Archive for October, 2009

The Search for my Sexual Identity

Thoughts on gender identity and creativity

I was listening to CBC radio in the car last year while two celebrity men my age were talking like giddy little schoolboys about their hockey and baseball sports card collection. I envied their enthusiasm and pride in their collections and wondered why I never got the bug, even though at one point I had boxes and boxes of them that I had won from playing toss and match gambling. I loved sports and played virtually all types. I had a large number of cards only because I won them. Soon after grade eight I just threw them out. But as the celebrities waxed on about their collections I realized that I too had my own collections during my youth, and as William Wordsworth wrote, “ the child is father to the man”

In my young boyhood the secrets of my future creativity were revealed and it was only on looking back did I realize how early my quirky creativity became apparent. My boyhood interests fathered the creative person I am today. I had two collections, one a stamp collection which I still have, the other a collection of match boxes from restaurants and hotels. My stamp collection was my art gallery. I loved the exquisite designs of Olympic sport stamps from countries all over the world, created by the best artists in each country. I treasured these little lithographs. I selected them in the same way an art collector would. The match box collection also revealed this artistic bent. I selected them, not like others who collected them from as many cities or countries as they could. I collected only the ones which appealed to me because of their artistic design—- another one of my art collections.

From a very early age I also treasured my Kodak Brownie camera and collected photos I took that I thought were fine art pieces. Today I have other collections of fine art. While I could never afford original paintings, I do own a Miro lithograh and Picasso lithograph and many lithos of the modern French artists, some fine Japanese woodcuts, as well as photos by Walker Evans, Josef Karsh and Robert Frank . These are my stamps and matchboxes of old.

But there is more to my creativity than just collecting. I remember in grade seven and eight, tearing out images from magazines of dancers like Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly with images of them leaping through the air with incredible grace and athleticism. I was never able to tell anyone of my interest or do anything about it because at that time a boy who was interested in dance had to be gay and I was terrified of being labelled that way. The only way I was able to come close and maintain my masculine integrity was to take up sports that captured some of the elements of dance. I became a gymnast as well as a springboard diver. In both cases I was able to perform my dance moves in the air and not be labelled gay!

When I retired, at the age of 58 as a school superintendent and returned to university to teach, I fulfilled a childhood dream and enrolled in a modern dance class at the Toronto Dance School. By this time I felt confident enough about my own masculinity that I didn’t care what anyone thought. In my class of 20 students, I was one of only two males and the other 18 were young women more than half my age. They were all hoping to improve their skills to the level that would allow them to gain admission to the school on a fulltime basis. What a sight to see me in tights amidst all this feminine pulchritude.

Our classes were held in a wonderful room with a high ceiling and the walls were covered with mirrors . I remember one crowning moment when the accompanist drummer led us though a routine that culminated in all of us rising up on our toes to one final climactic plie. As we approached the final moment and the drummer reached his final strum on the drum, and as we rose up as one, arms gracefully above our head on our tippy toes, the drum beat ended precisely at the moment when I unfortunately punctuated the final drum beat with a horrific thunderous fart. All twenty sets of eyes could be seen in the mirrors glancing my way and I turned pomegranate red. It certainly affirmed my masculinity. I did not attain admission standards for a fulltime place in the program.

There were other manifestations of my creativity that affected my identity. I began to sew. For years I made my wife’s clothing as well as my two daughters. My crowning achievement was making my daughter’s wedding dress. It was simple, elegant and chic. Again I feared that people would think I was gay. Whenever I publicly told anyone I sewed I always said “yes, I can make a skirt or a dress for my wife on a Sunday afternoon during an NFL football game.” It was in fact true, but it was an attempt to dissipate any thoughts of my sexual preference by adding this very masculine activity. How silly it now seems on reflection.

And it doesn’t stop there. I am avid flower grower and arranger. I made two massive flower arrangements for my daughters wedding that framed the ceremony. And I also love to cook . I studied French cooking while living in Germany and I devour cookbooks and cooking magazines. I am a very inventive and creative chef, if not a consistent one. As well, I love interior decoration. Our house and cottage are carefully decorated with many antiques that I have restored – collections of antique glass, fine artwork or my own photographs, and of course always fresh flower arrangements. My main hobby now is photography and I hold three or fours exhibitions a year of my work.

It is not that I excelled at all these hobbies, in fact I engaged in far more projects that I ever completed and fine detail and finishing are not my strengths. The old adage applies that I was a jack of all arts but master of none, but there is a record here from a very early age of an innate predisposition to artistic endeavours.

When you combine all these interests – the dancing, the fashion design and sewing, the interior decorating, the photography, flower arranging and the creative cooking, you emerge with a distinct stereotype of a gay male. When I was in the navy during my university years, I was the one who cut every mid-shipman’s hair! I have always had this fear growing up of being accused as gay and as Seinfeld said, “not that there is anything wrong with that”, it is just that I didn’t want that label applied to me . It is interesting and regrettable the things I did to ensure no one thought I was gay, including, regrettably, at times displaying homophobia. I am truly ashamed of those occasions, even though they were verbal displays. It is only now that I am comfortable enough in my own skin that I can talk about it. I know I am a “raging heterosexual” and I am proud of the more feminine aspects of my interests and talents.

