Soon after landing in Mexico for a family holiday five years ago, the World Health Organization declared the COVID-19 outbreak a global pandemic. I vividly remember saying to my wife, “I know we just checked in, but I think we need to get home.” Two days later, schools were officially closed in Ontario. The next day, after many hours trying to negotiate with the airline for the five of us to fly home, we landed in Toronto. Nine days after that, Crescent reopened as an online school. The rest, as they say, is history.

A number of years ago while visiting a colleague at a peer school abroad, we found ourselves discussing the emerging importance of boys’ well-being as a precondition to their engagement and performance at school. We mused about our own experiences as emerging young men. We could not recall a single conversation from our school days about our mental or emotional wellness.