Episode 1: Ashanti Branch
Removing the Mask and Showing Your Feelings with Ashanti Branch
Season 2, Episode 1: Show Notes [TRANSCRIPT BELOW]
Raised in a community where men weren’t allowed to show their feelings, together with an unhealthy concept of what being a man was all about, Ashanti Branch stuffed his feelings, ate emotionally, and had panic attacks. When he became a high school teacher, however, he wanted better for his students. What started as a meeting with some students to figure out how he could become a better teacher evolved into an entire movement which helps young people understand how connected they are when it comes to the masks we wear. In this episode, Ashanti sheds light on the struggles he faced as a child when it came to dealing with his emotions and shares a potentially-triggering and emotional story of a trauma he experienced as an eight-year-old. (Please note that this episode carries a trigger warning for sexual assault in the first few minutes.)
To hear the magic sentence Ashanti heard from one of his high school teachers that had a profound effect on his life and how he has gone on to impact the lives of so many others, plus so much more, tune in today! We invite you to take off your mask and listen to this inspiring conversation.
Key Points From This Episode:
• An introduction to change-maker Ashanti Branch.
• Ashanti explains the mask activity he does with students and gives examples.
• What it was like for him to grow up in a community where he couldn’t show his feelings.
• Ashanti’s unhealthy childhood perception of what being a man was all about.
• TW: For listeners who wish to avoid Ashanti’s account of sexual assault, please skip audio between [0:07:17] and [0:11:57].
• The traumatic story of what happened to Ashanti as an eight-year-old.
• How Ashanti learned to start stuffing his emotions and comfort eating.
• How he became involved in a men’s circle and learned to stop suppressing his feelings.
• What men supporting men looked like to Ashanti at the men’s retreat he attended.
• How he created a place to support young men six years before he found a place that supported him.
• How he first created Ever Forward to become a better teacher.
• The profound effect that a ‘magic sentence’ he heard from another teacher had on his life.
• An example of a magic sentence Ashanti used on one of his students and its impact.
• How Ashanti went from failing horribly as a teacher to leading a movement.
Tweetables:
“Society may not be ready for you to tell everybody how you feel, but if you can have a space where all your emotions are welcomed by men helping men become better men, that’s how it all changed.” — @BranchSpeaks [0:15:16]
“I created [in] Ever Forward what I wish I had when I was in high school. I wish I had a space where I could talk about what was really going on, and no one was going to laugh, and no one was going to judge me.” — @BranchSpeaks [0:19:25]
“If you care more about the subject that you teach than the subjects who you are teaching, there's going to be a disconnect.” — @BranchSpeaks [0:33:14]
“As a teacher, I saw how unprepared teachers were for the emotional baggage that students were bringing. I saw myself as more than just a teacher. I was teaching, I had a job to teach, but deep down, I was like, ‘This can't be it!’” — @BranchSpeaks [0:34:56]
Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:
TRANSCRIPT
“AB: No matter what somebody tells you, if you don't see beauty in yourself, if you don't see special in yourself, you don't see amazing in yourself, if you don't see love in yourself, then no matter what somebody else tells you— That's why, I tell young men, I said, “Look, if you're looking for some woman, some girl to make you feel loved, if you don't even love yourself, you're never going to find the right partner. Because they can give you some positive affirmations, but if you don't even love yourself, you're going to destroy it, because ultimately, you don't believe it.”
[INTRODUCTION]
[00:00:29] JU: Today, we're talking with Ashanti Branch, the founder of the Ever Forward Club, which helps young people understand how connected we are when it comes to the masks we live in and the founder of the Million Mask Movement. Ashanti focuses the conversation today on the lies that we believe around what it means to be a man and the formulas for living happily ever after. Such an incredible conversation, an emotional conversation, and we invite you to take off your mask and listen to his experience.
Want to let folks know that the first few minutes of this conversation center around an unexpectedly emotional story that Ashanti told us. Both we and he weren't expecting it to come up the way it did. But it's profoundly moving, but it's also a little graphic in nature. So, listener discretion is advised. We hope that you'll stick with it and enjoy the conversation that follows.
[EPISODE]
[00:01:28] AB: Mar, do you know about the masks?
[00:01:30] MH: I just found out. I just found out.
[00:01:33] AB: The mask is an activity that we do with students that's about, like, what's happening in front of a mask, which is the what we let the world see about us. And then what happens behind the mask. I have masks all over here. But I'm going to show you one here. And so basically, when we think about like, I have masks all over my office. We've collected over 50,000 masks from more than 40 countries. And so, what happens is, let me just find one here. This is this is an adult male. So, these are adults here. Oh, wow, this is interesting that I found this one. I’m going to show you a teenager in a second. 33-year-old male. So, this one is a front. So, can you read the front? The front is the things they let the world see.
