Inmates at the Maine Correctional Center in Windham were given the opportunity in the fall of 2024 to learn alongside seniors at Horace Mann School, an elite private school in New York City.

The focus of the course, known as “Bridging the Divide: Modern American Identity,” was on the ways in which people of differing backgrounds have navigated through the intersection between their personal identities and the collective identity of being an American citizen, as well as what it means to be an American citizen in modern times. Readings included the poetry of Walt Whitman, Emma Lazarus and Amanda Gorman; the Declaration of Independence; the literary works of Toni Morrison and Nella Larsen; and nonfiction works by Phuc Tran and Rodney Jones, as well as Maine’s Silas Hagerty.

The inspiration for the Bridging the Divide program came in the fall of 2019, when Lynn Novick, a documentarian and Horace Mann alumna, showed her film “College Behind Bars” to students of the school. The documentary focuses on incarcerated students in New York taking part in the Bard Prison Initiative, which allows for prisoners in seven facilities in New York State to earn degrees from Bard College. Then-sophomore Simon Schackner was inspired by the showing, and suggested that Horace Mann do a similar program.

While the school’s administration was initially skeptical of Schackner’s proposal, which would involve a video connection between Horace Mann students and incarcerated students, the pandemic-era mainstreaming of remote and hybrid learning gave him the perfect opportunity to set up the course. The school then worked with Novick and her team to reach out to various prison educators, eventually coming into contact with Abbie Embry-Turner, education director at Southern Maine Women’s Reentry Center.

Rebecca Bahr, the Horace Mann-based teacher of the course, was moved by the fact that the program was started by a student. She also noted that Schackner himself wanted Horace Mann’s mostly elite students to learn from people whose access to education had not been so easy, and saw how “the people who were getting educated (in the prison) understood the value of a college education more than the students at Horace Mann did.”

This is Bahr’s fourth year teaching the class. She explained that Bridging the Divide usually gets around 15-16 Horace Mann students, and 10-12 women from MCC, including one who served as the teaching assistant. Bahr explained that in 2023, the program switched from being exclusively focused on the minimum-security Southern Maine Women’s Reentry Center, which helps incarcerated women nearing the end of their sentence prepare for life outside, to include inmates in the maximum-security Maine Correctional Center proper. She noted how the women at the MCC have significantly less freedom than those at the Reentry Center, and thus needed the education more. Although the class only had six MCC students in 2023, the number more than doubled to over a dozen the following year.

Brandon Brown, who teaches the class from MCC, has had a long journey to become a prison educator. In 2010, Brown, who described himself as having made “bad choices” during his youth, was sentenced to 17 years in prison for an attempted murder two years prior. When he went to prison, Brown decided that he would try to make that time meaningful, and started writing letters to the education department asking about what educational options were available to him with a high school diploma. Eight months into his sentence, Brown was accepted into a prison education program funded by Doris Buffett’s Sunshine Lady Foundation.

Describing his education as a lifeline, Brown said that he “experienced more freedom in prison than (he) experienced freedom in freedom.”

Brown earned his undergraduate degree in prison in 2017, and decided to continue his studies in order to stay connected to the education program. In particular, he wanted to continue his studies on restorative justice, and appealed to the prison to get his master’s degree. After some negotiation, Brown was accepted into a course at George Mason University that focused on peace and conflict resolution, and in 2020 became the first Mainer to earn a master’s degree while incarcerated.

During the middle of his sentence, Brown served two years at MCC. Describing the prison as a “miserable factory” that churns out antisocial people, he said that his decision to return to MCC as an educator was to show not only that he was himself unbroken, but to maintain a connection to the people he met while behind bars. While incarcerated, Brown always told people in his community that he would come back after he came out. Speaking to the Lakes Region Weekly, he noted that prisoners often form strong bonds with each other, which gradually fade away the longer they spend on the outside.

Since he left the facility, Brown said that MCC has undergone substantial reform, saying that it was “a completely different place than it was when (he) was housed there, and it (felt) good to be able to say that.”

Brown was released in 2021 as part of a supervised community confinement program, and through the connections he had made during his education, he found his way into some teaching opportunities, before returning to MCC as an educator in the Bridging the Divide program in 2023. At the time, Brown was teaching courses at Colby College, and was involved with arranging for speakers to talk about their experiences with prison education and the “College Behind Bars” documentary. Through the latter, he became connected to Bridging the Divide, and was eventually asked to teach the class himself, succeeding Embry-Turner.

