Teacher Appreciation Week Isn't A Retention Strategy

This week, there will be messages, free meals, and moments meant to say thank you to educators. The question I continue to grapple with is this: How does Teacher Appreciation Week get us any closer to retaining Black educators?

Since I started The Exit Interview: A Podcast for Black Educators six years ago, I've been asking guests the same question: What do you believe schools, districts, and unions can do to retain Black educators?

The clips below have been dug out of our archives, some conversations more recent than others. Regardless of the year, the answers remain the same because the problem of Black educator retention persists, no matter how many gift cards and coffee cups are offered during Teacher Appreciation Week.

I begin with Kwame Sarfo-Mensah, whose words help us rethink what retention really requires.

From: Learning to Relearn with Kwame Sarfo-Mensah

Kwame invites us to think about retention through conditions. Jenna pushes us further, asking whether those conditions are even possible within the systems we currently have.

In the next clip, Jenna Greenwood names what Black educators are asking for: fair pay, space to exist beyond whiteness, and the ability to be human, while also holding a harder truth: many educators don’t believe institutions are built to offer it.

From: Finding Identity and Community with Jenna Greenwood

Jenna names a truth that’s hard to sit with: for many Black educators, the question isn’t just what would retain us, but whether the systems we’re in are built to support us at all. That kind of uncertainty shapes how Black educators move, what we expect, and what we believe is possible.

Within those conditions, something else begins to happen Black educators are left to navigate not just the system, but the impact it has on how we show up with and for one another.

Kelly Mitchell, in the next clip, speaks to what it means not to be alone, naming the roles of community and mentorship, and the ways isolation and even internalized racism can unknowingly undermine sustainability.

From: The Tax We Pay with Kelly Mitchell

Kelly names the importance of not being alone and how even our attempts to support one another can be shaped by the systems we’re trying to survive. Which brings us back to the system itself.

If isolation, pressure, and burnout are predictable outcomes, then retention requires more than mentorship; it requires fundamentally different conditions.

In the next clip, Kai-ama Hamer makes that plain, naming what Black educators have always needed: to be paid well, led by people who know how to lead, and supported as whole human beings in environments where their cups are not constantly running dry.

Her conversation about Human Development vs. Professional Development is one that we need to keep having in education.

From: A Love Letter to the Bronx with Kai-ama Hamer

Kai-ama makes clear what educators need to sustain themselves in the present. But retention is not only about the present, but it’s also about what we are able to build over time.

When Black educators are not retained, something larger is disrupted: the ability to pass down knowledge, navigate systems together, and shape environments for those who come next.

In the final clip, Langston K. Jacobs, MA speaks to that loss and possibility, reminding us that retention is not just about numbers, it’s about cultivating generations of Black educators who can support one another and turn lived experience into lasting change.

(Re)defining Me with Langston Jacobs

Across these reflections, a pattern becomes clear: retention cannot be reduced to appreciation.

It is shaped by pay, leadership, community, protection, and the ability to exist fully as a human being within the work. It is shaped by whether educators are isolated or supported, whether they are expected to endure or able to build.

Ultimately, it is shaped by whether systems are willing to move beyond gestures and toward transformation.

Teacher Appreciation Week may provide recognition, but retention requires something far more intentional that I know the education systems as a whole isn't willing to offer.