When Silence Is Violence with Kamye Hugley

In this episode, I sit down with educator and bibliophile Kamye Hugley to explore what happens when Black women in education refuse to stay quiet in the face of harm.
Kamye traces her journey from her grandmothers urging to be a teacher, to a Teach For America placement that threw her from third grade to Head Start mid-year, to a Head Start classroom tucked in a portable with coyotes underneath and systems that treated early childhood like babysitting instead of brain-building.
She shares the heartbreak of referring students for support only to be ignored, the letter she wrote to a district leader that quietly shifted hiring practices, and her time teaching high school intensive reading, where one administrators careless comment about test scores pushed seniors out of school entirely.
Together, Kamye and I discuss how these moments accumulate as racial battle fatigue and weathering and why, for Kamye, remaining silent feels like violence against herself. This episode invites listeners to consider: What does it mean to protect your wellness and still tell the truth about the systems harming you and your students?