What Black Women Tell Me Off Mic

After years of listening to Black women educators across the country, I noticed a truth we cannot keep ignoring.

After years of recording The Exit Interview: A Podcast for Black Educators, I realized I was hearing the same story again and again.

Maybe twenty or thirty episodes in, a pattern began to emerge. In pre-interviews, Black women would tell me about harm they had experienced in education spaces under the leadership of Black men. They named principals, assistant principals, deans, supervisors, nonprofit leaders, and district figures. They spoke clearly about what happened, how power was used, and how deeply it affected them.

Then the microphone would turn on.

And something would shift.

The Black male principal became “leadership.” The supervisor became “my boss.” The man at the center of the story became genderless.

The pain remained. But part of the truth disappeared.

At first, I wasn’t surprised.

I’m a Black woman who has worked inside education systems. I taught for twelve years. I’ve worked in higher education. I understand how institutions organize power and how certain narratives are protected. I understand how much urgency, funding, and celebration can surround efforts to bring more Black men into education.

So it didn’t shock me that some women were willing to name harm privately, but hesitated to name it publicly.

What struck me was how often it happened.

And it wasn’t only happening on the podcast.

In workshops, trainings, and conversations across the country, I began naming misogynoir in education spaces out loud. Often, once I said it first, Black women would respond the same way.

Me too.

That happened to me, too.

I’ve seen that too.

Sometimes people need to know they are not alone before they can speak.

Why the Story Gets Edited

By now, some people may ask: why would Black women tell these stories privately, then soften them publicly?

Because many understand that telling the full truth can have consequences.

Some fear losing contracts, consulting opportunities, or future access. Some fear being excluded from professional circles. Some fear being labeled difficult, divisive, or disloyal. Some fear damaging the career of the very man who harmed them. Some fear that if they tell the truth, they will be accused of turning against Black men or harming the larger community.

That is part of what makes this silence so layered.

Black women are often expected to absorb harm and protect the person causing it.

I’ve seen what this can look like. It rarely shows up first in formal complaints or public statements. It often shows up in texts and calls between Black women who are trying to keep one another safe.

Don’t go work for him.

Watch out for that school.

I need to tell you what happened to me there.

These whisper networks do not form because nothing happened. They form because speaking plainly feels risky.

Part of that risk is connected to a larger narrative many of us know well: the urgency of bringing more Black men into education.

Across the country, there are university-based initiatives, fellowships, and pipeline programs focused on recruiting Black male educators. These efforts often receive praise, funding, visibility, and social media attention. Black men in classrooms are still framed as rare and urgently needed.

I understand why those efforts exist. Representation matters. Black children deserve to see themselves reflected in educators.

But when rarity becomes reverence, accountability can become harder.

When the public story is that Black men in education must be protected at all costs, then conversations about Black male leaders harming Black women can be treated as inconvenient, divisive, or untimely.

The harm gets minimized because the pipeline has already been prioritized.

The Retention Lie No One Wants to Discuss

When people talk about Black educator retention, they often don’t actually talk about Black educator retention.

More often, Black educators are folded into the broader conversation about teachers leaving the profession. The language becomes familiar: low pay, burnout, long hours, lack of support, staffing shortages.

All of those issues matter.

But they are incomplete.

When we use blanket explanations for everyone, we flatten the experiences of Black educators. And when we flatten the experiences of Black educators, we especially erase Black women.

Black women do not move through education, or through this country, the same way everyone else does. Our experiences exist at the intersection of race and gender, a reality Kimberlé Crenshaw helped the world better understand.

So when Black women talk about staying or leaving education, the conversation cannot stop at low pay or generic burnout.

Because many Black women are navigating multiple pressures at once.

We may be dealing with hostility from white colleagues. We may be viewed as intimidating when we are competent. We may be asked to lead, then punished for leading. We may be burdened with invisible labor. We may be expected to mentor everyone while receiving little support ourselves.

And some are also navigating misogynoir from Black men in positions of authority.

That is not the same story as “teachers are burned out.”

If the diagnosis is shallow, the solutions will be too.

