There is a difference between being heard and being listened to.
For Black educators, that difference has shaped not only their experiences in schools, but the conditions under which they are asked to teach, lead, and stay. The Black Teacher Project Podcast exists because Black teachers have always had something to say. The question has never been whether the insight is there, but whether there is space for it to be spoken, held, and taken seriously.
The Black Teacher Project was built from that knowing. A recognition that Black educators are not just participants in educational systems, but leaders shaping what learning can and should be. Our mission is to develop and sustain Black teachers to lead and reimagine schools as communities of liberated learning. It is not about retention alone. It is about thriving.
The Black Teacher Project Podcast is an extension of the truth-telling, wellness-supporting, community-building and liberatory learning work we’ve been doing since 2016 as part of the National Equity Project. Since its launch, the podcast has become an emergent communal space where Black educators gather not to perform, but to be in conversation. Where truth can be spoken without translation and where complexity is not simplified, but held.
Now officially available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube Podcasts, and iHeartRadio, the Black Teacher Project Podcast invites more people than ever into conversations that too often happen without the voices of those most deeply living the work.
What It Means to Teach While Black
Throughout the Black Teacher Project Podcast’s first episode, Hope and Fear in Education: Black Teachers on Justice, Resilience, and Building Community for All Students, what surfaces first is not a single story, but a shared tension. As shared by Lisa Harton, one of the Black educators who took part in its roundtable discussion, “I am both hopeful and fearful.” That duality threads through every conversation that follows.
Hope lives in the relationships Black educators build and in the brilliance they witness daily. As she reflects, in “the talent in my class,” “in the hallways of my schools every day,” and “the genius that the children have is just amazing to be a witness to.” Fear lives in the steady erosion of autonomy, in federal and state policies that narrow what can be taught, and in the question of how much truth can be spoken without consequence. And still, there is return.
As Dr. Cecelia Gillam, the Black educator who hosted the episode, reflects, “I definitely do believe it was a calling… every single time I’ve tried to run away from this calling, it came back to me.” That return is not passive. For many Black educators, it is a decision shaped by purpose, connection, and the understanding that what happens in classrooms matters.
The understanding deepens in Episode 2 of the BTP Podcast, Enough Is Enough: Black Women Educators on Outperforming, Tone Policing, and Choosing Wellness to Thrive in Schools.
“Absolutely” is how one educator answers the question of whether Black educators must outperform their white counterparts to be seen as effective. As Dr. Lena Hamilton shares, “I was described as antagonistic… because I was speaking up for my team,” and even with “the whole terminal degree,” experience, documents, and data, she was still “called antagonistic rather than clear sighted and professional.”
What emerges is not just critique, but clarity about cost. The emotional labor, the constant calibration, the expectation to carry more while being recognized less. As Dr. LaTesa Brown names plainly, “I’m tired boss.”
And alongside that, there is a refusal to collapse under it. Wellness is not framed as an indulgence. It is necessary. As Dr. Lena Hamilton reflects, “Getting on this call, hearing from my sisters, unwinding from the week and sharing with y’all has been a moment of joy. So this fellowship really has perked me up.” Community is not secondary to that wellness. It is what makes the work sustainable.
Learning, Power, and the Conditions We Teach Within
In Episode 3, DEI Under Attack: Black Educators Confront Political Backlash, Fear, and the Fight for Inclusive Schools for All Students, that sense of cost and clarity expands outward.
“It’s like a silence has washed over and everybody’s side eyeing, everybody’s scared and the fear has taken over and it’s hurting the babies,” as shared by the episode’s host, Dr. Cecelia Gillam. Classrooms are being reshaped not only by policy, but by anticipation of it. Teachers are not always being told what cannot be taught. Instead, they are responding to what might come, adjusting in real time to a climate of uncertainty.
That preemptive silencing does not stop with educators. It reaches students, shaping what they are exposed to and how they come to understand the world around them. And still, even within that uncertainty, educators continue to hold their ground, making daily decisions about what it means to teach truthfully, to protect their students, and to remain in integrity with the work.
This moment is not new. In Black Teacher Project Podcast’s following fourth episode, Teaching Black History as World-Making: Dr. Jarvis Givens on Carter G. Woodson, Memory, and the Work of Black Teachers, that continuity is named directly.
“Our history has always been contraband,” reminds featured guest, esteemed academic and author Dr. Jarvis Givens, in his exchange with BTP Founder and Executive Director Dr. Micia Mosely, reflecting on how Black knowledge, memory, and truth-telling have long been treated as something to restrict, control, or erase.
As Dr. Givens affirms throughout the episode, Black teachers are memory workers who carry forward histories, practices, and ways of knowing that refuse disappearance. Teaching, then, becomes more than instruction. It becomes preservation, interpretation, and imagination at once, ensuring that students encounter knowledge that expands how they see themselves and the world, even when that knowledge is contested or pushed to the margins.
From Compliance to Liberated Learning in the Classroom
In Episode 5, Good Trouble in the Classroom: Black Educators on Literacy, STEM, and Teaching for Liberation, the conversation turns toward what liberated learning looks like in practice.
In the exchange, three Black woman educators reflect on and push beyond narrow definitions of learning that reduce it to performance and outcomes. As JaVaughn Hardaway shares, “Literacy in this moment is to be expansive… we’re also teaching you the literacy of who you are… the literacy of societal transformation and the development of criticality,” grounding learning in identity, context, and the capacity to think beyond what is given.
In this framing, learning becomes about curiosity, identity, and the ability to make meaning. It becomes about helping students read the world as much as the word. Black educators are not simply working within systems. They are reshaping what learning looks like inside them, creating classrooms where relevance, joy, and critical thinking are not extras, but expectations.
That shift is carried further in Episode 6, From Compliance to Possibility: Zaretta Hammond and Abdul-Haqq Khalifah on Teaching for Learning Power and Liberation.
As renowned teacher educator and architect of the Ready4Rigor Framework Zaretta Hammond reminds us, “Only the learner learns,” naming a fundamental truth that reframes the role of the teacher as one who designs conditions for thinking, not one who carries it. Abdul-Haqq Khalifah of Agency by Design Oakland, a longtime educator and BTP facilitator, extends that shift with a question: “How do we empower students to run the classroom?”
The episode’s talk pushes educators to reconsider who holds power in the learning space and what becomes possible when that power is shared.
Together, their insights name a necessary shift in practice. Teaching must move from managing behavior to designing for thinking. Students should not be positioned as passive recipients, but as active meaning-makers, supported to struggle productively, build independence, and take ownership of their learning. What emerges from the exchange is not just a different way to teach, but a different vision of what learning can be.
Why the Black Teacher Project Podcast Matters
Across these conversations, what emerges is not a single message, but a collective one. Teaching is not neutral. Learning is not separate from power. The work of Black educators has always been about more than instruction.
The Black Teacher Project Podcast holds space for that truth, even at a time when inequity is intensifying, reduced to headlines, misrepresented through narrative, and flattened into surface-level discourse before being dismissed. It invites listening that is active, not passive. It centers voices too often positioned at the margins of conversations about education, even as they shape what is possible within it. And it disrupts the doomscroll with truth-telling conversations that balance honesty with possibility.
Now available on all major platforms, the podcast continues to grow as a space of connection, reflection, and clarity. For Black educators, it offers recognition. For those who support them, it offers a deeper understanding of what the work requires. For anyone invested in the future of education, it offers a chance to listen differently.
Once you begin listening, the invitation is to stay.
