We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Teac(hers) Lounge Podcast a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Teac(hers) Lounge, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Can you talk to us about how you learned to do what you do?

Learning is continuous and fluid. If you’re not learning, then you’re not living. At the start of our journey, neither of us had experience with creating a podcast, we were “green” as they say. We had to do research and troubleshoot issues, plan episode topics, etc. During this process it was important to be flexible and have the ability to pivot, because the teachers literally now became the students. The first things we did was think about the platform we wanted to use to record, the materials that we needed (mics) and how our audience would access our content. Some of the hardest things to master was editing our audio and establishing interview etiquette. We would record whole episodes and then realize that there were glitches or that the person we were interviewing was tapping the entire time. It was great conferring with other creatives in the industry because they often provided us with tips to help us improve our techniques. For example, getting feedback to tape our podcast in segments and have parts of it that we use over and over again (like our intro and outro) to eliminate excess taping was great insight. It was things like this that we had to learn along the way. Now as we embark on trying to create a video podcast, we are excited even more. We have found resources and a space in our city where we will be able to learn and film! We are still learning as we go, but we are absolutely proud of our accomplishments and of the understanding and appreciation we have cultivated for the audio production creative process.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

The Teac(her)s Lounge Podcast is a small Philadelphia-based creative company run by Lauren Nelson and Crystal Thomas, two outspoken, fashionable and unapologetic female educators dedicated to cultivating conversations around urban education, advocacy especially from the perspective of Black women. The goal was to steer clear of the perfect Pinterest classrooms and content you see plastered all over social media and give our audience a glimpse of the challenges and concerns we face working within the educational field. Really raw and uncut! We created our podcast to serve as a safe space beyond the confines of the classrooms and school buildings we work in; where we could “let down our hair” so-to-speak and talk about the issues that are important and unique to us. With so many educators leaving the field, especially after the pandemic, we figured it was time to speak up about the realities educators that look like us and work in the environments we do face. But with us being who we are, we wanted to do it with a twist. Think of our platform as the reimagined “teachers lounge”, because at the end of the work week every off-duty teacher needs to wind down and have a drink! We like to get spicy around here and we always insert joy and humor into everything we do. On our podcast we speak our minds about current events, personal experiences and literature over cocktails, that’s why we pride ourselves on being “Philly Teachers, Truth Speakers”

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

The driving force behind our motivation to pursue this creative journey is one that we are very passionate about. When you think of education and who it serves, many times the focus is not on young black girls. They are often overlooked or clumped into categories where they do not authentically fit, categories which leave out parts of them instead of including all of them. You see this outside of the education field as well; in life in general. The reason we have chosen to amplify our voices is so that others that look like us will be heard and hopefully unafraid to use their voices as well. Advocacy is integral to what we do. Whether from the role of an educator, parent or learner. Our hope is that through our podcast we can create a charge to advocate for black women and ensure we are included in the conversation.

Have you ever had to pivot?

Honestly this whole process of our creative journey has been a constant series of pivots in multiple aspects.

Being that we are still teaching, we had to think about how we wanted to portray ourselves. When we first started and listened to ourselves, we realized we were using our “teacher voices” to speak to our audience. We had to remind ourselves that we could talk about education and present as our authentic selves because sometimes as an educator you can get wrapped up in your career forgetting that you’re much more outside of that job. It was a bit of a learning curve realizing that we didn’t have to feed into identity politics just because we were talking about education.

Business wise, we had intended for this journey to be a journey of four. We worked tirelessly to include everyone, but realized that the two of us were spending so much time trying to convince others of our vision. When we realized that we could simply move forward without dragging others along, that is exactly what we did. Making that choice was especially important because we wanted to stay authentic to our original ‘Why’; with too many voices, the message is lost.

Lauren: Personally, I am a perfectionist. I think I can kind of use that as a way to talk myself out of things. In the past, if I thought something was not perfect, I would abandon the idea no matter how much time and effort I had put in. Talking with other creatives and working with a partner helped me with that. I realized that it was okay to start something and learn/improve along the way. Starting something imperfectly felt scary and made me feel vulnerable, but pivoting to embrace and accept those imperfections has been a very rewarding experience.

Crystal: As a child I had 2 career goals; the first was to work with children in some capacity and the second was to go into journalism. I have always been one to play it safe, so I became a teacher under the assumption that it would be the safer career choice, and quickly realized there’s nothing safe about it. With all of the experiences I have had in the education field and talking to other educators I knew I had to let go of the many fears I had of letting my voice be heard. I realized that there are so many black women educators who leave work at the end of the day feeling unheard, but loved by students, defeated but hopeful that something she said or did made a change; this realization made it clear that Lauren and I needed to create a business that would open the door not only for dialogue, but learning and growth.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://spotifyanchor-web.app.link/e/AqkzsigdUzb
• Instagram: teacherslounge215

Image Credits
All photos were taken by Isabella Williams, the Teac(her)s Lounge Podcast Resident Photographer