[00:02:13] MH: “Successful, smart, wise”.
[00:02:16] AB: Yeah, that's the front. And so that's the thing that they gladly let the world see. And then, can you read the back?
[00:02:21] MH: It says “Three qualities that you don't usually let people see”, and it says, “eating unhealthy food, argumentative, thinking I will fail”.
[00:02:32] AB: Yeah, that's a 33-year-old male, right? So, what ends up happening is the youth write just as profound things, right? So, that's the front of the mask, the back of the mask. Yeah, this is a middle school. They're all over. We just started opening back up. We've been doing them online. I will share with you – if you go to 100kmasks.com you will see what we created during the pandemic, when we were started using during the pandemic because it was so powerful to be able to continue doing this work.
A couple of things that really stood out to me. So, this is middle schoolers. This one man, 13-year-old young male from Oakland. So, he wrote an arrow to what's on the front. So, you see the front?
[00:03:11] MH: Ski mask. He says, “I play basketball. I skate.” What he doesn’t let people see, "I was adopted. My dad died. My mom's a drug addict.” Wow, you're getting some really, really powerful responses, and I just pulled up 100kmasks.com. The technology behind this is amazing. The stories you're collecting are amazing. And I think that we definitely owe it to ourselves to check back in and find out what is the magnitude of what you've actually been accomplishing here.
[00:03:48] AB: I grew up in a community where you're not allowed to show feelings. Suck it up, man up, grow some whatever they tell you to grow, so that you can prove to everyone that you are a real man. And I think at seven years old, I'm supposed to be the man. My uncle told me and seven years old, you're the man of the house. My father died before I was born. Nobody asked me my opinion about it. I just showed up here on the planet, life was a mess. I was supposed to know what it meant to be a man and there's no man in the house. There's plenty of men around Oakland who will be willing to tell you what you should do. And I think most of the things they were telling me I should do to be respected as a man, they didn't feel right, it didn't sound right, I couldn't do it in front of my mom.
[00:04:25] JU: What’s an example? What's one thing that a man is supposed to do?
[00:04:29] AB: So, fourth grade, I went to a new school in Oakland Hills. I used to go to school in the heartland of Oakland or what they call the flatlands. I got an opportunity to go to school in the hills, which is hard to do, because only the people who live in the hills get to go to school in the hills and that's a richer school. I used to take the bus. So, taking the bus back and forth every day. I remember the bigger boys, the older boys on the bus, we had a middle school that was by our elementary school so they dropped the middle schoolers off first probably even some high schoolers, and then we took us up the hill to the elementary school.
The rule was, if you like her, you’re going to go grab her butt. That's how you do it. I think about this a lot lately as I've been talking to young people about consent and about, like, I didn't learn consent. I learned you try it, and then they tell you don't do it, then you don't do it anymore. Like, that's what I learned on the bus, going to school in elementary school, and I got slapped a couple of times. Okay. And everyone laughed at you. All right. And you're like, “Well, she let the jerk over there touch her. Why did she slap me? I'm the I'm a nice guy, right?” And I remember just thinking about what I was learning, and looking back was like, “What the heck?” But who was I learning from? I was an 8-year-old learning from 12-year-olds and 14-year-olds. Well, that's a recipe for disaster!
I think that when I talk about like those rules, they were things that were like – same thing on the bus. The first one I got slapped by a girl, I was emotionally overcome and I cried, and everyone's like, “Oh, you’re a punk, blah, blah.” And I remember, “Dude, let her hit you.” And I was like, “I can't hit No girl.” But I'm also in by my body is like, like, there's no guy would ever hit me and I would have took it. I was a fighter. I guess I spent at 20 times elementary school.
I'm on the bus. There's a hothead fighter and this girl slaps me. And now she just slapped me because I touched her. I wasn't interested in her. She's laughing because we were mouthing off at each other and she got mad a she was taller than I was. She slapped me. And I started crying because I couldn't do anything. I wanted to do something. I wanted to like, rage. But also, I was like, “I can't hit no girl. I got a sister. I got a mom who taught me about this.” So, I think all the things that I was learning was these rules. What do I do? Like she let anybody take advantage of you? Anybody assault you and do nothing about it? Or is it you can let girls do it because they're girls, and you’re not supposed to hit them back. But you sit there and just be ridiculed by your friends now. So, it's all the dancing that was happening in my mind as a young boy, right? As a as an eight-year-old –
[00:07:00] JU: Was that when the stuffing started? I don't know. But I mean, when you say I learned to stuff my emotions, is it you showed emotion that day, but then you got ridiculed. How did emotion continue to play or stop playing role in your life from that point?
[00:07:12] AB: Hmm.
[00:07:13] MH: Sips coffee after amazing question.
