A Teacher Blogs

I stepped out onto the sidewalk in front of our home to say goodbye to my wife Blanche as she was leaving for work. And to answer her questions about how to drive my smart fortwo -- it's quirky. As she drove off, I spotted two men with fliers approaching the house, chatting. They parted, and one made his way up our front walk with me quietly in pursuit, hackles raised. He was on the porch reaching for the door-knocker, as I climbed the steps. "What's up?" I asked, trying not to sound as suspicious as I felt. I was allowing for the possibility that he was from the City, perhaps advising me of work being doing in the neighbourhood.  He held out one of his fliers for me to see: "I wanted to let you know about a website...." Big as light, the word, "Bible," was on it. It's all I saw. That and a metal case he was holding that looked like it might contain a receipt book. "You saw the sign about the fliers coming up the walk,...

For the bulk of my career as an elementary educator, I was a teacher-librarian in the public schools. In my training as a teacher and librarian, combined with my previous work as a community college teacher in the nineties, I became very committed to equity and diversity. Simply put, in my belief, a school library ought to reflect the diversity of the school and community... and then some. Here's an example of what I mean, when I say, and then some. In all my years in elementary education, I have encountered one child whose family celebrated Kwanzaa .   One.   But just as I would have multiple books about Eid or Christmas or Diwali, I always made a concerted effort to have two or three titles about Kwanzaa on hand in the library. I didn't have them just in case in I ran across a child whose family celebrated the holiday; I also had them because children like to read about the lives of other children. Muslim kids sign out books about Easter. Hindu and Sikh kids re...

CBC: Language school blogger writes about homophones -- then he's fired   Timothy Torkildson during better days at Nomen Global Language Center, in Provo, Utah. According to Dictionary.com , a homophone is "a word pronounced the same as another but differing in meaning, whether spelled the same way or not, as heir and air." Or bare and bear . Or waste and waist . When I first heard the story of Timothy Torkildson's firing from Nomen Global Language Center -- that's a language school -- in Provo, Utah, for advancing "a gay agenda," I thought maybe his boss Clarke Woodger had conflated homophone with homophobe , the word for a person who fears or hates homosexuals and homosexuality .  Apparently not -- he just got stuck on the homo part. Mr Woodger had to look up the word homophone when he read in a blog Mr Torkildson was hired to write for the school, where the latter was also in charge of social media. According to an intervi...

I happened to be at home with the flu, February 9th of this year, when word turned up on my Facebook wall about a curious exchange between a Toronto District School Board trustee and a Toronto City Councillor. The exchange had to do with nudity at Toronto Pride, at the event's annual Sunday parade, in particular. I logged into my Twitter account to see @TrusteeSam and @krystenwongtam have at it. Sam Sotiropoulos , a Trustee in the The TDSB's Ward 20 , wanted Toronto City Councillor  Kristyn Wong-Tam , who represents the riding of Toronto Centre Rosedale , home to the city's LGBTQ Village , to explain why "Canada's nudity laws" were not being enforced during the annual Pride Parade. The heated exchange quickly made the press  -- in particular, because of the trustee's assertion that defenders of Pride traditions were guilty of, in his description,  "homosexism."  Twitter followers paused, fingers flexing over keyboards and devices, befo...

" Ontario Parents Alert! Check your Imams and Leaders ," warns Jawed Anwar  on his Seerah School website. The link leads to an article entitled "How the Accepting (Biased) School Act Will Affect You and Your Children." The tone is alarmist and conspiratorial -- like much of Mr Anwar's prose on the site.  BILL  13  is an act (law) now; Accepting School Act. It is a biased act promoting homosexuality and seven-gender sex in public funded school. It is not an anti-bullying act as told by some politicians. It is promoting gender fluidity by denying the gender of birth. It is a culture-shift mandate to embrace the homosexual agenda. It is an act to corrupt the minds and souls of young children. The " Bill 13 " he refers to is Ontario's Accepting Schools Act, 2012 . The Act, as I blogged before , updates the The Education Act of Ontario, expanding the definition of bullying; enabling administrators to issue greater consequences to students who bully...

One Friday evening in late October, I found a scan of a flier on a friend's Facebook wall. The flier, I later learned, had been handed out to residents of the Thorncliffe Park neigbourhood in Toronto's east end. Its purpose: To caution parents about implementation of Ontario's " Accepting School's Act ," also known as Bill 13 , which passed its final reading on June 15th, 2012 and is scheduled to be fully implemented by February 2013. But your kids will now be forced to learn the 'Same sex life of style' without informing their parents. This new educational policy [sic] completely against our social, moral and religious faith. Throughout the Curriculum," you will notice shocking changes which will change not only the behaviour of our kids but also the behaviour of  our whole society. In other words, according to the authors of the flier: The great queering of Ontario's school children has begun. Let me backtrack: T...