When the class is not in session, Brown’s main job is serving as executive director at Youth-LED Justice. YLJ, according to Brown, is a restorative justice program dedicated to helping young people who are in trouble with the law and keeping them away from the pipeline from proven-risk youth to incarcerated adult, a pipeline which has led to a situation where 60% of Brown’s fellow prisoners had been incarcerated in their youth. YLJ’s process is helping troubled youth through restorative learning experiences, walking them through an accountability process, and expanding their worldview to understand how their decisions affect the world around them.

Other Maine organizations that Brown works with include the Maine Prisoner Advocacy Coalition, which has him interacting with all facilities in the state, as well as the Freedom and Captivity initiative, which creates curriculums that are meant to be facilitated by incarcerated people as 8-12 week courses teaching about the broken prison system.

Bahr explained that the class usually begins with a week where the Horace Mann students are taught alone, and given necessary background on the prison education system, including watching “College Behind Bars.” At the beginning of the combined course, everyone records an introduction video as a way of getting to know each other.

From there, the class meets every Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday through Zoom, with Bahr and Brown teaching separately on Thursdays. Classes usually begin with big Zoom meetings where everyone meets together, and from there, Brown and Bahr break the students up into groups where they can discuss the course individually.

Brown noted that much of the class is about reconciling the vastly different experiences of elite New York high schoolers. He also explained that on Thursdays, when it’s just the incarcerated students, the class is somewhat different, as it is guided by the women’s real-life experiences, and places them in the context of systemic injustice regarding mass incarceration.

According to Brown, the three biggest things that have happened as a result of the class are giving the incarcerated women faith that their humanity exists beyond their incarceration, reaffirming the belief that young people are going to steer our country in the right direction, and allowing for the women to reimagine what education can do with their lives and what their future can hold because of education.

Miranda H., who served as a teaching assistant for the course, saw the program on a flier at SMWRC, and was very excited to take part. She, and many of the other participating prisoners, saw Brown as a role model figure, and for her, to know that he went from being incarcerated at MCC to earning a master’s degree and becoming a renowned activist was something incredible.

Miranda came out of the program optimistic for the next generation, a sentiment that takes on new meaning given the elite prospects of many of the Horace Mann students, with one student having told the class that he hoped to become president one day. However, she also wished that more people were aware of the program, and that “College Behind Bars” was more accessible. Meanwhile, Courtney B., another incarcerated student, really enjoyed getting to know the Horace Mann students, and was touched to see that they viewed her not as a criminal, but as an equal part of the class.

Both Courtney and Miranda plan on pursuing paths in education and restorative justice long after the Horace Mann program. Courtney, who will be released in February, is currently taking classes at MIT, and plans on becoming a substance abuse counselor. Meanwhile, Miranda plans to finish her criminal justice bachelor’s degree in the spring of 2026, and is currently looking at law schools with the hope of getting a JD in 2029.

The Horace Mann students came up to Maine on Saturday, Jan. 18, to meet their classmates in person. The two groups of students gathered together in the prison’s chapel, though Bahr lamented that they didn’t get to have the same extensive tour that they had the previous year. The day began with some movement exercises and name games to help properly introduce students to those who were not in the same breakout groups as each other, followed by group discussions and what Bahr described as a “raucous game of rock paper scissors.”

The students then did an “exchange of swag,” where the Horace Mann students gave the MCC students sweaters from their school, while the MCC students gave their peers T-shirts designed by an incarcerated student. The same student also designed the cover of an anthology containing poetry and prose from throughout the course, as well as a document made by the class known as the “Declaration of Interdependence.” Following a period of free time, the students each shared one thing that they would take away from that day, and the day ended with Brown leading everyone together in a toast.

“It was a very rich, very intense, and very wonderful day,” said Bahr.

Regarding the future of Bridging the Divide, Brown said that he would love to see it expand, both to other schools and prisons across the country, and within MCC itself. Brown hoped that the end goal would be to have a co-ed class at MCC, as MCC contains prisons for both women and men within the same complex. He noted that a lot of the topics discussed in the class have a gendered lens, and it would be very powerful to have representatives of all genders in both the school and prison to discuss them.

“My heart will always be with prison education,” said Brown of the course. “Until the day comes that we no longer need prison … the one thing that’s gonna get us closer to abolishing this system as it stands is to continue to educate people. There’s nothing more you can do for an incarcerated person than to give them the opportunity to learn, and specifically learn about the environment they’re in, and about how to change it.”