When They Come Back Looking For You

Something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately is what happens when Black educators are forced to leave their students, not because they want to, but because they have to. We talk about teacher turnover as a staffing, pipeline, and retention issue. But we rarely talk about what that moment actually feels like in a classroom.  I think about the first day of school more than I think about the last. I think about students walking back into classrooms in August, looking for the teacher who was there the year before, the one who knew them, who laughed with them, who made space for who they were. And I think about what it means when that teacher is gone.

We don’t talk enough about the relationships that are interrupted in that moment or the stories students are left to tell themselves when the person who saw them is suddenly gone. We don’t talk about what happens when we leave them. Not retirement. Not transitions we chose. I am talking about when Black educators are pushed out, when we are forced to leave schools, classrooms, and communities, not because we wanted to, but because we had to.

The hardest truth is that they look for you. They come back to that classroom in August or September expecting to see you, and you are not there. I remember carrying that in my body all summer, knowing that my students would return and I would not be there to greet them. That kind of knowing does not just disappear.

I think deeply about what students believe in those moments. Do they think we stopped caring? Do they think we chose other students over them? Do they believe we simply moved on? Some students may understand, but many are left to fill in the blanks.

And what I need people, especially leaders, to understand is that we do not just move on. You may close our file, process the paperwork, and move forward with replacement plans, but that experience stays in our spirit. It lingers in ways that are not easily named and not quickly resolved.

What we are talking about here is grief, even if we do not always call it that. For educators, that grief can live in the body as tightness in the chest, as heart palpitations, as sadness that does not have a clear place to go. Sometimes it shows up as depression. Sometimes it shows up as exhaustion. For many Black educators, it is layered with racial battle fatigue, which makes it even more complex to process. Leaving a school does not mean you have healed from what happened there. I have spoken with educators who needed years before they could even begin to talk about their experiences. The wound does not close just because you leave the building.

And on the other side of that, there are the students. We do not often name their experience as grief, but there is something there. There are students who come back wanting to share what happened over the summer, wanting to reconnect with the adult who saw them, who believed in them, who held space for them. And that person is gone. Their families feel it too, because children carry those relationships home. When a teacher leaves under those circumstances, it is not just a staffing change. It is a disruption of relationship, of trust, of continuity.

We also have to be honest about why this is happening. Black educators are being pushed out because we are pushing up against systems that were not designed for us. The current structure of education continues to center white norms, white comfort, and white success. When Black educators advocate, when we create space for Black children and families, when we practice truth-telling about what is happening in schools, the system responds. And too often, that response is not transformation. It’s resistance, isolation, and removal.

So let me say this plainly. School systems, as they currently operate, do not fully love all children. They may love what children produce. They may love the data, the funding, the outcomes that can be measured and reported.

But love would require something deeper. Love would require schools to seek understanding, to build relationships with Black educators, families and communities, to design curriculum that reflects the lives of the students in front of them, to actually listen and believe what Black children say about their experiences.

What I see instead is that Black children are often left fighting for those very things, sometimes alone. They are fighting to be seen, to be represented, to experience joy in spaces that were never designed with them in mind.

When Black educators show up to protect that to advocate, to create, to hold space, we are often positioned as the problem. When we leave, students do not just lose a teacher. They lose someone who sees them, someone who understands them, someone who is actively rooting for them. Even when we do not share the exact same background, there is a connection that comes from shared identity and shared experience. That connection matters. It shows up in the small things, in the check-ins, in the encouragement, in the belief that is communicated both directly and indirectly every single day.

For many of us, there is no real goodbye. When I left, I didn’t get to sit down with my students and explain. I didn’t get to close that chapter in a way that honored what we had built together. One day I was there, and then I was not.

That is part of why I created The Exit Interview. It exists because so many Black educators never get to tell their story. We don’t get to say what happened. We don’t get to name the harm. We don’t get to say goodbye in the ways we need to. And yet, the love remains. If I could speak to my former students now, I’d tell them that I love them, that I’m still rooting for them, that I’m proud of them every single day.

