Bronx resident Ricardo Ramos has five great reasons for having attended the UFT Men in Education seminar, titled A Symposium Dedicated to Promoting Male Involvement in Education. “Five girls — 17, 16, 11, 9 and 5,” said the 49-year-old school bus driver. “I am a good father, but for my five girls I need to be a great father.” He joined 150 other fathers and father figures in the all-day symposium on Jan. 30. The speakers as well as the workshops and panel discussions ranged from how to get involved in schools through parent associations and other formal and informal means to being engaged role models, mentors and advocates. The numbers tell the story: Only 21 percent of New York City teachers are male. Though about 43 percent of male students are black, Latino or Asian, only 8 percent of their teachers come from those ethnic groups combined. “Huge eye-opener,” said Sherwyn Lovell, a security consultant with two boys, a 1st- and a 3rd-grader at Baychester Academy in the Bronx. “I’m taking that back to our principal.” Lovell sits on school and parent committees and his mission is to convince fathers, particularly fathers of color, to be a presence at their kids’ schools. “They need to break the fear of being in the forefront of their children’s education,” he said. “Fathers need to know they have a voice and bear a responsibility in the education of their children.” For Ramos, the most moving experience of the day was staring at a poster of a male lion, its cub in the background. The message at the bottom was, “Thought about quitting, then I noticed who was watching.” Ramos knows that feeling. “Job pressure, family pressure — sometimes you just feel like, ‘I quit!’” he said. “Then I look at my five girls and how they look at me and I know I will never quit. I want them to be proud of me — and I want to be proud of myself.”