Schools often experience rapid turnover among teachers of color. Yet research and practice highlight the importance of teachers of color in the K–12 education system. As such, school and district-level administrators, educational leaders, and students need to conceptualize and develop new approaches aimed at sustaining Indigenous and Latinx public school teachers. This case study describes a community-based organization’s efforts to support and sustain new and established Indigenous and Latinx teachers during COVID-19. Recognizing the problem with retention about 7 years ago, two university professors decided to create Academia Cuauhtli, a community-based organization in Austin, Texas. In addition to serving as a cultural and language revitalization Saturday school program for students from third to fifth grade, the space also promotes the curricular recognition of alternative epistemologies and the development of culturally relevant pedagogies that foster students’ culture, language, and funds of knowledge via teacher professional development pláticas. Since its inception in 2014, Academia Cuauhtli has been able to successfully train and sustain more than 60 public school teachers. However, COVID-19 has created a new set of challenges for teachers and, in particular, for Indigenous and Latinx teachers.

The coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic continues to shape individuals’ decisions about employment and postsecondary education. The authors leverage data from a longitudinal qualitative study of educational trajectories to examine how individuals responded to the shifting landscape of work and education. In the final wave of interviews with 56 individuals who started their postsecondary education at a community college 6 years ago, the authors found that most respondents described engaging in satisficing behaviors, making trade-offs to maintain their prepandemic trajectories where possible. More than a quarter of individuals, primarily those with access to fewer resources, described trajectories fraught with insecurity; they struggled to juggle competing obligations, especially in the face of an unpredictable labor market. A small portion of participants described making optimizing decisions, which were sometimes risky, to prioritize their aspirations. These descriptive patterns may partially explain mechanisms shaping recent shifts in employment and postsecondary education, including lower labor-market engagement and declines in college enrollment.