Director’s Reflections: Five Years of Teacher Truth
Dr. E’rika Chambers holds data boards from the Teacher Truth gallery.
Greetings BlackFemaleProject Network,
As Teacher Truth enters year five, our team continues to celebrate the brilliant educators who lend their stories of triumph and loss; joy and pain; success and struggle; and everything in between. We continue to be grateful for our strategic institutional partners in this work, like CAAASA and NCOEE, who have helped us align our work with the goals of the broader education industry. With their support, we’ve been able to make meaningful connections with others who are doing work to illuminate the ways that contemporary experiences of Black educators are rooted in the long history of anti-Blackness in U.S. education, particularly the detrimental impacts of Brown v. Board of Education, which we’re still navigating 70 years later. BlackFemaleProject Executive Director, Precious Stroud, has provided sound leadership that positions Teacher Truth to have a positive impact on educators and the educational landscape.
We recognize that fostering a culture of care is essential for creating a sense of belonging for students and teachers and that a sense of belonging is a key factor in improved academic outcomes. By offering healing and wellness resources and a safe space to share and process their stories, Teacher Truth is facilitating healing that embodies and demonstrates the power and importance of storytelling as a tool for addressing experiences connected to racial identity and systemic racism. From our research, practical strategies are emerging to help transform workplaces into spaces where Black educators and the students they serve can flourish.
When Precious first hired me four years ago to manage Teacher Truth, I felt triggered as I began to engage the quantitative data. Soon after, I started listening to the rich qualitative data from the initial Teacher Truth interviews, which often touched on experiences and dynamics that mirrored patterns I navigated throughout the course of my own lifelong educational journey. Things I had repressed, buried, or forgotten came to the surface. I knew I needed to face the hurt, the dismissiveness, and the denial of my leadership as an educator that I had encountered in some of my early work experiences. Having worked in diverse educational settings across my career, I saw the devastating extremes in different school types, demographics, culture-building approaches, and access to wealth. Giving more thought to the challenges I faced as a young Black woman in education, I was present to how grateful I was for the support of Black people who were in leadership roles. This reinvigorated my commitment to showing up and being a support for the educators that Teacher Truth serves. Black educators need our voices, influence, and advocacy to show up for them in rooms they aren’t in and may not get invited into. Teacher Truth positions us to insert ourselves in the rooms, conversations, and agendas that often exclude Black educators, but undoubtedly and majorly impact their day-to-day experience. We serve as ambassadors, bringing their words, recommendations, and solutions into the mix to make the case for investing in Black educators' healing and wellness and otherwise undoing the harm caused by generations of systemic anti-Blackness.
Leslie Fenwicks's book, Jim Crow's Pink Slip: The Untold Story of Black Principal and Teacher Leadership, highlights the impacts of Brown V. Board on Black educators and administrators. Nearly 40,000 Black educators lost their jobs during the implementation of Brown v. Board of Education in 1954. Many who had masters and doctoral degrees faced demotion; some were fired or placed in new positions with little interaction or impact on education. In the book, Fenwick poses the question, "Is the future one of little hope for the protection of the Black educator?" The Teacher Truth research team ponders this question and a few others:
What specific strategies can leadership implement to create environments that better support Black educators in K-12 schools?
How can Teacher Truth's research insights and recommendations be leveraged to shift educational leaders and policymakers who are crucial in implementing change?
What role do educational institutions play in addressing the historical injustices faced by Black educators, as highlighted in Fenwick's work and echoed throughout our findings?
We recognize the hostilities that exist toward race-specific initiatives in this politically charged moment. But hostility in the face of righteous resistance is not a new phenomenon, and our ancestral legacies have equipped us to face these challenges with grace. Our inspiring research team keeps us grounded in our resolve: Dr. Micia Mosely of The Black Teacher Project elevates the joy and liberation that Black educators are experiencing, balancing the challenging stories with positive narratives. Dr. Britte Cheng of Menlo Education Research expertly analyzes our data and adds our learnings into the national bank of related research while helping us keep a pulse on the field. And Dr. Tameka McGlawn consistently reminds us of the importance of healing and well-being as we do the work of power-building to shift systems across industries. We thank her for reminding us that we must rest, replenish, and frequently reset as we stay the course.
As we push forward with our commitment to uplifting and documenting the voices of Black educators, I find myself contemplating what it means to lead with courage, integrity, truth-telling, grace, and joy while also documenting – and at times experiencing – harm, hostility, and dehumanization. During a time of uncertainty, funding cuts, massive layoffs, and a generally antagonistic environment, we extend peace, love, light, and, of course, our support. We will continue illuminating the path toward healing, liberation, and the freedom to teach and learn in ways that are grounded in love.
We often advocate for cultures of care in our schools, workplaces, districts, and county offices. As UC Berkeley’s Othering & Belonging Institute explains it, “A Culture of Care is an affirmative, generative form of resistance and adaptation" (UC Berkeley, 2025). Keeping our pulse on the Black educator experience in K-12 education, we recognize that we can contribute and do more to bring awareness to what Black educators are experiencing regarding race and racism in the workplace (Teachertruth.org). In hearing from educational leaders, it seems that they are beginning to understand that, "it's not the educators but the systems that support them." We know that it’s possible to shift the atmosphere and curate a learning and working environment where everyone thrives, and we know that storytelling and healing play a crucial role in making this shift happen.
Call-to-Action
We urge everyone who can have an effect on education—whether you're a teacher, administrator, superintendent, policy maker, researcher, funder, PTA leader, or concerned community member—to listen to Black educators and make tangible changes in your work that truly respond to their self-defined needs and priorities.
While Teacher Truth is a project that honors Black educators, everyone has a place in this work!
1. Fenwick, L. T., & Milner, H. R. (2022). Jim Crow’s pink slip: The untold story of black principal and teacher leadership. Harvard Education Press.
2. UC Berkeley. (n.d.). Overview: Why cultures of care?: Cultures of care. Othering & Belonging Institute.
3. Teacher truth. BlackFemaleProject. (2025).
4. Bristol, T., Carver-Thomas, D., Ladson-Billings, G., & Madkins, T. C. (2025, February 25). Brown at 70: The importance and scarcity of black teachers. Learning Policy Institute.
