OTIP TEACHING AWARDS
He makes the music happen
October 1, 2009
Nicole Baute
Greg Rogers would rather stay out of the spotlight.
The Toronto Catholic school board teacher is the driving force behind an ambitious program that sends local teenagers to India and Africa to build schools, teach and volunteer, as well as numerous other programs aimed at fostering student leadership. But he wouldn't mind if the credit went to someone else.
Perhaps, instead, we could recognize the many people who helped him along the way, he says. Or his heroes and role models, such as Jean Vanier, founder of the L'Arche communities for people with developmental disabilities, or Free the Children co-founder Marc Kielburger, who was one of his students.
Colleague Kevin Welbes Godin, the school board's consultant in religion and family life, uses an apt poetic analogy to describe this 55-year-old father of seven.
"When you see orchestras being conducted, it's almost like the conductor isn't there," he says. "The music happens."
It certainly does, which is why Rogers has been selected as this year's winner of the OTIP Teaching Award in the Secondary category.
When Rogers was in his early 20s, he was on track to work in management for Bell Canada. He had never taught before but, on a bit of a whim, he ended up at a school in Mansa, Zambia teaching "English, geography, whatever they needed at the time."
"While I was teaching in Africa, I fell in love with Africa and I also fell in love with teaching," Rogers says.
He returned to Canada two years later, went to teacher's college and starting teaching, first at Chinguacousy Secondary School in Brampton, then at his alma mater, Brebeuf College School in Toronto, where he was head of the social sciences department and then acting vice-principal.
When he was seconded to the school board in the '90s, he took the opportunity to follow a dream.
One day he walked into his superintendent's office and said, in his gentle, unassuming way, "Mike, I want to take students to Calcutta. Or to Africa, to Zambia."
He remembers the superintendent's response: "Greg, we can't even take kids to the museum. You want to go to Calcutta?"
But he and a fellow teacher, Robert Lato, convinced the school board to let them take 21 students to India in 1996, where they worked with Mother Teresa. "That experience was so powerful," Rogers says.
He has since developed an overseas leadership program that focuses on four pillars: service, learning, leadership and adventure.
Since 2004, Rogers has run a program in Kenya every summer, working closely with Free the Children and his former student, Marc Kielburger.
The students help build schools and run camps for local children, using their basic Swahili to teach drama, art and phys-ed.
Running the Kenya trips is only part of Rogers' role as co-ordinator of student leadership for the school board. He also continues to run excursions to India.
In Toronto, he takes police officers and at-risk youth on canoe trips, organizes a day of service where students volunteer throughout the city and facilitates a host of other projects, including conferences and retreats. In the summer, he is the associate director of Olympia Sports Camp.
More on World Teachers' Day.
Toronto Star