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

This episode didn’t go the way we planned, in the best way. Instead of a traditional interview, Dr. Steve Perry steps in with the kind of mentoring questions that don’t let you hide behind “next month,” “next season,” or “when I’m ready.” It becomes a real-time reflection on fear, purpose, leadership, and what it costs, personally and professionally, when we hold back what we’re here to give. Dr....

What if the students who say they’re “good” are the ones we need to check on the most? In this episode of unMASKing with Male Educators, Ashanti Branch pulls back the curtain on what young men are actually carrying beneath the surface, using real words, real data, and real stories from the Global Young Men’s Conference and the Million Mask Movement. Drawing from over two decades of work with young...

Welcome back to UnMASKing with Male Educators. As we reflect and look ahead, we’re revisiting one of the most personal and vulnerable episodes of the podcast, a re-release of Episode 42. Ashanti shares an honest journey through a 30-day detox that became much more than a health reset. It became a mirror, revealing how food, work, service, and self-neglect can quietly take control when we’re carryi...

Welcome to UnMASKing with Male Educators . As we close out the year, we’re revisiting some of the most downloaded and most meaningful conversations of the season. This replay with Dr. William (Bill) Penuel is one of those episodes that continues to resonate deeply with educators who are navigating burnout, discipline challenges, and the emotional weight of teaching in today’s schools. Dr. Bill Pen...

Welcome to UnMASKing with Male Educators. As we close out the year, we’re revisiting some of our most impactful, most downloaded, and most transformative conversations of the season. This episode dives into a moment that has stayed with me, traveling around the world, stepping into classrooms, and noticing something surprising: more and more young people were leaving their work blank during my wor...

Welcome to UnMASKing with Male Educators. As we close out the year, we’re revisiting some of our most impactful, most downloaded, and most transformative conversations of the season. This episode with Nicholas Ward is one we continue to hear about from teachers around the country, practical, personal, and packed with wisdom. It represents exactly why we started this podcast. Nicholas Ward is a mid...

What if the secret to real learning has nothing to do with cognition, and everything to do with emotion? In this episode of unMASKing with Male Educators , Dr. Maurice J. Elias, Rutgers University professor, psychologist, and one of the nation’s leading voices in social-emotional and character development, joins host Ashanti Branch for a powerful conversation about the emotional foundations of lea...

We just wrapped our second Young Men’s Conference, and I’m still taking in the power, the stories, and the lessons this year brought. From 220 registered to nearly 100 young men showing up in person, this year felt bigger, bolder, and more aligned with the work we’ve been building: helping young men normalize vulnerability, step into their strengths, and see themselves in community with mentors wh...

Do you ever feel like you’re carrying the weight of your students’ futures on your shoulders? That tension, between hope and exhaustion, between responsibility and grace, is familiar territory for Dr. José Luis Vilson , Executive Director of EduColor and author of This Is Not A Test: A New Narrative on Race, Class, and Education. In this powerful episode of unMASKing with Male Educators , Dr. Vils...

Gregory Robinson Jr. is an author, educator, and mentor currently incarcerated at the Samson Correctional Institution in North Carolina. From behind prison walls, Gregory has built a movement of healing, accountability, and creativity,  guiding other men to confront their pain, share their stories, and take off their masks. Through his Wisdom of Creation series and the Million Mask Movement , Greg...

Nicholas Bradford is the founder and Executive Director of the National Center for Restorative Justice , where he and his team help schools across the country transform discipline systems into spaces for healing, accountability, and connection. A former teacher in Vermont and Washington and a 24-year Coast Guard veteran, Nicholas brings a grounded, compassionate, and deeply practical approach to w...

We police ourselves too much. And by "we" I'm referring to the progressive movement. Those on the other side have built a large coalition by putting the conservative agenda above all, ignoring the warts and the ugly within the organization. This approach has made me think about what's also limiting us when it comes to recruiting male mentors: We need to embrace our warts instead...

