The Exit Interview: A Podcast for Black Educators has been approved as the first podcast collection to be archived at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.

Why This Matters

For generations, Black educators have shaped classrooms, communities, freedom movements, and the future of public education. Yet too often, our stories are flattened into data points, crisis narratives, diversity statements, or retention reports. The fullness of our experiences, our brilliance, exhaustion, refusals, grief, joy, strategy, and imagination has not always been preserved with the care it deserves.

The Exit Interview: A Podcast for Black Educators was created to change that.

This podcast documents the stories of Black educators who have left, questioned, resisted, or reimagined their relationship to traditional education. These conversations make visible what institutions often overlook: the emotional toll of racial harm, the cost of staying, the complexity of leaving, and the powerful ways Black educators continue to serve education beyond school buildings.

Being archived at the Schomburg Center affirms that these stories are not side conversations. They are part of Black history.

This milestone matters because Black educator stories deserve more than momentary attention. We deserve preservation. We deserve to be heard by future educators, researchers, families, organizers, policymakers, and anyone seeking to understand what Black educators have carried, created, and survived.

To archive The Exit Interview is to insist that the experiences of Black educators belong in the historical record, not someday, not after institutions decide they are ready to listen, but now.

About the Schomburg Center Milestone

The Exit Interview: A Podcast for Black Educators has been approved as a collection at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, one of the world’s leading institutions dedicated to preserving, researching, and celebrating Black life, history, and culture.

This milestone is historic. The Exit Interview is becoming the first podcast collection to be archived at the Schomburg Center.

For a podcast rooted in the stories of Black educators, this recognition carries deep meaning. These interviews document more than individual career transitions. They preserve the truth of what Black educators have experienced, endured, questioned, built, and imagined inside and beyond traditional education systems.

To have these stories held by the Schomburg is an affirmation that Black educators’ lives and labor are part of the larger story of Black history. It ensures that future educators, researchers, families, organizers, and communities will be able to engage with these narratives as part of the historical record.

The first 83 episodes have been submitted to the archive to start the collection process. The Schomburg has agreed to continue to add podcast episodes to the Exit Interview: A Podcast for Black Educators Collection until the podcast is no longer in production. This also allows future podcast guests to have their episodes archived.

About the Podcast

The Exit Interview: A Podcast for Black Educators is an award-winning podcast hosted and produced by Dr. Asia Lyons that documents and honors the lived experiences of Black educators who have chosen to leave the profession. Grounded in archival justice, the podcast uplifts their stories as a powerful form of truth-telling, healing, and resistance. By centering Black voices and their reasons for leaving and staying, it sparks critical conversations about wellness, racial battle fatigue, and what it truly takes to transform educational spaces into ones where Black educators can thrive.

From Our Host & Producer

Greetings, beautiful people.

Thank you so much for sharing in the celebration of this historic moment for The Exit Interview. My podcast started from my own desire to be heard. After being pushed out of teaching in 2018, I requested an exit interview with my superintendent. After several emails, he finally agreed. I entered his office with a list of reasons why other Black educators and I were leaving the district. Afterward, I reflected on the many Black educators who had left education without ever sharing their stories. A podcast seemed like an ideal way to give them a voice and find my own healing simultaneously. Over time, I’ve gained new insights from my guests. What I initially assumed would be simple solutions to retaining Black educators became more nuanced. Themes have emerged, and my perspective on Black educator retention has expanded. What began as a straightforward project, The Exit Interview, has grown into a meaningful body of work I am proud to create and uphold.

My goal in seeking out the Schomburg to preserve our stories was to ensure that the lived experiences of Black educators would not be lost. I imagine that my guests' family members will be able to hear their stories firsthand 100 years from now, long after I’ve stopped recording the podcast. It is important that their stories live on forever. Partnering with the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture ensures that this legacy continues.

In solidarity,

Dr. Asia Lyons