[URBAN NOTE] "Toronto may get queer-centric school"

[rfmcdonald]

Xtra!'s Andrea Houston writes about a potentially controversial proposal to establish a queer-centric high school in Toronto. I don't think it'll happen: politics aside, it's not clear that there would be enough non-heterosexual students who'd so strongly identify as queer, or who would want to be separated from their heterosexual peers if they did, or that it wouldn't be possible to reform schools to include queer content for everyone's benefit. Queer identity just doesn't work in the same way as the African-Canadian identity that has driven the foundation of an Afri-centric school.

The Toronto District School Board (TDSB) wants to know whether it should create a high school that encourages queer teachers and students to be out and proud.

A former student of the TDSB is hosting a community forum on Sept 26, entitled Have Your Say: A Queer-centric Secondary School in Toronto, to solicit community feedback.

The idea was first proposed by Fan Wu, 20, a University of Toronto student who graduated from Douglas Collegiate in 2010, and has been gaining support from members of the board.

[. . .]

The school would include grades nine to 12, says Javier Davila, a teacher and advisor in the TDSB's office for gender-based violence prevention. Davila is helping to organize the community forum as well as gathering support among board members.

While some schools are more queer-friendly than others, Wu says, most high schools don’t actively encourage lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans students or teachers to be out and proud.

“The gay teachers at my school made a point of not coming out to their students. Some only told students after they graduated,” he says. “Teachers are afraid of parental backlash, mostly. They were sensitive to the cultures of students, especially new Canadians, some of whom come from very conservative families.”

Some teachers who knew Wu's sexuality made efforts to share books from queer writers, passed on to him like contraband, he recalls.

“I remember my writers' craft teacher would slip me passages from queer writers, things that would inspire me that she would not give to the whole class,” he says. “I have always been attracted to queer writing and finding voices that I can relate to.”

Michael Erickson teaches at Harbord Collegiate and is one of the lead writers of the teachers' guide “Challenging Homophobia and Heterosexism.” He says he would rather ensure that every TDSB school has queer-focused resources.

“I am concerned when we are pulling resources and goals into making one small space safe, as opposed to asking ourselves how that should look across the system,” he says. “What kind of student will self-select at 13, 14 or 15 years old? I think convincing teachers in schools to be integrating equity work is a better use of our resources.”