Published in: Uncategorized | on October 21st, 2009 | 103 Comments »

Teach for Ontario?


Of the 12,000 teacher graduates in Ontario in

2009,  less than a third have been hired

An American friend was proudly bragging to me about the outstanding, “Teach for America” program that recruits top graduates from Harvard and Yale and all the great universities in the USA, in order for them to teach in the inner city schools of America, working with the one in ten children living in poverty who will not attend college. Teach for America candidates commit to teaching in needy schools for two years at a modest wage. So far 24,000 graduates have participated, impacting the lives of 3 million students in a country where 13 million live in poverty.

I envied him this program momentarily but when I thought about it I told him that in Canada, we do not need a Teach for America program because unlike the US and the UK, where teachers are drawn from the bottom third of university graduates, teachers in Canada are drawn from the top third of graduates, along with those headed to medical schools, law schools and MBA programs. And still over 50 % of those who dream of becoming teachers are currently unable to find a place in a faculty of education in Ontario!

As I sat at an orientation of 300 new teacher candidates in the concurrent program at York this fall, I pondered their prospects for teaching employment when they graduate. I am concerned that of nearly 12,000 new teachers to the profession in 2009, fewer than 28 percent of them were able to get jobs. Some of our grads head off to Central America, the USA, or Korea for low paying teaching jobs but most end up in temporary jobs here in Ontario.

Hundreds and hundreds of teachers are not teaching and these are the best and the brightest of our university grads. All have 2 degrees and many with more. What an incredible waste. And it does not seem to be a temporary teacher surplus.

I realize now we do need a Teach for America type program in Ontario. There are thousands of students in our system who are underachieving, disengaged and dropping out; children living in poverty who are already two to three grade levels behind their higher-income peers by the time they reach fourth grade. The achievement levels of children living in poverty is unacceptable, despite the fact that as the OECD has pointed out, that the gap in achievement between low SES and high SES is the narrowest in Canada of all OECD countries. . . but we have a long way to go. We have been promising to reduce child poverty in Canada for 30 years but the level is the same now as it was then.

We have this enormous growing pool of unemployed teachers, our best and brightest university graduates. We have this enormous pool of underachieving students. Why not tap into this enormous pool of talent and develop a program whereby these teachers have an alternative to teaching abroad or not teaching at all, by working with students living in poverty, the disaffected, students who are disadvantaged in some way, in a creative in-between kind of joint government/private enterprise, a quasi Teach-for-America type of program, for lack of a more creative phrase, a Teach for Ontario Program.

We have some models. York University has developed a unique introductory year practicum placement for first year students. It is like the dream of Teach for America in the sense that placements are in organizations where social justice and equity are the guiding principles, where teacher candidates are working with our neediest students. They are run by, and funded by an incredible variety of governments and private enterprises. Dozens of community organizations place our York students in a year long practicum in home work clubs such a the Jane Finch Community Centre, Ralph Thornton Centre, or Working Women Center, Frontier College, or green placements in the Toronto Botanical Gardens or the Mississauga Garden Council, as well as placement in the Arts,  such as Inner City Angels and Theatre Peace. The list is endless and overwhelming in its variety and commitment.

These organizations would gobble up unemployed teachers willing to participate in their program if an organization existed to facilitate their placement and funding existed. New teachers would continue to hone their skills while working with our neediest underachieving students, as they wait for an opportunity for full employment.

There are other models in Ontario now. The Nursing Graduate Guarantee is an initiative of the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care aimed at ensuring that every new nursing graduate (4000 of them per year) who wishes to work full time in Ontario will have that opportunity in positions varying from a minimum of 12 weeks to a maximum of 7 months. Fifty Million dollars a year is committed to this program!

Imagine the power unleashed by offering a similar promise to teachers. Consider the costs to society of the long term effects of our current level of school dropouts, costs related to unemployment, welfare, teenage pregnancies, gangs, crime, police, courts, jails incurred by the disaffected.

There are strategies that work. We know from the Ypsilanti study, for example, that followed the Head Start students and their control group for 20 some odd years, that for every dollar spent on Head Start saved six dollars to society down the road on the these burdens I just outlined. We can’t afford not to provide help to our young children living in poverty. It’s also clearly an economic issue.


Fundamentally, I am calling for the opportunity for teachers without hope of a teaching position in the immediate future, to continue to develop their teaching skills in positions which can make a contribution to society. We do it for nurses, why not for teachers? Are the costs to society in the long run not comparable? There are many creative ways of implementing this initiative, perhaps offering up an additional teacher qualification for this service for example. If not a government program, a program, like Teach for America could be funded largely by contributions from supportive corporations like many of the organizations currently working with York University now operate.

We do need a “Teach for Ontario” type program, where social justice and equity underlies our commitment to our neediest students. It would provide an alternative outlet for our unemployed or underemployed teachers while improving the achievement of our failing students. It is not just an economic issue, it is a moral one as well.

A Ministry of Education task force could be created to explore these possibilities. Graduating 10,00 to 12,000 new teachers a year without much hope of employment is a waste of our best and brightest.

Published in: Uncategorized, canada | on October 3rd, 2009 | 127 Comments »