TaVshea Smith Talks Community and Connections in Education
As I look at Dr. TaVshea Smith from my end of the Google Meet call, I can tell from her smiling face that our conversation is going to be a good one. It’s Tuesday evening and I’m in a fairly loud setting—college dining halls are admittedly not the quietest place to take interviews—but TaVshea’s voice is steady and articulate, a calm but carrying cadence that I can hear clearly over all the noise. It’s not just her speaking voice that stands out to me. Everything about her screams put together, from her aesthetically pleasing, minimalist-style background to her neatly flat twisted hairstyle and gracefully crossed hands.
Then again, with her line of work, being put together is a necessity. TaVshea is currently an Assistant Professor of Education at North Carolina Central University, where she specializes in Early Childhood and Curriculum and Instruction. She has been working in education for over a decade, and as you’ll see as our discussion progresses, her service to the field is both notable and crucial.
Chapter I: Roots
TaVshea has been surrounded by educators of color for as long as she can remember. In addition to her mother being a teacher, she went to a predominantly Black daycare and has had Black teachers throughout her K-12 experience. She recalls her kindergarten teacher Ms. Lawrence with a smile: “I still see her to this day when I go home to South Carolina. She still teaches kindergarten at the same school!”
After taking teaching-based courses at her high school, she went on to study elementary education at Shaw University, the oldest Historically Black University in North Carolina and the first to exist in the American South. Upon graduating, she served as a student teacher and later a full-fledged one at various elementary and middle schools in the Wake County Public School system, where she taught for 11 years. She was also a member of CREED’s 2021 North Carolina Equity Fellowship cohort, where she designed and implemented educational initiatives to address educational inequities in North Carolina. Her years of experience have led to a fruitful career in schooling, but it wasn’t always easy for her.
“When I first started teaching, it was a lot to take in,” she admits. “I’ll never forget my first year. Our teacher prep programs give us what we need—the foundations, the history—but when I was in that classroom, and it was just me and twenty-eight students, it was a lot to take in. And also…the day-to-day, coming out of college and working full-time, and being the be-all for both your students and their parents who don’t know you, trying to bridge that gap. It was overwhelming.”
Taking on the role of sole provider for her students was no doubt a daunting task. Luckily, TaVshea found she didn’t have to carry such a weight by herself.
“Having a network community of beginning teachers was very helpful, because we were all coming in at the same time and we could bounce off of one another,” she says. “I also had a very good mentor—we’re still good friends to this day. It’s amazing to see how those relationships grow.”
Chapter II: Building Community & Connections
Throughout our conversation, the terms “community,” “connection,” and “network” come up quite frequently. From the time she was in daycare to this very day, TaVshea has found herself surrounded by a network of teachers of color, which she accredits to part of her success as an educator. Even now, she continues to have lunch with her old teachers and keeps up with them on social media, and her mother does the same as well.
“They still are pouring into me about how proud they are of me,” she tells me with a warm fondness in her tone. “It makes me feel good.”
In a society that is growing increasingly individualistic, where many prioritize the needs, well-being, and ultimately the survival of themselves before that of others, community and a sense of belonging to one can feel scarce. To some degree, it’s not a far-fetched concept. How can we expect to care and provide for other people in such a cut-throat economy that rewards self-reliance? However, as TaVshea has been keen to emphasize, looking out for others is necessary in the trying times we live in. In building community and connections we are able to find support, uplift others in turn, and build meaningful relationships. This is especially true for teachers of color like TaVshea, where every day they are faced with challenges both shared by all educators and ones unique to them.
“Now more than ever in education, you need a network of people,” TaVshea asserts. “You need a community because so much is happening—good, bad, in between—and having that network and reminiscing from back to where you started to where you are now is really effective. For me personally, it’s really helped to shape who I am as an educator.”
When asked what she believes is the importance of having educators of color in the classroom, TaVshea’s answer delivers on the question, but it also perfectly underscores the value of networking and community.
“Looking back, 90 percent of my K-12 teachers were teachers of color,” she says. “It didn’t really dawn on me until a couple of years ago. I said, ‘wow, that has really had an impact on me and who I am, my students, and those connections’. Because now, even for myself, I’ve seen some of my students that I taught in fifth-grade graduate high school during COVID, and now they’re about to graduate from college this year. That was my first class. It’s amazing to see some of those connections because now I understand the connections that I was able to make while I was in school, and how I’m doing it as an instructor. It really just makes you see the vitality of those connections and how you never know who you’re going to touch, how it’s going to come around in a full circle moment. It’s very powerful and rewarding to be able to say, ‘I really planted something in this student, and now they’re off to grad school or a PhD program. I had a help in that!’”.