When we talk about retention, we have to expand what we mean. Retention is not just about keeping teachers in classrooms. It is about creating environments where people actually belong. It is about designing systems where Black teachers, students, families, and communities are all seen as integral, not peripheral. Belonging cannot be conditional. It cannot depend on behavior, performance, or proximity to whiteness. If we’re serious about supporting students, then we have to be serious about supporting the people who show up for them every day.

I’ll leave you with this. Think about all the Black educators you have encountered in your life. How many of them stayed until retirement? And how many left earlier than they intended to? What happened to them? What did they carry with them when they left? And what did students lose in their absence?

Because we can't keep talking about student outcomes without talking about who is in our students’ corner, and who is no longer there.

When Black Educators Bet On Ourselves

In a recent episode of The Exit Interview: A Podcast for Black Educators, I spoke with Latoya Turner, M.A.an educator, author, and founder of Brown Hands Literacy. During our conversation, she said something that stayed with me long after we stopped recording.

Latoya shared that she knew she wanted to be an author. Not someday. Not “if the opportunity presented itself.” She saw herself as an author and understood that part of her calling was bigger than the routines and monotony she sometimes felt inside the classroom.

At the same time, she was very clear about something else: education helped her discover her love for literacy. It was the classroom that introduced her to the very thing that would later shape her next chapter. Our conversation reminded me of a pattern I’ve noticed over the years while hosting this podcast. For many Black educators, the classroom is not only a place where we teach young folks to dream big, but it’s also a place where we discover new parts of ourselves. It’s where skills emerge. Ideas begin to form. Creative instincts rooted deep in our souls come to life.

Education, for many of us, becomes a door that opens to possibilities we may not have imagined before we stepped into the profession.

I’ve interviewed several educators who began building something new while still teaching. Kwame Sarfo-Mensah wrote books while in the classroom and discovered a community that supported his work and ideas. Keisha Rembert began writing and sharing her voice while she was still an educator, too. Mary Hemphill, PhD did the same.  The list goes on and on.

For many Black educators, these creative outlets become safe spaces where imagination is allowed to breathe, and through that breath, sometimes they become the foundation for a pivot.

Now, let me be clear about something.

This conversation is not about encouraging Black educators to leave traditional education spaces. It’s simply an observation of what is already happening.

Many Black educators are doing powerful work with children every single day. They are helping students learn to read, mentoring young people, and creating classrooms where students feel seen and valued. That work matters deeply. But we also have to remember to hold space for truth-telling.

Educators have dreams, too. They have ideas, ambitions, and visions for their own lives.  And sometimes, many times actually, those visions expand beyond the classroom front office or cubicle.

For some educators, the schoolhouse, district office, or lecture hall becomes the place where a new path begins. A book gets written. A nonprofit is launched. A space for rest gets imagined. A film is created. A movement starts to take shape.

The pivot rarely starts with a neatly written 5-year plan.  It always starts with a feeling, an inner knowing that it’s time to branch out. Latoya described it simply: she didn’t necessarily have a detailed roadmap. But she knew there was something more waiting for her.  The acknowledgement of that knowing takes courage.  To move to action on that knowing takes audacity.

Because when educators start to imagine a different path, the responses around them are not always supportive. Some people celebrate the dream. Others, trapped in their own scarcity mindset, question it.  And sometimes institutions themselves struggle to make space for educators who are building something beyond the traditional boundaries of the role.

This prompts us to consider an important question for anyone invested in the future of education.

What does it mean to truly support educators as whole, beautiful, and brilliant humans?  Are they no longer important in the conversation about Black educator retention if they are not being retained in the limited capacity we believe they should be within education?

What does it mean for administrators, colleagues, and communities to support both possibilities: The educator who stays.  And the educator who pivots. Because both paths can be powerful.

Some educators will continue in a traditional education space for decades. Their impact will ripple through generations of students.  Others will take what they learned in the classroom and build something new, something that reaches children, families, and communities in different ways. Neither path is a betrayal of the profession.  In many ways, both are expressions of it.

Latoya’s journey reminds us that betting on yourself is not about abandoning education. It’s about honoring the vision that education helped awaken in you.  Sometimes entrepreneurship becomes a form of liberation.

Not necessarily because someone leaves the classroom, but because they allow themselves to imagine what else is possible.  Doesn’t that count as being an example for young people, too?

And perhaps the real work in this moment is learning how to support Black educators as they continue to bloom.