Diversity Alone Does Not Equal Safety

There is also a common assumption that if a school is majority Black or majority people of color, then the workplace must automatically be healthier.

That assumption is false.

Shared racial identity does not automatically create shared liberation.

People can look alike and still carry very different politics, values, wounds, and relationships to power. There can be anti-Blackness. There can be colorism. There can be rigid gender roles. There can be ego. There can be competition. There can be misogynoir.

Sometimes, diversity without accountability can make harm harder to name because everyone assumes it shouldn't be happening there.

We cannot keep confusing representation with justice.

Why This Is Hard to Say Publicly

This conversation creates a different kind of tension than conversations about racism from white leadership.

Many people know how to discuss white supremacy when it sits in a white body. Institutions know how to host DEI trainings, release statements, or perform concern.

This is different.

This asks us to talk about power in a gendered body. It asks us to hold two truths at once: Black men can experience racial oppression, and Black women can experience harm from Black men in positions of authority.

That complexity makes people uncomfortable.

When Black women publicly critique harm from Black men, many carry real fear.

Fear of being attacked.

Fear of being called anti-Black men.

Fear of being accused of tearing down the community.

Fear that people will piece together names, schools, and districts and retaliate.

I’ve felt some of that pressure myself while writing this.

I was raised under many of the same invisible rules that other Black women were raised under. Rules about protecting community image. Rules about what stays inside. Rules about not saying certain things publicly, even when they are true.

But silence is not solidarity.

Naming misogynoir is not attacking Black men.

Accountability is not betrayal.

Truth-telling is not disloyalty.

What Needs to Change

If we are serious about retention, then we must become serious about accountability.

Real accountability begins with acknowledgment.

Black male leaders must be willing to examine where harm has happened under their leadership. The harm they caused directly. Harm they benefited from. Harm they witnessed and chose not to interrupt.

That kind of reckoning requires humility.

It requires reflection.

It may require therapy.

It requires a willingness to look at patterns instead of pretending every story is isolated.

And after acknowledgment must come change.

Leadership is stewardship of power.

That means creating workplaces where Black women can speak honestly without punishment. It means sharing opportunities. It means recognizing labor accurately. It means apologizing when harm occurs. It means making repair possible.

Right now, Black women educators need psychological safety. They need fair compensation. They need rest. They need healing spaces. They need leadership pathways that do not require self-erasure.

Most importantly, they need workplaces that they do not have to recover from.

Districts, universities, nonprofits, and funders also need to look more honestly at what they celebrate.

If an initiative produces more Black male principals, deans, superintendents, or teachers, are we also asking the people under their leadership about their experience?

Are we conducting meaningful exit interviews?

Are we listening to supervisees and colleagues?

Or are we congratulating ourselves because the numbers look good on paper?

Representation without accountability can become branding.

If We Truly Want Retention

If we truly want to retain Black educators, then we must acknowledge that Black women often have a different experience in education than Black men do.

And we must listen seriously to Black women who have already left.

Retention strategies cannot be built only from the voices of those who remained. They cannot rest on assumptions about burnout or pay alone. They cannot be designed through guesswork when thousands of women hold direct knowledge of why they walked away.

This conversation is more nuanced than the public narrative allows.

And we are more brilliant than the solutions we have accepted.

For Black women reading this, I want you to know something clearly:

I heard you.

Even if this piece arrives later than it should have, I heard you.

I appreciate you. I love you. And I want you to stay in education as long as you desire, not until harm forces you out.

We are stronger when truth-telling is part of education.

We are wiser when retention efforts can stand ten toes down in honesty.

And we will only move forward when silence is no longer mistaken for solidarity.

“My Mom Was Right”: What Our Families Know About Teaching That We Ignore

Before she became a teacher, Kelly Mitchell’s mom questioned her decision. And later, after everything Kelly experienced in education, she said plainly, "My mom was right." That moment didn’t surprise me, but it sat with me. Because I often think about the ways our families try to warn us about becoming educators.