[00:07:17] AB: Okay. So, a lot has happened when I’m eight. When I went to that school up in the hills. And for your guests who don't know who I am, we haven't even really get into a big intro. This is not a story that you're trying to activate anybody. But you may get activated by what I'm going to say. And so just let yourself feel whichever is going to come up. But this is my my story.
At eight years old, I went to a camp. I never used to get to leave the house. My mom was really super protective. But I was also the oldest and I was helping raise my siblings. So, she kind of needed me at home a lot. So, but eight years old, I get to go to this camp and went out into the woods. At that camp, I was sexually assaulted. When I came home from the camp, I'm crying, but I can't tell my mom, right? Because my mom is a hothead. I'm eight years old making a decision for adults, right? I can't tell her what happened. Because what's going to happen? She's going to go do something to somebody and then what's going to happen? Who are we going to be raised by? I'm already having a hard time raising these kids with her being the mom and me just being the oldest. What happens if she goes and hurts somebody? Because I know my mom enough.
I can't tell her. And also, how do you tell her when you saw the the man of the house and you let somebody do that to you? Like, I blame myself or somehow should have known better, should have whatever— I told myself at eight years old, but I knew that couldn't tell her. So, I stuffed it. And I remember being in the bathroom that day. I was in the mirror. I was crying. As she came to the doors like, “Are you okay? What’s going on?” I was like, “Oh, I hit my head on the shelf.” I made up some story. She’s like, “Are you sure?” I said, “Yeah.”
I remember standing there the mirrors, like, “Okay, I can't tell her. So, what do I do? I can’t never tell her because also to be the man of the house. How do you the man of the house let this happened to him?” And then I was like, “Okay, well, what am I going to do?” And so, once a physical pain wore off, after you know how many ever days or weeks whatever, it went to a recess of my brain that I forgot about it, because I knew I couldn't ever tell her. But what I began to do, I began to eat, I began to eat for comfort.
I think around that time, I started a candy business at my school. So, I was making money and I was buying more candy and I was eating. I was just stuffing that feeling. And to this day, like, I have a sugar addiction, like not candy whatsoever, flour and sugar. Sweets, that's where I go to comfort and what I'm doing right now I'm in a phase of like, insatiability. I bought some sweets yesterday. I was like, today is my last day and I was eating this stuff in this box. And I'm like, it did not even satisfy. I was like this is disturbing. But I was like, “What am I running from right now? What emotion I'm not trying to deal with right now that I'm going to buy this stuff and I'm eating this stuff right now?” I’ve been a big guy my life. I'm not stealing sweets, I'm buying it. It's my money. I do what I want. But I know it's not healthy for me. I know it's not good for me. I'm clear about that.
I think that the stuffing began early. And it began a journey of like, stuffing and stuffing and stuffing emotions and just not dealing with it, not talking about it, ignoring it. Because I've been a big guy all my life, I can hide behind a big plate of food and no one thinks that you're sad or depressed or worried or whatever. So, that's the – wow. Thank you for that. That started early. That's already fast.
[00:10:41] MH: Yeah, I just want to honor you sharing your story with us. Thank you. Thank you for that.
[00:10:47] AB: Yeah, thank you for asking me. I was breathing like, “Am I saying this right here?” You never know when it's going to come, right? You just get to a place of like, and only, like, literally, my mom found out on CNN. So, I never told her. Last year, I was featured on Lisa Ling, This is Life. So, I forgot that I had said it – that was in the woods with some young men, and there's rites of passage weekend. And so, I told my mom, I was going to be on CNN. She told her friends. I'm watching the episode. And then I see myself stand in front of the fire and I tell the men this story. And I'm like, “Oh crap.” I realized I had to go to my – so I went to go see her right away.
I went to go, I got literally – she did what I thought she was going to do. She tried to blame herself. And she's like, “Why don't you tell me? I would have killed somebody, I would have hurt somebody.” I'm like, “Yeah, I know. Which is why I didn't tell you at eight years old. Now, I’m an adult with gray hair, and you're still wanting to hurt somebody.” So, I knew who you were and I knew what I needed to protect. I needed to protect my family. So, I needed to take on the grunt of all of that pain.
[00:11:57] JU: So, just maybe not to have too strange of a transition. But staying in this emotion journey. I mean, we started the conversation saying, “I've been learning that— not to suppress.” And you told us, and I thank you again for telling us where that started, what changed? Or what enabled you to say, “I can't live like that anymore.” How did you discover that and get permission for that? How did yourself permission? I'd love to hear the bookend of that journey.
[00:12:26] AB: 2010, I got invited to a men’s circle. And I was like, “Okay, yeah, I'm down.” The first time I heard about a men’s circles, some friends were in this men's group. I was like, “Can I come?” And then like, “Oh, no, it's private.” I was like, “Huh?” And they were friends of mine. But it had a private men's group. And I was like, “Oh.” I felt kind of weird. So, I was like, “Okay, well,” and then I got over that. And then this man invited me to a men’s club, and I was like, “Yeah”, because I had been interested in one. I never knew what they existed.
