I have this knowledge of how to love myself and be my own best friend and I'm obligated to share this with children.

Captain Pat is not your typical school teacher and he may not fit into what people think a teacher should be. After he graduated with a masters degree from Loyola Marymount University, he wasn’t sure what he wanted to pursue in his future but he knew he wanted to be a teacher in whatever form he could.

“During recess, I just kept seeing students having so many issues and it caused problems in the classroom.” Not immune to childhood bullying, he could also relate to the problems kids were having at recess. “When I was younger, I used to get teased. Teased about my race. For not being black enough. For not being white enough. For having different hair.” He said, “The way I responded to teasing was just be quiet and shut down like, ‘They're right.’ That was me not recognizing my greatness.”

It was after that, he realized that he could do something to help these kids deal with those issues. “I wanted to create a company to help all these recess problems. Right then I knew, I was going to move to LA to start a nonprofit to teach kids how to make friends.”

It’s taken Captain Pat many years to realize how to love himself and embrace his uniqueness. At 32, he wants to spread that knowledge to others. “Now that I have this knowledge of how to love myself and how to be my own best friend, I'm obligated to share this with children who are going through similar things that I went through or worse."

He eventually moved to Spokane, Washington in September of 2018 and thought he may have to put his dream of creating his non-profit on hold. That was until he met a local elementary school principal who believed in his new approach to teaching children how to deal with outside stressors. That conversation catapulted him into a weekly classroom session called ‘FriendSHYP,” spelled intentionally with a ‘Y.’

He explained that this would be the starting point to teaching kids how to breathe properly, calm down, and deal with anger and anxiety in a more healthy way. “Each letter of the word 'FRIEND' and now, even more, the word 'FriendSHYP,' all mean something.” FriendSHYP means:

F - Find self love and awareness.
R - Respect your truth and others.
I - Identify your triggers and find the chill.
E - Embrace your greatness 'cause we're all bound for greatness in our own creative way.
N - Never give up.
D - Deploy and celebrate and deploy means to take action.

All that was left was ‘SHYP’ and he described why he spelled it specifically with a ‘Y.’ “SHYP means, Serving and Helping Your Purpose. That’s why I chose to spell it differently."

Not coincidentally, that’s where his inspiration for Captain Pat came from. Not wanting to go the traditional CEO or Founder route with his non-profit, he decided he’d rather be a Captain, guiding you to your happiness and inner self love. “A SHYP of friends.” He smiled. “I believe that we're all a divine reflection of one another so when you call me captain, it's actually hopefully reminding you that you are a captain and we are all captains of our own lives and we choose to love ourselves and be our own best friend."

"School is a stress cesspool. We all bring our stress and we share it and we go home more stressed.” He summarized. “I'm just on a mission to share and help children know that you're not the only one that has anxiety. You're not the only one that's going through these things. You're not the only one that feels all these crazy feelings. You're not the only one that thinks you're not enough."

Love. Friendship. Growth.