My heart swells as she speaks. I can only imagine the pride she must have felt seeing the students she taught go on to receive higher education and build successful careers of their own. Better yet, she has been able to cultivate the kind of relationships with her own students that helped her when she was starting out and continue to be of help to her. TaVshea herself said it best earlier: truly a full circle moment, in the best way possible.
Chapter III: Looking to the Future
With 11 years of experience under her belt, it’s safe to say that TaVshea is a veteran in the field of education, and she’s not going anywhere anytime soon. However, she worries that isn’t the case for many other teachers, especially ones of color.
As our conversation progresses, we start to acknowledge the decreasing rates of educator retention, both in North Carolina and across the country. TaVshea wrote her dissertation about teachers staying in the profession after three years; in her research, she found that many are leaving, with some citing changes in the realm of education and how it will negatively impact them in the long run if they want to stay.
“I know there’s so much that’s going on politically, and it can have an effect on what teachers say and don’t say, what they do and don’t do,” she tells me. “I hope that doesn’t take the luster or love out of teaching, or deter teachers of color from coming into the profession and staying. We may not get paid the most, but it’s a very rewarding job.”
“In the state of North Carolina, we need more teachers than ever—we have more than 3,000 vacancies, and it’s climbing,” TaVshea continues. “Teachers of color need to be guarded, and we need to be able to really be ourselves in the classroom without being judged, recorded, or having political groups come against us. I’m sure we can overcome these issues, but it won’t be easy.”
How do we go about finding solutions to this problem? TaVshea’s solution is simple but effective: use your voice. “Teachers need to speak up now more than ever. What do we have to lose at this point? I hate to sound pessimistic—I’m a very optimistic person—but we’ve kind of lost everything at this point. Book bans, the whole Critical Race Theory controversy, teacher pay…I have five student teachers, four of which are of color, and they’re looking for new jobs come December. So I hope we don’t continue to lose good teachers who really want to teach because of this.”
Epilogue
It’s clear by now that TaVshea has made her mark in the education world. Even so, she’s far from finished.
At the time of our interview, she’s about to head out to Albuquerque, New Mexico to lead a round-table discussion about the importance of mentoring during the teacher initiation process in order to retain educators, especially ones of color. She also became a member of the leadership team for the North Carolina branch of Social and Emotional Learning (SEL), where she advocates for students to have the resources they need to be successful on a social and emotional learning level. Additionally, she had recently attended a Black SEL summit at NC Central and is conducting her own research on early childhood and hoping to attend multiple conferences. She also tells us with excitement that she was just appointed as the advisor for NC Central’s chapter of the Student North Carolina Association of Educators (SNCAE), a pre-professional organization for college students pursuing careers in education.
I’m fighting the urge to let my jaw drop as she discusses her accomplishments. It would be tempting for anyone who has achieved half of what she has to be patting themselves on the back about it, and yet TaVshea speaks with a humbleness and grace that is to be admired. With so much going on for her, it can be easy to get overwhelmed, but fortunately, she has a strategy to combat this: just breathe.
“I just do the best I can in one day and give myself grace,” she explains. “When I first started teaching, I wanted everything to be perfect, but you quickly learn that there are going to be hiccups and problems. And that goes for anything. What has carried me all this way is just doing what I can each day, knowing that’s the best I can do, and being okay with that.”
She stresses that setting healthy boundaries is also important. “I only take on what I can take on. If I can’t, ‘no’ is a complete sentence, and it’s one I’m continuing to stick by!”
As a fellow overachiever and perfectionist, I definitely needed to hear that, which I tell her with a laugh.
TaVshea’s final piece of advice is also crucial for aspiring educators of color: “Get involved with different community networks, such as CREED and other teacher of color networks. Find that community. Foster those relationships. Network, socially and also professionally. You just never know who knows people and how that’s going to impact your career as an educator.”
Needless to say, TaVshea’s own career as an educator has been an incredible one so far. May her journey be a source of inspiration, a testament to the significance of community and connections, and a reminder that now more than ever is the time for teachers of color to make their mark.
CREED would like to thank TaVshea for taking the time to speak with us! Stay tuned for more stories from educators of color like TaVshea from across North Carolina.
Are you an educator of color interested in having your story told? See HERE for more information about Diversify the Narrative!
Want to get connected with fellow educators of color throughout North Carolina? Join the #TeachinginColor Community today! We are a professional learning network of educators dedicated to building community, supporting, and advocating for policy changes in the best interest of educators of color and the students they serve. Joi.