I go up in the Roberts Park in Oakland, in the redwoods. There's a bunch of men in a big old circle, and there's a fire in the middle. And I'm like, “Hey, what's going on here?” Now, most of the men did not look like me. The guy invited me was black, but the other 95% of the other men were white. And I'm like, I know where I'm at. I'm in Oakland, right? So, I'm like, “Where did you just bring me?” Where you bring me?” We're in the middle of the woods with a fire. I'm like, how well do I know this person? You know I mean?
But I think I what I felt in that circle was like men supporting men and I started seeing a place where I never really trusted men. I mean, my grandfather and my uncle, and you know, people like that, but I didn't have men in my life. I joined a fraternity, but even in the fraternity we didn't talk about real stuff. We talked about stepping in parties and dancing and girl and whatever. There was no emotional support in that experience. It was more of like an emotional tear down. If you think about how pledging works and things like that.
But what happened is doing that men's work, I started doing these men's retreats, and it really began to help me see that I had just been taught a message that was not – I didn't even believe, but I bought into it. I bought into the message that says you're not supposed to have feelings, you’re supposed to suck it up, you’re supposed to always be tough and strong. And there's a time for that. I think, but there’s time for having a wide range of emotions that are human, otherwise, you become less human, you become almost inhuman.
I think that's what I was seeing. Because at the time as a teacher, 2010. Yeah, I was already a teacher. So, I was teaching. I was seeing this in my students. I already started the Ever Forward Club. Because I saw young men in my classes who were like struggling academically, but beautiful and incredible young men. I was supporting them. I was giving them a space to talk about all their stuff and I was carrying it and I had no place to dispel it. I found myself, at one point, in Kaiser, in the emergency room. Literally, the ambulance came to my classroom had to take me out, because I think I was having an anxiety attack or something. I don't know what it was. They couldn't find anything. They did all these tests. I think ultimately, I didn't know how to take all those young men’s stuff and I was holding it for them, holding it with them, but I didn't have a place to hold my own stuff. So, I'm carrying my own life baggage and stuff and I'm taking on theirs and then I think I just got overloaded.
I think when I learned that there's a place for men to do this work, you can talk about it in a space where it's safe. Society may not be ready for you to tell everybody how you feel, but if you can have a space where all your emotions are welcomed by men helping men become better men, that's how it all changed. And that was 2010, so I just hit my 11-year anniversary on this team.
[00:15:31] MH: What did you see, you were in this moment, you come to a men's retreat and the first thing you notice is 95% of these guys don't look like me. What did you bring me to? What did you see specifically, that you said, you saw men being men, but what did that look like? What happened? What did a man being supporting to – what did that look like in that moment?
[00:15:55] AB: Yeah, I think the way I saw it was, people, they were laughing. They were jabbing, kind of like— but it wasn't anybody trying to tear anybody down. I'm trying to remember what all the [Inaudible 16:06], but it wasn't like, “Hey, so where are you going on vacation and how sports?” It was really, like, people were having some really authentic conversations that was before the meeting, and the meeting happened, and then it just felt the energy. But also, I remember that this piece called circle time, and circle time is a space for men to come into the circle and like, talk about real stuff. And I'm going to say like, “Yes, I'm just checking this out.” But I'm like, okay, so man goes in and that's the time where you get a chance to like, I just need to vent. I just need to vent.
If I come in, if I think about circle time, how we work circle time, one is to vent. I didn't want to vent. I don't know opinion. I don't know advice. I just want to let this off my chest. And some men came in and vented, some men came in as a two. A two is like, I'm looking for similar stories. I don't want to hear from men who have similar stories about what I'm going to say. Okay, three is I'm looking for advice from the collective wisdom of the circle. And a four is I need to leave this circle by making a commitment to make change in my life, whatever is going. I don't know what I need, but I just need something and make a commitment.
What I saw men do is open their hearts in a space of a bunch of other men, like I never told any men anything. So, to see somebody telling that circle of 50 plus men, about their personal stuff, I was extremely shocked. I'm like, what? You trust me with your personal business? But it's a space of confidentiality, that's what we hold, is a confidential space. So, what happens in that meeting stays in that meeting. So, what I saw and felt was, is this possible for me? I'm a guest here, but I always had the opportunity if I wanted to go in the circle and say, I was like, “No. Thank you.” But seeing it happen?
It really opened my eyes to that, that there is a place there. It is possible for men to talk about real stuff and no one laughs and no one says you're less than a man. It's almost actually, if you don't talk about what you're really going through, people are going to call you out because they're going to ask you questions about your life, and that's so beautiful and I didn't know that was even possible.