Alex Campbell is a high school social studies teacher at Elizabethton High School in East Tennessee, where he’s spent more than two decades reimagining what learning can look like. His classroom became known nationally after his students helped investigate and solve Tennessee cold cases, turning lessons in history and sociology into powerful acts of justice. As the author of 10 Lessons That Will G...

What keeps educators going when the system feels overwhelming? How do we balance creativity, critique, and care in classrooms where students face everything from initiative fatigue to gun violence? In this episode, Ashanti sits down with sam seidel, educator, author, and Director of Strategy & Research at the Stanford d.school. sam has spent more than 20 years designing schools, launching yout...

I shed 30 pounds, and I’m feeling the best I’ve felt in a while. But it was 30 difficult days - of cravings, headaches, mood swings, brain fog, fatigue, you name it… But it was necessary, and it made me think, “What would that look like for our schools? Our school districts? Our educators and their classrooms?” Our schools and our young people are struggling. Are we willing to go through the neces...

Do you ever wonder if you are doing enough? If you are truly making an impact as an educator, mentor, or leader? For Dr. Edson Andrade, those questions have been a constant companion, shaped by his journey as an undocumented immigrant, his experience with imposter syndrome, and his work training the next generation of counselors. Dr. Andrade is a professor of counseling at California State Univers...

I bet there are more ways you can create productive struggle in your classroom, and you haven’t thought of them. And I bet taking in what Jerome has to say about smartphones, dopamine, and struggle will help unlock something in you as an educator. Jerome is an educational strategist based in Seattle, Washington, who stands at the intersection of education, policy, community engagement, and young m...

We've been recruiting male educators to take part in our upcoming Young Men's Conference (details below), and the successes and difficulties in doing so have forced us to confront some important questions: Where are all the trustworthy male educators? What does it even mean to be a male? To be masculine? We hope you take this exercise and exploration as a rallying cry to support your young...

I travel around the world talking to young people and educators. To start the school year, I noticed a lot of young people were leaving their work blank during my workshops. What’s behind this? Something cultural? Pedagogical? Personal? Specific to each particular school? I’m going to share what I learned for future workshops, and how you can apply the lessons of these experiences to your classroo...

Did you have a Black male teacher growing up? In high school? Middle school? Elementary school? The numbers go down as the grades get lower. But thankfully we have people like Jason. Jason is an elementary school teacher based in San Francisco, California. He’s been teaching in some capacity for 13 plus years, and his passion for teaching is rooted in his passion for mentorship and commitment to e...

Russell is a middle school music and movement educator, now entering his 20th year in the profession! And with so many years of experience in the field, he has a wealth of experience with teaching frameworks, student motivation, neurodivergent thinking, and mindfulness. I really hope that you can integrate what he says today into how you approach the start of the 25/26 school year. Today, we discu...

I guarantee this episode will make you a better teacher. Practical advice, explicit tools, a clear perspective, and a way to move throughout your school site with intention - our conversation with Nicholas was exactly why we started this series. Nicholas Ward is a middle school history teacher and Athletic Director in East Oakland, where he’s been teaching for the past seven years. He focuses on m...

This is essential listening to start the 2025-26 school year. And as an educator, you should be able to finish the title of this episode. If you can’t, you’re not doing an essential part of the work - listening and relationship building. Well… you came to the right place to LISTEN. Listen to AJ and Angel, two young male high schoolers that are here to lift the curtain on what makes modern day stud...

“We need safe spaces in which guys can drop into that boyhood, that kicking the ball, or throwing the ball, or goofing around and roughhousing with each other or telling jokes, whatever it is… Because being in those moments and acting that way, I believe, takes us back to a boyhood element of ourselves, which at some point was beaten out of us… ‘That’s immature. What you’re doing, you can’t be doi...

“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 the experience with them, build up their confidence… Put a battery in their back. They need that. Everybody needs that. That little bird that’s about to jump off the nest, I’m sure the little bird nee...