Leslie Odom Jr. was going to quit. Before his breakout role as Aaron Burr in the Broadway phenomenon Hamilton. Before the Tony and the Grammy. Before the Academy Award-nominated performance as Sam Cooke in “One Night in Miami.”

“It was just about to get good,” says Odom Jr. “And I was going to quit.”

Of course, he did not quit. The singer and actor spoke with NSBA Executive Director and CEO Anna Maria Chávez at the opening general session of NSBA Online Experience 2021 Thursday. The reason he planned to quit, he told her, was that he wanted stability in life. He reached out to a mentor, who asked him, “When the phone doesn’t ring, what do you do in the absence? Did you do anything on your own behalf?”

His mentor “was absolutely right,” said Odom Jr. He took the advice to heart. Since then, he said, “I haven’t stopped working in the past 10 years. I’m never sitting at home waiting for that phone to ring.”

If someone from the Biden administration called him for advice on education, what would he say, Chávez asked him. Odom Jr. answered with two points. The first: Higher wages and better working conditions for teachers. “Teachers should be venerated, celebrated, honored members of any well-functioning democracy.”

Second, he said, would be to advocate for the arts in public schools. As a public school graduate, he benefited from early exposure to the arts. “For a kid like me, it made all the difference,” he said. “By raising young Americans to have an appreciation for the arts, we will raise more emotionally articulate, kind, and empathic citizens.”

Odom Jr. treated conference attendees to a live performance of two “Hamilton” hits: “Wait For It” and “The Room Where It Happens.” In a nod to the online audience, he switched the lyrics to “the Zoom Where It Happens” once or twice.

Chávez noted that Odom Jr. has spoken out against systemic racism in entertainment, and she mentioned NSBA’s Dismantling Institutional Racism in Education (DIRE) initiative. “What a great name,” Odom Jr. responded. “It sounds like you are looking at the system you are a part of and asking the tough questions.”

In the movie “In one night in Miami,” Odom Jr. sings Sam Cooke’s song, “A Change Is Gonna Come.” When you consider that song, Chávez asked him, “what makes you hopeful about the future?”

“Young people make me hopeful,” he replied. “They have certain ideas about fairness and equity that we haven’t seen in such large numbers before. That gives me hope. There have been many people who have had to suffer in silence for a long time, and that is changing. There will be a day when that’s over.”