In this bonus mini-sode, Tianna welcomes her youngest (and cutest) guests to the podcast—her nephews Coltrane and Garvey. They discuss what it’s like to be young, Black boys in school, their favorite books, dinosaurs, dogs, cookies, and more.

In this episode, Tianna turns on the storytelling lens to focus on the lives of two phenomenal Black women educators who had a tremendous impact on her life as a child, educator, and human being: Mrs. McCain & Mrs. Berry of Long Creek Elementary School in Huntersville, NC. Not only did they love their students with a passion, but their respective lives outside of education left Tianna shocked and in awe.

Tianna chats with mother of two, post-partum doula, and home-school educator Brianna Burton on the impact of The Oreo Dilemma; the false notion that academic status and education level is directly tied to the white race, and the stereotype that Black people who are well educated are considered "oreos" (black on the outside and white on the inside). We explore this conversation through a human, educator, and parent lens respectively as well as examine the effects of code switching and the integration of AAVE into conversations at work.  Resources for racial identity development: https://www.uua.org/files/documents/derman-sparkslouise/1206_233_identity_stages.pdf https://www.mccc.edu/pdf/cmn214/Class%203/Racial%20identity%20development.pdf https://www.sbctc.edu/resources/documents/colleges-staff/programs-services/foc-mentorship/stages-of-racial-identity-development-oct2019.pdf