When Black Educators Bet on Themselves

In a recent episode of The Exit Interview: A Podcast for Black Educators, I spoke with Latoya Turner, 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.  Dr. Mary Hemphill 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 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.