involved in that, too. 

Photo courtesy of R.J. Lozada

First Person: Why College Matters for People Serving Extreme Sentences

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I attended a college surrounded by fences “adorned” with barbed wire. In early 2021, at 50 years old, I earned an associate’s degree from Mount Tamalpais College, which is located on the lower yard of San Quentin State Prison. It’s been life changing.

Mount Tamalpais College, which we call Mt. Tam, provides a classroom education on the prison grounds. The teachers are volunteers from other schools including Stanford, San Francisco State University, Harvard, and Berkeley. It has a study hall area where tutors are available five nights a week and a recently opened computer lab with 36 laptops that allow communication with teachers and access to reference materials through a “mediated internet,” according to Kirsten Pickering, research program fellow. 

For incarcerated people, the quality or success of a college program is often measured by recidivism rates. By that standard, Mount Tamalpais, formerly the Prison University Project, is a success. Its students had a recidivism rate of 17 percent compared to the 65 percent recidivism rate for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation as a whole, according to a 2011 program evaluation. 

Moreover, MTC provides jobs for graduates on parole. I’ve seen Dimitri, a former student, come back into the prison, dressed up in a sharp black suit, as an employee of Mt. Tam. The college recently hired Richard “Bonaru” Richardson, the former editor in chief of San Quentin News. I know of at least three other former incarcerated students that are now Mt. Tam employees. 

For those of us serving long sentences, recidivism rates and jobs can’t measure the success of our college education. My pursuit of a degree started in 2016, approximately 16 years into a 55-years-to-life sentence. I would have to live to be 85 years old to evaluate whether an associate’s degree will break the cycle of incarceration that’s circled my adulthood. Proof of the quality of a Mount Tamalpais education has shown itself in several other ways that impacts society and my life.

Incarcerated graduates have a positive influence on their peers and families. I remember attending a graduation where the valedictorian was a man with locks. His siblings attended the event, two sisters and a brother, plus his mother, sat in the front row as he gave a short speech. Afterwards, one of his sisters said, “I’m so proud of my brother. He’s the first to graduate from college in our family. And if he can do that from prison, I can get my degree too.”

The influence of college on peers is also apparent on the yard. In other prisons, the conversations you usually hear about are sports, war stories, or women. At San Quentin, you can walk by and ear hustle (overhear) debates about ethics, politics, or Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. 

A 2016 qualitative study featuring interviews with 27 Mt. Tam students showed that the program positively transformed how students think about themselves, others, and their futures. Over 90 percent of respondents reported that college positively affected their self-identity, mental health, and personal relationships. More than two-thirds also said that the program has positively influenced the prison culture at San Quentin, particularly in regards to race relations.

Personally, I see education as the key to my success from behind bars. After getting sentenced to a term beyond my life expectancy I needed a path to redemption in the eyes of my mother, my sons, and society that didn’t involve going home. I came up with becoming a writer because my voice was the one part of me that was still free.

I envisioned writing a memoir that people who grew up in tough neighborhoods like I did would read and drop their guns. The problem with that plan was that I only had a high school education and no creative writing skills. In isolation I wrote for 10 years without training or a mentor. Words stacked up that no one heard.

 In 2013, my security level dropped and I was transferred to San Quentin, a progressive lower security prison. Here they have all kinds of programs and I signed up for anything that could make me a better writer, including college, creative writing and the San Quentin News Journalism Guild.

Each program made my writing better and better. I became the sports editor for San Quentin news, and a contributing writer for The Marshall Project and Current. Additionally, the college program offered a communication class that developed my speaking skills. I pursued the oral art to deliver prerecorded speeches over a collect call to reach Stanford, MoMA and to honor James King, the campaign manager for the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, and California State Senator Nancy Skinner for their work by the nonprofit law firm UnCommon Law. Plus, speaking skills landed me the cohost and co-producer job with the Ear Hustle podcast, which was a 2020 Pulitzer Prize finalist and DuPont award winner. 

In a trailer used for a classroom, I learned the history of Black codes, unions, the New Deal and other events that shaped the environment that shaped me. From gaining this worldview, I began to look beyond the people who bullied me growing up and instead began to see the systems that pitted us against each other. My new perspective made it easier to quit taking things personally, forgive others, let go of my anger, and heal.

Additionally, I learned how political systems work and put that knowledge to use. I inspired Taina Angeli Vargas of the nonprofit advocacy group Initiate Justice to fight for the restoration of voting rights for incarcerated people. Our efforts led to Prop 17, an initiative on a 2020 ballot in California which gained the support to restore voting rights to people on parole.

Another thing that made learning from teachers in person a high-quality educational experience was the socialization. Other prisons only offered correspondence courses that pale in comparison to in person learning. Imagine professors from famous universities volunteering to give you a free education. Their dedication made me feel a love and loyalty to society that I never felt before — I can’t be a waste of their time.

I think the biggest mark of success stemming from my college education on a prison yard is the opportunity to go home. On January 13, 2022 California Governor Gavin Newsom commuted my sentence, which grants me a parole board hearing this summer for a chance of getting a release date in early 2023. As a reason for granting mercy, Newsom’s Legal Affairs Office cited “participating in self-help programming and completing college coursework.”

Editor’s Note: Mount Tamalpais College was founded in 1996 as the Prison University Project, and operated as an extension site of Patten University. In January 2020, the program changed its name to Mount Tamalpais College when it became a candidate for accreditation by the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges (ACCJC). The college is the first independent liberal arts institution dedicated specifically to serving incarcerated students.

Rahsaan “New York” Thomas is a writer, podcaster, and director. He was a Pulitzer Prize finalist and won the DuPont Award in 2020 for his work as a co-host and co-producer on Season Four of the Ear Hustle podcast. He’s also the chairperson of the San Quentin satellite chapter of the Northern California Society of Professional Journalists and a contributing writer for Current, the Marshall Project, and San Quentin News. All from a cell at San Quentin State Prison.

Attribution: This article originally appeared in Open Campus on January 19, 2022.

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