Susan Hirsch

Susan Hirsch is a career educator, a professor, a chef, a banjo player, a birder, a gardener, a poet in mind, and a resolute advocate for outcasts and outsiders in heart and practice.  She has taught middle schoolers and college students, written curriculum for English language learners, for state reading and writing projects, for Ear Hustle podcasts, and for science education. She believes education is more than a set of test scores, more than a vocation. Education is transformational. While we may not all be able to become ballet prima donnas, we can all learn to dance, to reason, to listen with open minds, and respond according to our own backgrounds and experiences.  This is the essence of a democratic education, not for one person of authority to silence another, but for everyone to participate and speak their own truths. “Reading the world always precedes reading the word” (Paolo Freire).

Susan has been teaching English for Mount Tamalpais College inside San Quentin Rehabilitation Center for almost ten years. She believes prisons should be a place to learn, to challenge beliefs, to reinvent identity, and to re-imagine a more hopeful future.

On her hill above the Russian River, Susan and her husband Joe walk the woods with Polly, a livestock guardian dog with a dab of border collie, looking for mushrooms, watching for blooms, or simply staring up at the sky.