I didn’t Come to This Work From Just One Side of the Table
Before I spent more than three decades in education, I worked in corrections.
There, I saw Black men after choices, circumstances, missed opportunities, and systems had already intersected in ways that could permanently change the trajectory of their lives.
Years later, as a special educator working with children with behavioral and emotional needs, I found myself thinking about some of those men again.
Only now, I was meeting the children.
I saw how quickly a struggling Black child could become known primarily by his behavior. How easily correction could replace connection. How lowered expectations could follow a label. How removing a child from instruction could address what happened in the moment without necessarily teaching him what he needed to do differently the next time.
And I began asking myself a question that would eventually shape much of my life’s work:
What happens before a child gets there?
What happens before the suspension?
Before the repeated discipline referrals?
Before academic failure?
Before the anger?
Before a young person decides school has nothing to offer him?
Before choices are made that can alter the rest of his life?
Those questions became even more personal because I wasn’t only an educator.
I was raising Black sons of my own.
I Realized We Needed More Than Advocacy
For years, I taught parents how to advocate for their children and worked to improve collaboration between families and schools.
But eventually I realized advocacy alone wasn’t enough.
We could fight for better treatment at school while never examining what was happening at home.
We could demand that teachers understand our children while failing to understand what our children were communicating through their own behavior.
We could recognize bias in educational systems without examining the beliefs, fears, expectations, and patterns we ourselves may have inherited.
And we could protect children from obstacles outside our homes while unknowingly creating different obstacles inside them.
That realization was difficult, but it was also empowering.
Because if some of what shapes our children’s trajectory happens within our influence, then we have the power to change it.
That is where BlackEduPreneur became bigger than educational advocacy.
I began connecting the pieces of work I had spent decades developing.
Black parents need opportunities to understand and heal what they carry so that our wounds do not inadvertently become our children’s obstacles.
Families need practical ways to examine what they are passing from one generation to the next and intentionally decide what should continue and what should change.
Parents need tools for supporting children’s behavior, learning, and development.
Children need to be explicitly taught character, responsibility, comprehension, problem-solving, and decision-making—not simply punished when they demonstrate that those skills have not yet developed.
Educators need tools for understanding and responding to different learners while developing genuine partnerships with families.
And sometimes parents and communities need the knowledge and confidence to create entirely different educational environments.
Those aren’t separate problems.
They are different parts of the same child’s ecosystem.
And that is why BlackEduPreneur exists.
One Child. One Ecosystem. Multiple Points of Transformation.
UNDERSTAND
What shaped us?
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RESET
What will we change?
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EQUIP PARENTS
How do we prepare our children?
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EQUIP CHILDREN
What do they need for life?
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EQUIP EDUCATORS
How do we strengthen the partnership?
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BUILD
What environment do our children need?
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