In collaboration with dr. antwan jefferson at UC Denver, Liberated Educators Lab is documenting the lived experiences of Black educators through a multi-year oral history study. Drawing From the Well is an archival justice and oral history project chronicling the stories of Black educators who taught in Denver-area public schools between 1960 and 2005. These long-serving educators, each with 20 or more years in the classroom, have lived through desegregation, busing, shifting accountability policies (Keyes, NCLB, RTTT, ESSA), and decades of funding volatility in Colorado. Their perspectives offer rare insight into how policy, racism, and community change are experienced on the ground, and how Black educators have persisted, adapted, and led through it all.

Using qualitative narrative inquiry informed by phenomenology, the study gathers in-depth life histories from approximately 20 Black educators across the Denver metro region. Interviews focus on how they made sense of significant reforms, advocated for students and families, drew on community cultural wealth and professional networks, and navigated the emotional and psychological toll of racial battle fatigue on themselves and their families.

This project aims to:

• Center the voices and institutional memory of long-serving Black educators whose stories are often excluded from official histories.

• Bridge policy and practice by showing how large-scale reforms and funding decisions shape daily classroom life, professional identity, and retention.

• Advance archival justice by preserving these oral histories for future scholars, educators, and community members through public collections and exhibits.

Together, these narratives will inform future policy, leadership practices, and wellness supports that honor the contributions and needs of Black educators in Denver and beyond.

Liberated Educators Lab serves as a key research partner in a multi-year evaluation led by the University of Denver’s Butler Institute for Families, examining the experiences of early childhood educators across the Denver Preschool Program (DPP). This project explores working conditions, workforce shortages, racialized workplace experiences, compensation disparities, and educator well-being through a combination of surveys and in-depth interviews.

As a racial battle fatigue subject-matter expert and qualitative consultant, Liberated Educators Lab supports this project through the design of BIPOC-centered survey and interview questions, training Butler’s team on RBF-informed interviewing, and co-developing qualitative analysis approaches. Together, the team is using both quantitative and qualitative insights to inform recommendations that:

• Expand culturally grounded wellness supports for diverse educators,

• Address racial pay inequities and advocate for fair compensation, and

• Strengthen recruitment, retention, and professional development strategies across DPP sites.

This work helps ensure that early childhood systems in Denver not only recognize the expertise of diverse educators but also actively create conditions for them to thrive.