Whether that blooming happens inside the classroom…

Or beyond it.

"I Don't Know If I Should Tell This Or Not": Why Educator Truth-Telling Matters

This weekend, I started reading Sisters of the Yam by bell hooks. In the opening chapters, she writes about truth-telling as a form of self-recovery, a way for Black women to begin healing by naming what has been carried in silence.  Those pages made me pause and think about something Monika Robinson said during her episode on The Exit Interview.

“I don’t know if I should tell this or not…”

That phrase,  in some way, shape, or form, shows up often in my conversations with Black educators. It usually arrives right before another layer of truth emerges. And almost always, what follows is not gossip or complaint. It is a revelation. It is self-discovery.

Truth-telling is rarely about drama. It is about liberation.

The Cost of Silence in Education

As educators, many of us learned early how to survive systems that were not built with us in mind. We learned to smooth over experiences. To rename harm. To keep moving.

We hide racialized experiences behind phrases like:

• “I was just burned out.”

• “It was time for a change.”

• “I decided to move on.”

But what happens when the truth underneath sounds more like:

• I was the only Black teacher for years.

• I thought working for a Black male principal would be different.

• They said we were friends, but then I was purposely excluded, and that hurt.

• I thought the other Black educators who left were just weak.

During her episode, Monika shared what it meant to spend years as the only Black teacher in her building, navigating isolation while still honing her craft and becoming exceptional at her work.

She spoke about being excluded from social spaces and simply telling herself, “I’m not here to make friends anyway.” Sound familiar?

Because many Black educators know that posture well, the quiet survival strategy of shrinking our needs so we can keep showing up for students.

Truth-Telling as Self-Recovery

bell hooks writes:

“Many Black women in the United States are brokenhearted.  They walk around in daily life carrying so much hurt, feeling wasted, yet pretending in every area of their life that everything is under control. It hurts to pretend.  It hurts to live with lies.”

When I hear stories like Monika’s, I think about how much energy it takes to pretend we are unaffected. To pretend isolation doesn’t hurt.  To pretend exclusion doesn’t accumulate. To pretend that being the only one at the table doesn’t require constant emotional labor. Truth-telling interrupts that pretending.

And here is what I have learned after dozens of Exit Interview conversations:

When educators begin telling the truth, even hesitantly, something shifts. Their language softens. Their shoulders drop. Their story begins to make sense to them.

Truth-telling becomes a mirror.

Naming Harm Is Not Bitterness, It Is Clarity

Monika’s story also reminds us that truth-telling is not always neat or comfortable.

She described how administrative decisions and poor communication shaped pivotal moments in her career, including being handed a contract that would have fundamentally changed her role without a conversation.  These moments matter.  Not because we want to blame individuals, but because naming them helps us understand the systems that push Black educators to the edge. When districts, schools, and unions bother to ask why Black educators are leaving, I wonder if they think about teachers like Monika, Akil Parker, or Ronda Haynes-Balen.

Stories like Monika’s and all the folks who share their lived experiences on The Exit Interview show us that people rarely leave because they stop loving education. They leave when the conditions continue to force them to keep up the lie.

What Truth-Telling Makes Possible

Here’s the paradox:

When we tell the truth about harm, we also reclaim our agency.

Monika eventually found new pathways, moving into nonprofit work and later building her own wellness-centered business supporting educators. Truth didn’t trap her in the past.  It helped her imagine and move toward a different future, one where she is able to support education in a way that brings her joy and clarity.

This is something I see again and again through The Exit Interview:

• Truth becomes data.

• Stories become archives.

• Archives become strategy.

  When we tell the truth, we create knowledge that institutions can no longer ignore.

A Question for Black Educators Reading This

Sister bell asks us to consider what happens when we stop lying to ourselves about harm. So I’ll ask you:

What truth have you been carrying quietly in your professional life?  What part of you might finally begin to heal if you named it, even if only to yourself?

Why This Matters Beyond One Story

At Liberated Educators Lab, we talk often about storytelling as healing infrastructure. Because truth-telling is not just personal, it is collective. Every time an educator tells the truth about their experience, they make it easier for someone else to do the same.  And maybe that is where liberation begins.

