I became an effective teacher faster than I had any right to. I did not do that alone. I was carried, coached, and corrected by Black women educators who refused to let my students receive anything less than excellent instruction. Without them, I would have been another well-intentioned novice teacher figuring it out on children’s time. Instead, they accelerated my learning so my students did not have to pay tuition for my mistakes.
I was ushered into the craft by several Black women educators — especially my coaches, Mrs. Yvonne Savior and Mrs. Tanya Corbett — who refused to let my students receive anything less than excellent instruction. And they were not alone. Inspiration was all around me, embodied in a constellation of Black women whose names still anchor my practice: Mrs. Floyd, Mrs. Haltie, Mrs. Hawkins-Walker, Mrs. Lee, Mrs. Leggett, Mrs. Carr, Mrs. Pendleton, and so many more.
They modeled rigor wrapped in love, made classrooms hum with possibility, and quietly pulled younger teachers aside to say, “Here’s how we make sure our kids win.”
When I talk about my growth as a teacher, I am really talking about standing in the overflow of their expertise — especially the relentless coaching, correction, and care I received from Mrs. Yvonne Savior and Mrs. Tanya Corbett.
Mama Aisha El-Mekki belongs here, not as part of a roll call, but as part of the lineage that made my educational life imaginable. She was a quiet, fierce educator, a West Philly daughter, a Black Panther veteran, a Shia Muslim, and a woman who moved through the world as if children were a question adults had no right to evade. Long before I had formal language for pedagogy, I had Mama Aisha showing me that education was sacred work, community work, and justice work. That sensibility shaped how I received the instruction of Mrs. Savior and Mrs. Corbett — not as isolated coaching moves, but as part of a larger Black pedagogical lineage of women who taught, protected, and carried us.
Mama Aisha showed up as her full, consistent, layered self. She did not sand herself down for institutions, and Black women educators need that same room to be whole — not just what children need from them, but who they need to be in order to remain healthy, grounded, and free. When systems and supervisors keep demanding that Black women shrink, perform, and contort themselves to fit somebody else’s comfort, they should not be surprised when those same women slide right out of the building. By then, the loss belongs to all of us.
The System is Failing Black Women Educators
That is why I thought immediately of them when I read new reporting on the loss of Black women educators.
Black women make up about 5 percent of the teaching workforce, yet their turnover rate is 21.8 percent. That is not just a staffing issue. It is an instructional emergency.
If you remove Black women educators like Mrs. Savior and Mrs. Corbett from my story, you remove the very people who showed me how to teach.
As a brand-new teacher, I walked into my classroom full of energy, theory, and fire. They brought something else: craft, courage, and a clear understanding that our students deserved mastery, not experiments. They sat in my room, took notes, and then gave feedback that was as precise as it was loving. They modeled tight, joyful classrooms where expectations were high and culture was warm. They pushed my lesson planning, helped refine my questioning techniques and how I could my effectiveness in what was taught, reflect did I actually teach it well if they students didn’t understand it, became part of my internal check for understanding.
I already had healthy assumptions about my students and their families from my own parents and teachers. I was an activist entering a school. These coaches and mentors shaped and formed me into a teacher. Dr Martin Ryder helped me see that my role as a teacher could be a part of a longer Black educational freedom struggle – my coaches helped make that a reality. I did not become a strong teacher quickly because I was gifted. I became one because Black women took the time to shape my practice.
The research names a tradition many of us already know in our bones. Black women educators often understand teaching not as a job title but as an identity and a calling, rooted in radical care for students. They show up as teachers, mentors, and othermothers, taking on unspoken responsibilities for protecting and nurturing children, especially Black children, in systems that too often harm them. They invite students in when they need a listening ear, shield them from unfair discipline, and model authentic Blackness in spaces that routinely police it.
This is the same labor Mrs. Savior, Mrs. Corbett, and that wider circle of Black women carried in our school. They were not just responsible for their own classrooms. They were responsible for mine, too, because they understood that my learning curve had direct consequences for the children sitting in front of me. They were doing the work beyond the work — the extra, often uncompensated mentoring, emotional triage, and cultural translation that Black women educators have always provided.
Black Women Model Radical Love in Education
Recent data highlight a painful paradox: Black teachers have some of the highest morale in the profession and, at the same time, some of the highest rates of turnover. New reporting on teacher morale shows that Black teachers often report the strongest morale of any racial group, describing their work as meaningful, hopeful, and deeply connected to their life purpose. Many say that proximity to their students and communities fuels that sense of mission; they do not just see themselves as teaching children, but as training and developing their replacements — the young people who will one day stand at the front of classrooms and lead their communities.
Yet while they pour that level of care, time, and expertise into school buildings, the systems around them rarely reciprocate, failing to provide the support, respect, and protection that match what they give. That disconnect is part of why the very educators our students need most are also leaving at such troubling rates.
Mrs. Savior and Mrs. Corbett are living examples of that paradox. Their morale was never the issue; their belief in our students and in the power of teaching was sky-high. The question was whether the systems around them would honor what they were pouring into our classrooms — or continue to run on their labor while treating them as endlessly renewable resources.
And this is where educators like Dr. Bettina Love have been clear: districts have to stop congratulating themselves for recruiting Black teachers while refusing to build the conditions that retain us. Dr. Love put it plainly when she argued that districts should stop trying to recruit Black teachers until they can retain the ones they already have. The issue is not whether Black educators are willing to serve. The issue is whether systems are willing to protect, develop, affirm, and keep the Black educators they are so eager to showcase.
That means changing more than slogans and staffing plans. It means building schools where Black women educators are not treated as crisis managers, emotional first responders, surrogate disciplinarians, and culture keepers all at once, without the pay, authority, or support that labor demands. It means creating conditions where their brilliance is not merely extracted, but sustained.
There are concrete ways to begin. Support for Black women educators has to include trauma-informed leadership, identity-affirming spaces, healing affinity groups, and a serious commitment to protecting their joy and well-being. None of that is extra. That is what real retention looks like.
We make a grave mistake when we treat the loss of Black women educators as a line item in a teacher turnover report.
When a Black woman teacher leaves, students lose a critical mirror and advocate. Colleagues lose a truth-teller who understands how racism and sexism show up in policy and practice. New teachers lose the coach who will quietly pull them aside and say, “Let me show you how we do this so our kids win.” In African traditions, it is said when an elder leaves us, it is like a library being burned to the ground. I have always thought of the dope elder Black women teachers similarly.
I know what it means to have that kind of support — and what it would have meant not to have it. My students would have experienced more chaos, more misaligned lessons, and more trial and error. I would have made more harmful mistakes in classroom management and family engagement. Instead, a circle of Black women educators stood in the gap between my inexperience and my students’ right to a world-class education.
So here is my plea to systems leaders, policymakers, and preparation programs: stop hiding behind recruitment campaigns. Do not spend another dollar marketing that you value diversity if you are not willing to change policy, pay, and protection to keep Black women teachers. We do not need one more glossy brochure to find Black educators; we need districts to build the infrastructure to retain the Black teachers they already have. If you are willing to showcase Black women on your website but not willing to build the conditions that honor their labor, you are not building a pipeline — you are playing in our faces.
Black women have been carrying schools, just as they have carried cities and movements, often without the title, the salary, or the safety that should come with that level of responsibility. For my part, I will keep saying their names. I will keep naming the data and the debt. And I will keep insisting that when we talk about teacher shortages or retention, we center Black women educators, because when they stay and thrive, students like mine — and teachers like me — do, too.
