unMASKing with Male Educators: Creating Emotionally Safe Classrooms & Schools for Male Students

“I was doing really good in school, but, self-esteem, self-confidence, all that, I didn’t work on that. I worked on just schoolwork. I wasn’t focused on working on myself.” - Johnathan P.

Ever Forwar…

“There are so many decisions that are to be made for students [in India] at this point in time - about their college, about which course they want to take in their high school… on how we good maintai…

“‘How are you? How are you up here? How’s everything? Are you okay?’ I had someone ask me that one time. And I just… I broke down - because that dam that I built and built had a crack in it. And that…

“I’m a teacher, I have two masters, I have my doctorate. My father would always call me ‘stupid stupid…’ The only good piece of advice he ever gave me was ‘you don’t have much of a brain so you might…

“If anything, you’re on a journey. And if you want to use a metaphor of a kayak in a river, don’t worry about who’s looking on the shores. It’s just you and your paddle and the water.” - Tu David Phu

“As a guy, I want to be able to express my emotions. I would hate for other youth or young men to feel like they can’t do that. It’s such a narrow way of being. You miss out on such a huge experience…

“Public speaking has always made me very very nervous, on a neurological level. So there’s a part of me that feels safe when I’m writing because I can spend a really long time working through one sen…

“We all grow up with an accent. We all grow up speaking a language, an emotional language, and the longer we stay in that emotional language the harder it is to learn a new one.” - Dr. Steve Perry

Ev…

“I always want to avoid the pain as quickly as possible. But, guess what? You have half of your life - trying to get away, run away… And, when you try to work on that, you are now saying, ‘No, I’m no…

“More often than not the mask is a survival mechanism for me. It’s serving a purpose to allow me to get through this interaction, this engagement, this party, this wedding that we’re a part of… It’s …

“I’ve kind of worn the front of the mask so much that it’s become attached… Even when I’m with myself, like, the ability to take it off has basically been diminished… It doesn’t help that one of my t…

This TOTM Face to Face conversation is between Mohandas and Gabriel. Mohandas is the Ever Forward Club’s Youth Host, whom you can get to know more about in episode 83. Gabriel is Mohandas’s cousin an…

“In this society today, in this culture today that we live in… You have to have it all figured out before you can talk about it, or before you can speak on it. And we forget the school of life, we fo…

“It’s been a very challenging time and my way of coping with this adversity has been through humor. I think a lot of people have been using humor as a coping mechanism because it’s a hard time, and y…

“I don’t come to education as just a teacher. I come to education as a teacher, as an administrator, as a former really bad student, as a former really good student, as a community person, as a man i…

“When we can look young people in the eye, and see who they are, and tell them that they matter, and show them a book, and spark their imagination, and be right there… That’s the thing. Going through…

“Why do I want this? Why do I react like that? Why do I do this? I think that’s something that more people need to be asking themselves. I think that people need to explore themselves a bit more, und…

“I was raised in a violent environment, so, as much as I want to be positive, it’s just satisfying to do some of that petty stuff. As much as I don’t want to, as much as I’m like, ‘I can’t- that’s ra…

“For people like myself, who have a lot of privilege, I try to become aware of other people’s experiences. And then I can make a conscious choice: ‘How do I want people to experience me? What choices…

WARNING: SUICIDAL IDEATIONS DISCUSSED

“I’ve come to learn and understand that, whether it’s depression or - something more serious - dealing with suicidal thoughts or anger or just the overall emptin…