School leaders of color face high levels of burnout. Here’s what they need to thrive.

This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Sign up for their newsletters at ckbe.at/newsletters By HARRISON PETERS As a novice teacher in 1999, I was grateful to have a colleague across the hall who was also new to the profession. We swapped stories, shared strategies, and commiserated about our shared challenges around lesson planning and staying in touch with students’ families. At some point, though, our experiences at the same Florida elementary school diverged. While my colleague was asked to lead a grade-level team, I was tapped to head up the school’s Black History Month programming. After school, she oversaw academic enrichment while I supervised detention. On the weekend, she led a scholars program while I coached the basketball team. My colleague was a white woman. I am a Black man. My early leadership opportunities reflected important school staffing needs and aligned with my skill set. And while these assignments were mostly enjoyable, they didn’t prepare me for the next steps on my leadership journey. Through dogged persistence, informal guidance from fellow leaders of color, and my fair share of luck, I became a principal and, later, a district superintendent. The system, however, was not set up to support my...