For many of us, those warnings aren’t random; they’re rooted in history. They come from parents and grandparents who lived through school integration after Brown v. Board of Education, who experienced bussing not as a policy but as something that disrupted, displaced, and harmed. They remember what it felt like to enter schools that weren’t designed to protect or nurture them. They remember the trauma, even if they don’t always name it that way. So when Kelly talked about her mom’s hesitation, I didn’t hear doubt. I heard protection. I heard a mother who understood something deeply that education, as a system, has never been neutral for us.

I think about my own daughter. If she told me she wanted to become an educator after everything I’ve experienced, I’d be afraid for her. Not because I don’t believe in teaching. Not because I don’t believe in students. But because I understand what this system can do to a person’s spirit, their body, and their sense of self.

My father told me I was too smart to become a teacher. At the time, I heard that as dismissal.

When I think about what older Black folks have shared about education, the message is consistent, even when it’s unspoken. You can’t fully trust these systems. You have to take care of yourself. Focus on the kids, but be careful with the adults. Don’t lose yourself trying to survive in that place. And for some of us, the warning was more direct. My father told me I was too smart to become a teacher. At the time, I heard that as dismissal. But looking back, I hear what his experiences taught him. He grew up in Detroit Public Schools and didn’t see Black genius reflected back in his teachers. To him, becoming an educator meant settling. That belief didn’t come from nowhere. It came from what he saw. And still, I became an educator. Because many of us do. We enter the profession not because we’re unaware of the warnings, but because we feel called. We love students. We love learning. We’re born to teach. And the most accessible, visible pathway for that calling is the classroom. We don’t start off thinking about building freedom schools or creating something new. We walk into the systems that already exist.

Not every Black educator experiences harm in the same way. Many thrive. Some build long, meaningful careers. But for many of us, the cost is real.

But here’s the truth I’ve come to understand through my own experience, my research, and the stories shared on The Exit Interview: our families weren’t wrong. Not every Black educator experiences harm in the same way. Many thrive. Some build long, meaningful careers. But for many of us, the cost is real. And when we ignore that intergenerational wisdom, we end up paying for it in ways we weren’t prepared for. We pay for it in our mental health. We pay for it in our bodies. We pay for it in the slow dimming of something that once felt like light. Our families see it. They watch us come home exhausted. They hear the stories we tell. They feel the weight we carry. And it confirms what they already believed, that this system wasn’t built for us.

What I’ve also learned, through my dissertation on racial battle fatigue's impact on Black educators and our families and through nearly every conversation on my podcast, is that this harm is never isolated. When Black educators experience hurt, it ripples. We talk to our families. We text our friends. We process in community. That ripple becomes collective knowing. It shapes how our communities see schools, districts, unions and individuals. It shapes whether our children, grandchildren, nieces, nephews, etc. want to enter the profession. It shapes whether the next generation even considers teaching as a possibility.

So when a Black parent discourages their child from becoming an educator, it’s not because they don’t value education. It’s because they don’t trust the system. And honestly, they have every reason not to. I want to be clear about something. There’s no shame in being a classroom teacher. There’s no shame in entering the profession through the pathways that exist. I loved teaching as all of us did, but there is harm in pretending those pathways are neutral, or safe, or sustainable for everyone.

So this is what I want to say.

To Black parents: you’re not wrong for wanting your children to be safe. You’re not wrong for mourning what this profession can take from them. We understand that your concern is rooted in love.

To aspiring Black educators: you deserve to teach, but you also deserve to be well. You need language for what you’re experiencing. You need community outside of your school. You need spaces for joy, for healing, for truth-telling. Don’t make the classroom your entire world.

And to school systems: when you recruit Black educators, you’re not just recruiting individuals. You’re asking entire families and communities to take a risk. People move across the country. They leave support systems behind. They bring their whole lives with them. And when you ignore that, when you focus only on numbers and representation, you don’t just lose the educator. You lose everything that came with them.

If I could speak directly to Kelly’s mom, and to so many mothers like her, I’d say this: You did the right thing. You said what you needed to say. You saw what needed to be seen. And your love showed up as protection. And we hear you now.

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.