[00:18:05] MH: What I hear, is there a sort of this number system in place, that for you reflect is like a system of trust that sort of created this revelation for you that, “Oh, this is possible.” That's kind of what I'm hearing in there.
[00:18:19] AB: That's right. It was possible and it felt amazing. Not only that is possible, but like, what would it be like, if I didn't have to walk around like an emotional zombie with a mask, emotional mask that says, “I'm good. I'm fine. Everything's good with me.” Knowing that is not, where do I get to go and be like, “Today, it was a shitty day. Today, I'm struggling with X, Y, Z,” and to know that people are there. They're not there to fix you, but if you want support, men are there to support you.
When I saw it, I felt it, and it was like— because, remember the first time I heard about a men’s circle, I was interested, but they told me it was closed, it was private, and I felt left out. So, I've been wanting something like that, thinking that it was possible. I already started a program for young men. I started Ever Forward 2004. I didn't find my own Ever Forward for myself since 2010. So, for six years, I'm supporting all these young men with their stuff and I didn't even have a place to help me with my stuff.
[00:19:18] JU: What led you to do this for others when you hadn't done it yourself?
[00:19:22] AB: I think deep down is what I knew I needed. I think I created Ever Forward what wish I had when I was in high school. I wish I had a space where I could talk about what was really going on, and no one was going to laugh and no one's going to judge me. Ever Forward started with these young men who were really smart, but they were failing my class. And I was like, “Dude, you can't fail my class. You just can't fail my classes. We don't do it. This isn't work.” I didn't blame them for failing my class. I mean, you have to do the work but what am I doing wrong that I'm not reaching? You're smart. I can see it in you. What if you can't see it in yourself right?
No matter what somebody tells you, if you don't see beauty in yourself, if you don't see special in yourself, if you don't see amazing in yourself, if you don't see love in yourself, then no matter what somebody else tells you – that’s why I tell young men, I said, “Look, if you're looking for some woman, some girl, to make you feel loved, if you don't even love yourself, you're never going to find the right partner. Because they can give you some positive affirmations. But if you don't even love yourself, you're going to destroy it. Because ultimately, you don't believe it. And you're going to keep searching for what you think you're trying to feel. But it's your own love of yourself first.” And I think that's what I try and talk about.
So, I think like, how often do we give young men the space? When I think our young men weren't used to a space, where they were held in such high regard, but also held with like, I'm here to support you, I'm not here to fix you. I'm not here to change you. But if your life is not going the way you want it to go, then maybe some changes have to be made? And I can't make those changes, but I can ask you questions and figure out how you can make those changes.
[00:20:52] MH: What does it look like for these young men to be in this space, being held to a high regard? Can you describe that for us?
[00:21:02] AB: Yeah, so when Ever Forward first started, I said, “Look, I'll buy you lunch, once a week. Exchange for lunch, teach me how to be a better teacher.” That's how it started and then that lunch meeting, we just ate.
[00:21:12] MH: Wait, what?
[00:21:16] AB: So, I was struggling as a teacher, I was that first year, I left engineering career. So, I started engineering, I wanted to be rich. Switched to become a teacher, first year teaching, doing a horrible job. First of all, I'm getting paid like a peasant and now I'm doing a horrible job. I knew I was going to be broke being a teacher, but I wasn't going to be broke and a failure. You know what I'm saying? I was like, I'm going to be a teacher, I'm going to be amazing. And that's going to make up for this financial decline in my life, from engineering work to now.
I was doing a horrible job. And what I realized with those young men was that, “Why are you failing my class? You're so smart.” Now by high school, I got my act together. Middle school, I was a mess. So, I'm teaching high school. I'm thinking they all had have Ms. BP. And Ms. BP changed my life. Ms. BP was the teacher who said to me in middle school, right before I went to high school, or was actually when I got my act together, she was like, “I know you're sad that your father died before you were born.” And I was like, first I was irritated she was talking about my business. Second of all, I am not sad, I'm mad. Second of all, because boys can't be sad. She saw me. She said, “But look, life doesn't give you what you want. Life gives you what you get, and you got to make the most out of it.” And that sentence changed my life.
Because she saw me for more than what I thought people could see. Because I had good masks, right? Just to be tough and cool and “I don't care about all this stuff”. But that is what changed. So, when I got to – when I became a teacher, I'm thinking, “You're in high school now. Somebody should have already caught you in middle school to give you the magic sentence that changed your life so that you can come to high school and be focused and take care of business, you know?” and no one had. So, I said to them, “Look, I'll buy you lunch once a week. In exchange for lunch, teach me to be a better teacher.” I was doing like prototyping before – I wasn't trying to create a nonprofit, I wasn’t trying to create a club, I was a teacher struggling, failing, like and not willing to stay in that work, doing horrible.
