Letters From The Lab
Letters from the Lab is the writing home of Dr. Asia Lyons, essays and reflections from Liberated Educators Lab exploring Black educator wellness, truth-telling, retention, and the conditions needed for liberation. Rooted in story, research, and lived experience, these pieces name what’s often overlooked and imagine what becomes possible.
May 25, 2024
Rethinking Black Teacher Affinity Groups
Creating Black teacher affinity groups needs to go beyond DEI checklists. Maybe it’s time to rethink school district-sponsored affinity spaces. A few weeks ago, I met with Jalisa Evan, executive director of the Black Educator Advocates Network, …
March 27, 2024
Healing In Community
What happens when a group of women and non-binary folks get together with the intention to heal in community? That was the question Dr. Ellie Cahill and I asked when we started thinking about a healing space for Black educators. Our work, we imagi…
Jan. 8, 2024
Living at The Intersection of Niceness and Silence
“We lived weekly in the intersection of niceness and silence.” - Stephen A. A few months ago, I had the opportunity to talk with two other speakers with a group of doctoral students in a program at a university here in Denver. The focus of the cla…
Jan. 4, 2024
January 2024 Newsletter
Welcome to our first Exit Interview Newsletter! We are so excited to get the 2024 year started by sharing behind-the-scenes content, upcoming episodes, and other dope things coming down the pipe. Come along with us as we start our 4th season! I…
Dec. 21, 2023
Racial Battle Fatigue's Impact On Black Educators & Our Families
“The first thing he starts with me is about racism and how he believes in the bootstrap kind of idea of everything. And that's what he teaches the students here at the school, and he starts asking me all these questions. And I told him, I said, Jose…
June 17, 2023
June 2023 Newsletter
Hey Exit Interview Community! As a consulting firm focused on supporting youth-serving organizations, we feel it important to focus on some of the most minoritized folks in the youth-serving spaces; Black educators. Amid ongoing conversations surro…
April 11, 2023
Clean Pain
As a part of the Black Educator Wellness Cohort, a program Dr. Ellie Cahill and I co-facilitate monthly for educators in the Denver Metro Area, we are reading, My Grandmother's Hands. The author talks about clean and dirty pain in one of the firs…
March 14, 2023
Take The Detour
In May 2022 I graduated with my doctorate in Leadership for Educational Equity. Of all of the things that happened during the commencement (besides me crying like a newborn as dr. jefferson hooded me), the commencement speaker’s speech impacted me …
March 7, 2023
If You Are Living with Racial Battle Fatigue
Four years ago, I was an educator in a district teaching middle schoolers about what happens in society when a lack of humanity exists. I asked them to examine with me what social justice means and why it is necessary when humanity is interrupte…
Feb. 20, 2023
One More Thought
Last year, during a discussion in a pre-service teaching class I instruct, a Black woman asked me a simple and complex question, “Do all Black teachers experience racism at work?”. My answer is, “Yes, of course. If we experience racism in our lives…