Not in perfection.  Not in silence.  But in the courage to say:

“I don’t know if I should tell this or not…”

…and then saying it anyway.

The Cost of Perfect Attendance: What Are We Really Rewarding in Schools?

In a recent episode of The Exit Interview, Whitney Tolliver shared a story that is celebrated in education: perfect attendance as an expectation. During new staff orientation, her principal stood in front of the room and proudly declared:

She had buried both of her parents and did not take a single day off. And if she didn't miss any work days, her staff could do the same. (See the clip here.)

The Cost of Perfect Attendance

No days off. No excuses. Perfect attendance. That moment is not rare. It is not shocking. It is normal in far too many schools. And that's the problem.

As a kid who grew up in the 80's and 90's, getting a perfect attendance award was a big deal for me. However, years later, the certificate is long gone, and for many of us, the only thing that remains is the trauma masked as "excellence"...or is that just me?

What Are We Actually Rewarding?

When we celebrate perfect attendance, feel guilty for taking days off, or guilt others who need a break, what are we actually doing?

• Ignoring grief.

• Deferred medical care. (Think dentist appointments, knee surgeries, and breast exams.)

• Skipped lunches

• Sleep fractured into survival naps.

The list never ends.

How do we disrupt the behavior in ourselves for better health and to disrupt the behavior in the next generations? Whitney described waking up at midnight to write evaluation reports because there wasn't enough time during the workday. She described making coffee; she never had the time to finish drinking (sound familiar?). She described stomach issues that led to invasive surgery, only to later question whether workplace stress had been the real cause all along.

This is not a time management issue. This is a systems design issue that we as individuals, in collectives in communities, have to disrupt for ourselves.

The Myth of Dedication

For Black educators in particular, perfect attendance carries extra weight. Many of us were raised with the "good government job" narrative: Secure the benefits. Secure the pension. Make your community proud. Endure.

For some of us, add to that the pressure of being "the only one in the room." Add perfectionism. Add code-switching. Add the silent expectation that you represent your entire race with excellence, and suddenly, taking a sick day feels like failure.

Education systems are not just rewarding attendance. They are rewarding self-abandonment.

Why This Is A Retention Crisis

Schools, universities, foundations, unions, and districts across the country are asking: Why can't we retain Black educators? But rarely ask: What are we asking them to survive? When leaders implicitly or explicitly communicate that presence matters more than wellness, we create cultures where:

• Racial battle fatigue and burnout are normalized.

• Wellness is postponed or cancelled altogether.

• Boundaries are punished

And then we are surprised when talented Black educators leave, but why? Retention is not about recruitment pipelines. It's about redesigning conditions.

To be clear: many administrators are not villains. They are buffers. They absorb pressure from the central office, accountability systems, test-score mandates, and staffing shortages. That pressure rolls downhill. However, it is important to state that without intentional healing infrastructure, fatigue remains the culture. We are talking about the education system, not a single person.

What Liberated Educators Lab Is Building

At Liberated Educators Lab, we approach this differently. We don't simply offer "support spaces." We build strategy. We work with community groups, foundations, nonprofits, and districts to design:

• Wellness and healing-informed leadership practices

• Sustainable affinity structures

• Policies that protect boundaries.

• Retention frameworks rooted in racial equity and healing.

We archive Black educator stories not as nostalgia, but as knowledge production. Stories like Whitney's are not personal testimonies. They are and always will be data for our healing and for archival justice. They reveal:

• Where systems fracture.

• Where bodies break

• Where, why, and with what weight educators walk away.

And they also reveal something else: What becomes possible when leaders choose authenticity, boundaries, and self.

The Real Question

If we stopped rewarding perfect attendance, what might we reward instead?

• Rest that prevents resignation.

• Boundaries that protect longevity.

• Leadership that filters pressure instead of transferring it.

• Excellence without perfectionism.

• Policies that honor humanity.

If we want Black educators and all educators to stay, we must stop confusing endurance with commitment. Commitment to students should not require sacrificing our bodies. Perfect attendance is not a badge of honor. Sustainable leadership is. If you are a district leader, union partner, or institutional decision-maker rethinking retention, I would welcome the opportunity to discuss it. We can't keep asking educators to survive systems that refuse to evolve.

Let's redesign what we reward.