I was either going to go back to money, and find another way to satisfy this desire to give back, or I was going to find out how to make it work. And I said, “Well, let me start with the young men.” What am I doing wrong as a teacher? Because you're smart. I think I'm smart. And we're creating failure. Two smart people shouldn’t be creating failure. What's happening here? So, what do I need to do differently? And I think what I saw most teachers, they were like, “Oh, that kid doesn't care about his education. That kid doesn't care about his learning. That kid don't care about his future.” I'm like, “Yeah, I don't think it that way.” Because I remember when I was the bad kid, bad kids get treated differently than good kids. That's a truth.
I remember how it felt. I saw kids who were amazing. They were bad – they were not doing well academically, but they weren't bad kids. They were just disconnected from school. My job was helping them figure it out. So, I think I started in Ever Forward. I mean, this is me looking back, right? Why it was happening. I'm just like, “You can't fail my class. We got to figure a way to help you pass. We can't do it in class. Because if I tell you, you're smart in front of your peers, you want to fight me, because smarts not cool in my community, right?” So, I had to like navigate around this cool society that says cool is not smart. Because I remember it was true for me too.
But by the time I got to high school, I didn't care what people thought. I was on my own. I was like, I'm about to go to college. I want to be rich. So, you all are going to stay here and be dumb and broke yourself but not, Ashanti Branch, as I held this context in high school, so I wasn't worried about impressing people for that reason. I was going to be with the Wijangco twins. The Wijangco twins are always number one and two in our class. They were my invisible, unspoken nemesis’s academically.
[00:24:38] Ju: I’ve got Wijangco twins in my life too.
[00:24:44] MH: We all got Wijangco twins.
[00:24:49] AB: Oh, my god! It was so wild. But that's how it happened. So, Ever Forward was this idea that I'm going to try something different. It's not going to happen in the classroom. Because in the classroom, you're trying to put on a show, the Wizard of Oz. Get behind the curtain and see what's happening in there.
[00:25:03] MH: So, there's something that you said that this is so sticky. And I don't know if you realize this or not. But you said, you realize that what Ms. B, I think you said her name was.
[00:25:15] AB: BP.
[00:25:16] MH: Ms. BP. She gave you your magic sentence and you started to realize that some of these guys who were a little further along than when you got yours, they hadn't gotten their magic sentence yet. So, I will be just curious, I think it'd be cool for our listeners. Can you maybe tell us a story of maybe one of the more magical sentences and a story attached to that sentence from one of your students?
[00:25:47] AB: Oh, man, this what came to mind right away. So, this is my first year teaching, because I'm doing my masters that year. First year teaching, kid comes in the first day of class, I give them these little pieces of paper, like a tabletop. I mean, it's nothing fancy, it's a piece of paper folded in half, and they got to put their name on it. It's going to be a tabletop for their name. So, I can kind of get to know their names. I tell them, “Draw on it, write on it, do whatever on both sides, put your name really big in the middle.”
At the end of the day, I go through the team folders, and I'm looking at them, and I want to look at the names. I remember where they were sitting and kind of like, “Okay, getting those idea what they drew in their paper.” And there's one young man, he had put some freaking gang stuff on my paper. And I'm like, “No, he didn't. Day one?” He drew little symbols on there. And I'm like, you don't think I'm smart enough to know what he's doing. Because he had like a picture and he had it inside this picture.
So, I was like, “Okay, wait until tomorrow. Wait until tomorrow.” I was going to throw it away. Someone said, “Don't throw it away, don't throw it away. I'm going to do something dramatic tomorrow.” I'm already kind of dramatic. So, class comes out, they take out your name tags and put them on the table. And he takes us out and everyone takes him out. I'm like, pretending I'm not paying attention and wait till I get the class the activity. Then, I go over to him and I say him, and say, “Hey, we'll just talk to you about what you put on your name thing right there.” I said, “Don't ever bring that shit to my class again.” I grabbed it, and I gave him a new one and I walked away.
I felt like a laser beam shifting through my body, because he stared at me as I walked away, almost as if no one had ever talked to him. I wasn't threatening him. I was more saying, this is a place of learning and you can do whatever you want – I said a lot more, but that was the essence of what I said to him. I said, “Look, you can do whatever you want outside of this classroom, and you have the right to do it. That's your life. I'm not here to change your life. But in this room, that's just not welcome.” There was a longer sentence, but that was more of my essence or like, but I walked away. I went back in. I went to the front of the room, because I didn't have to do a slide. So, no one knew that I was chastising him because it’s day two, right? I'm not going to chastise him in day two.
I went to the front, and as I went to the front, he was still looking at me. And we just made eye contact. He started drawing a new one. He became one of the subjects of my master's thesis. That relationship grew. His brother became a member of Ever Forward. He was like one of the founding members of Ever Forward. That was before Ever Forward even was an idea. He was one of the first members of our club. And that was, I think, back to that day, I was risking creating a battle day two a class, right? Because he could have been like, “Who you think you?” Because I was prepared for all of it. I'm born and raised in this area.
