Counter-Narratives and Retention: Understanding and Supporting Black Educators in Politically Hostile Educational Ecosystems
In partnership with Dr. Jacquelyn Ollison of the Center for Research on Expanding Educational Opportunity (CREEO) at UC Berkeley, this project uses The Exit Interview: A Podcast for Black Educators as a qualitative data source to better understand why Black educators leave the profession, especially in politically hostile, anti-“woke” environments. Rather than framing this solely as a generic “teacher shortage,” the study treats Black educator retention as a matter of racial wellness, institutional accountability, and epistemic justice.
Using narrative and critical discourse analysis, the research team will analyze 10–20 publicly available podcast episodes where Black educators share their exit stories. Guided by frameworks of racial battle fatigue, compassion fatigue, leadership and turnover, and testimonio, the study examines how educators describe racialized hostility, administrative practices, emotional and psychological exhaustion, and the conditions that make staying impossible or unsafe.
This project aims to:
Center Black educator narratives as critical data that reveal systemic failures and possibilities for repair.
Identify structural and institutional themes that inform racially affirming, wellness-centered retention frameworks.
Model podcast-based research methods that other justice-focused scholars and practitioners can use to study educator experiences.
Anticipated outputs include a policy brief, a white paper on narrative-based retention approaches, a practitioner toolkit for HR and school leaders, and conference presentations. Through this work, Liberated Educators Lab, CREEO, and collaborators seek to shift the question from “why do Black educators leave?” to “what do their stories reveal about how institutions must change?”