I knew what could have happened. I wasn't saying to him to threaten him, I was saying to tell him in this space, whatever is out there, leave it out there. That part of yourself, like you need to be here to be focused. And so that's what happened. I don't know if it was that word, or just the fact that he knew that I wasn't – I don't know. Our relationship grew and blossomed, and I’m still in touch with his family today.
[00:28:46] JU: I got to know your organization is now doing amazing things. I'd love for you to tell everybody about the Million Masks Movement and all that stuff. But the first thing that I want to come to and then you can kind of take it where you will, I'd love to know, you said, “I was just a teacher, I wasn’t looking to start a nonprofit, I wasn’t trying to start a Club, I was just failing horribly.”
How did you go from failing horribly teacher to leading a movement? How did that transition happen? Because I think there's a lot of people who think you got to have some grand vision ahead of time or whatever, right? I'd love to hear you dispel or reinforce that myth. If it's not a myth, great, reinforce that truth. If it's a myth, tell us how you stumbled into becoming a movement leader, a change maker, from failing first year teacher to change maker.
[00:29:36] AB: So, I grew up poor, and when they told me there was a formula that you can live happily ever after. They told me that there was a formula. They said, if you study hard, and you go to college, get a good job, make a lot of money, live happily ever after. I'm going to say it again, study hard, go to college, get a good job, make a lot of money, and live happily ever after. I mean, “sign me up for the make money and happy ever after”.
So, when I I left teaching, engineering to become a teacher, my salary dropped by 66%. I was devastated financially in the mind. But I knew that I was in the right work. So, purpose went up and financial wellbeing went down somewhat. As a first year teacher failing, I was like, “You know what, I'll go back and make money.” Because as an engineer, I never had to worry about, could I pay all the bills in one month. Can I pay all the bills and still go and have a movie or go have dinner with friends? As an engineer, I didn't even look at the account. I just went out whenever I wanted to go out. That's just the beauty of that life I had.
As a teacher. I'm like, wait a minute. I think I'm going to need to get groceries this week. Because teachers get paid once a month, you got to stretch 30 days of a check. And the engineering I get paid – we got paid almost every week. So, it was like, money was just constantly popping in, enough money to survive, right? It's almost like I got one – anyway, all that to say, you could tell the money has been a piece of this journey, right? When I’m doing a horrible job teaching. I mean, kids are failing. I'm like, “Okay, maybe I didn't want to do this.” I know, I wanted to do it in my heart. But financially, it was a it was a battle. And I'm like, “Maybe I should go back and make money, find a way to give back another way.” But I deep down thought that it was something I was just doing wrong. What am I doing wrong, that I'm not reaching these students who are smart?
Now look, I told students, if you put the effort forward, nobody will fail this class. If you put the effort forward, we will work together, you will pass. But what about when as soon as I didn’t put an effort, when you can't see the effort? Maybe they think they're putting effort, but you can't see it. I can tell if a kid is trying a little bit, at least paying attention. He's at least taking this pencil out. He's at least attempting the homework. He's at least doing something on his own end. I'm not dragging him through, like the treachery of algebra class. I'm like, “Hey, it's a team effort.” What I saw is that I wasn't willing to just give up on them.
So, I knew that I need to try something different. That what I'm doing right now is not working. Teaching, as just teaching is not enough. It's about relationships. I think when I began to learn that it was about relationships, and it happened, because I did an activity with students, and I asked them about, what are some obstacles you overcome? And what are some obstacles you currently face? And in my mind, I didn't say about math, but I thought they were going to write about math, so I could figure out how to help them get better at math. None of them talked about math. They all talked about how life was hitting them in so many different ways that math was less important.
I mean, young people had lost parents. They're walking through gang territory to get to school. They're navigating stresses of life. They're having relationship issues with family and girlfriends and drug addictions in ninth grade. So, who cares about the Pythagorean Theorem, when my life was a mess? Who cares about algebra? Who cares about any of that when my own life is going so haywire? That's how it happened.
I was like, okay, since I'm not doing a good job of teaching, I'm going to try something else on the side. I do the math, I love the math. It wasn't that I couldn't teach math, it was that somehow the math wasn't enough, me having enough math knowledge wasn’t enough. And I think what I tell teachers now, when I do work with teachers, I say, “Look, if you care more about the subject that you teach, than the subjects who you're teaching, there's going to be a disconnect and that's how it all happened for me.”
[00:33:23] MH: That’s magical sentence.
[00:33:26] JU: Not to dismiss the magical sentence, just say it again, Ashanti.
[00:33:30] AB: I tell teachers in my work, I say like, if you care more about the subject that you teach, than the subjects who you're teaching, there's probably going to be a disconnect. And the follow on to that sentence is, there's some students who, if you don't show up one day, they'll make up their own homework. And there are some kids, you can deliver the homework to their house, and they not doing the homework still. So, you can't just be the person who's going to teach and whoever gets it, because there's some kids who won't learn from you that have a relationship with you. I knew that to be true, because I was that kind of kid. But I knew he didn't like me. Guess what? “We going to have a fight today and maybe every day until you back off me because I'm going to win. I'm not going to physically fight. I'm just going to make this class impossible to teach in today.” I was good at it because I was smart and I was creative.
[00:34:21] JU: Marcus is thinking, “Man, I'm glad I haven't had to teach Ashanti.” So, I would like to transition from, see how you go from teacher to change maker, in a micro sense, right? I mean that in a deeply profound sense, also, I don't mean that in a bad way. How did you go from teaching mindset to, I'm going to change these lives’ mindset to, I'm going to spark that's not about teaching math anymore, it's about masks now? How did you go there?
[00:34:56] AB: As a teacher, I saw how unprepared teachers were for the emotional baggage that students were bringing. And I saw myself as more than just a teacher. I was teaching. I had a job to teach. But deep down me, I was like, “This can't be it.” I saw that the first year. I was like, “This can't be all that I'm supposed to be doing now.” My job is to teach. I had no other plans. I wasn't trying to do any other movements. I wasn't working a side job at that point. I mean, I was working at Chili's, because I had to make up for the difference of my lifestyle at that point to have another job but I wasn't trying to do anything else. I was like, trying to be a good teacher.
What I realized is that because I had a bigger vision, my mind was always waiting for what can I do better. Imagine this, if I come in and talk to the school where every kid did their homework, and I didn't have to worry, I wouldn't have to create anything. I would have just taught, and maybe I would have found another thing to get involved in. But I was at a school where a big majority of students in my class were just like, “whatever”. I was like, “No, no, this can't happen.” And so, because I had already made it through, I knew that their 13-year-old self was going to sabotage your 18-year-old self. So, what I saw always, I saw three sides of it. I saw I was Ashanti, the poor kid from Oakland. I was Ashanti, the engineer. I was Ashanti, the teacher. And I was Ashanti the person who was like, “You're not allowed to give less than your best.”
So, I came in with all these different hats, and something I had to like be the mean person, right? Like I was strict and kids knew it. So, I think that what happened was when I went to get the movement part, I'm always looking how do I affect change more? Because in a classroom, you only have your 100 and whatever kids every year. Why am I walking around the halls and the other kids go back to class? Kids be like, “You are not my teacher.” I'm like, “I am your teacher. I'm a teacher at this school, go to class.” Why would I do that? Well, because I care more about just than the kids in my class. I care about the community at large. The way I was able to translate to the movement was that I was not willing to like stay in that movement, then that place and be stuck. I saw a teacher have been teaching more than 30 years. 30, 20 plus years. I'm like, “Wow, that's amazing.” But I was like, “Well, if I'm going to do that, then there's going to be more going on than me just sitting in this classroom, teaching a group of 30 kids at a time. I got bigger goals for my own self of like just making the world better.” I couldn't just stay super hyper focused in there.
I think it called me. I wasn't looking for it. Literally, it called me and I think that when it happened, when the documentary came out, they invited us to be a part of this documentary. I was like, “Sure.” Now I'd never know really much about documentaries. I see people a little camcorder, they come around, they'll ask you some questions. I'm like, “Sure.” And when they showed up with a camera crew, I was like, “What's going on here?” They're like, “Oh, this is the documentary crew.” I’m like, “A crew?” I thought it was a person with a camera.
Then I realized something was happening. It wasn't me looking for it, they heard about us. I was like, “Oh, boy. I didn't really know much about it until I saw the documentary, which then began to change a whole another layer of beings that where this movement came from. So anyway, did I answer the question? Did I clarify that?
[00:38:06] JU: You killed. It’s perfect. So, I love is to me, this is the prequel. I feel like what we just got was the origin story. Everybody knows from the documentary onward. And by the way, in my mind, you are going to be beyond the documentary too. I actually love. Let's stop right here. This is the prequel and we see how Ashanti came to become the man without the mask. It's beautiful.
[00:38:40] AB: Thank you. I appreciate you.
[00:38:42] JU: Thank you for sharing your art with us. I mean, it's incredible. I feel tremendously privileged and honored to get to be a part of this conversation and hopefully, to shine a spotlight on you, and your amazing work, and your amazing story with as many people as possible, I believe, that this story has the power to really change lives. So, thank you for sharing it with us.
[00:38:51] AB: Thank you. Thanks for having me. Thanks for letting me get a part of my emotions today. I appreciate that. Happy Friday.
[00:39:01] JU: Likewise.
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