Anyone who says high school was the best time of their lives either caught the winning touchdown or has been living in a Siberian salt mine since graduation.

From the objects of adoration who sport the priciest duds to the portraits of rebellion covered in countless piercings-everyone wants to be liked in high school. It’s during this tumultuous time that many people will have their first drunk, first joint, and first sexual experience.

Even Premier Mike Harris, while commenting on the alleged strip-searches of 20 students, acknowledged how precarious a time it can be for teens. "I personally think back to teenage years, and Grade 9, and the challenges of puberty, and of a very sensitive age."

High school administrators have begun to recognize the pressures and difficulties faced by their students. Ontario students are taught about the proper use of contraceptive devices and the consequences of drug and alcohol abuse.

But one topic missed in the Ministry guidelines is homosexuality. And though it may not be required classroom curriculum, walk through any high school hallway and students are talking about it. Words like ‘fag’ and ‘dyke’ are common teen insults. But for lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender students the constant barrage can be unbearable.

According to Steven Solomon, a Social Worker with the Toronto Board of Education’s Human Sexuality Program many decide to leave school entirely. "They’ve put up with it as best they can and maybe they’ll drop out for a time," says Solomon. "Hopefully they’ll get go back but in some cases they don’t."

A 1997 Univeristy of Calgary study, Suicidal Behaviours in adolescent and adults: taxonomy, understanding and prevention, found that homosexual and bisexual teen males were 13.9 times more at risk for serious suicide attempts than their heterosexual peers. It's a finding that's confirmed by a number of similar studies.

In Toronto, the Human Sexuality Program decided to do something about it. In September of 1995 one of it’s alternative schools started the Triangle Program. A program for lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender students who due to harassment are having difficulty staying in school. The objective of the program is to keep them in school or help them make the step back into the school system.

But that’s in Toronto where tolerance of a reflection of it's heterogeneous community. In Ontario’s smaller cities and towns the common isolation felt by lesbian, gay or bisexual teens becomes further compounded the lack of information and resources that could help them understand what they are going through.

According to Solomon, community groups like PFLAG (Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays) have stepped in to cover for schools’ inadequacies.

"Community initiatives are happening," he says. "Now compared to five years ago there are some groups that they can connect with in their own community. There are agencies or groups of individuals who have put their energies together and come up with a safe place for youth to meet."

When Richard, a gay student at a Guelph high school (he asked that his real name not be used).

When Richard was looking for answers to questions he had about his sexuality he called OUTline, a resource and support line in Guelph for anyone dealing with Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual or Transgender issues. He heard about it through friends.

At school his teachers’ opinions on homosexuality have run the spectrum from virulently homophobic to positive and accepting

He stopped taking Phys Ed class because of it. "The topic of homosexuality would come up and everybody would avoid it or the students would say something negative about it and the teacher would laugh along."

In one of his business classes, a subject he wants to pursue, one teacher openly expressed his opinion about the sexual orientation of the entire class. "Cause some people were talking about gays and the teacher said ‘Well, I don’t think anybody in this class is gay.’ Making it like there was something wrong with gay people. One of my friends in the class who knew kind of looked over at me. It made me feel like an outcast-like your not normal or something."

The only openly gay man that Richard remembers visiting the school was there to talk about being HIV positive.

Not all of Richards experiences have been negative. While studying the book Fifth Business, his English teacher explained a gay sex scene to the class, ignoring the classes jeers.

It was only a couple of months ago that Richard told his parents he was gay. They weren’t very happy to hear the news. They told him he wasn’t gay and began looking for a therapist to set him straight.

Due to the tense situation at home Richard started missing school and his marks started suffer. He went to see a guidance counsellor for some academic advice and ended up revealing why his parents were so upset. One of her suggestions was that he marry a lesbian to make it easier on his parents.

"She mentioned one type of gay marriage where a guy marries a girl and they go off and do their own thing with the same sex. I don’t know why she thought so far ahead, I wasn’t even asking her for those kinds of options. I wasn’t suicidal"

Later, he went back to the guidance office and met with a different counsellor.

"She was a little curious about what was wrong because I asked her about dropping out. So I told her because I heard she was a really good guidance counsellor. She asked if I needed a referral for a psychiatrist for my parents. After that she talked about how she has gay friends and how there’s nothing wrong with being gay—it’s not something you can change. She just made me feel really good."

Richard’s high school is a part of the Upper Grand District School Board which consists of schools in Guelph, Orangeville, as well as Shelbourne, Palmerston, Erin and many others in between.

Next to Guelph the second largest town served by the Upper Grand School Board is Orangeville.

Pat Burbidge, head of the Guidance Department at Orangeville District High School tries to remember what she told "the one or two" students who asked her for advice.

"I would try to be supportive," she says but admits that right now, "We don’t have supports in this community at all."

Simon Leibovitz, publicist for the Upper Grand District School Board says the issue is Ministry guidelines. "It's not local curriculum it’s provincial curriculum that’s being taught. There’s nothing that would be taught that isn’t in the guideline to begin with. If you’re wondering if there’s ever going to be anything that might be strange that might be taught, that might may not be acceptable. Anything that’s taught has to be within the ministry guidelines."

But according to Ilze Purmalis, a policy analyst with the Ministry of Education, the ministry guidelines consist of broad expectations that can be adapted by each board and each teacher.

"Ontario is a very diverse province. Provincial expectations, documents have to be able to respond to the whole diversity of the province," explains Purmalis.

"It’s not like making nuts and bolts. A teacher in a classroom is a professional person-not a technician. So consequently with any kind of teaching you have to look at the students and make a judgement in what you present and how you present it within the broad framework of fulfilling the provincial guidelines.

"Teachers are professional people and they have to look at their students, they have to look at their community and make their judgement how to present their material."

Charlie Pullen, a Bachelor of Education Student at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (University of Toronto), says he has yet to hear a single mention of how to approach issues like sexuality in the classroom.

"There is one course called Cross-cultural Communications which sounds about as critical as it’s going to get and it seems to be the only course that’s going to talk about dealing with people's different experiences in the classroom. It’s an elective—so nobody has to take it. So I’m imagining that it’s people that are already interested in issues of race and sexuality in the classroom [who are taking the class].

"In no way does OISE require that teachers encounter these issues and discuss them. You could go through a raving homophobe, no one would even know and you could be certified."

Solomon has some experience facilitating workshops on homophobia in some rural high schools and says that, "it’s still an unfamiliar area to many."

But he counters that there have been many positive developments in schools efforts to acknowledge the problem.

"We did a number of workshops with Young Peoples Theatre last year they put on a play about homophobia and schools from across Southern Ontario came to see it. In exchange for the students coming out to it we offered to go and do discussions and workshops with the schools.

"We went out to one high school in Guelph, and a number out in Milton. So people were taking the initiative. When the offer was made people were running with it, which was nice to see. Places where they’d never even mentioned the word gay before were taking their students to see a play about homophobia that was quite explicit in terms of the experience that one young man finds himself in when his friends and family find out he’s gay. I think it provided teachers with a chance to begin to talk about this."

Even the teaching of the ins and outs of sexual reproduction has met with controversy. The current Sexual Education curriculum initially met with resistance from some parents and community members. Now any parent may have their student excused for a particular lesson which is contrary to their religious beliefs.

Nevertheless, Solomon is pessimistic about seeing any changes to the provincial curriculum. "I would be incredibly surprised if the Minister of Education and Training came out with a anti-homophobia policy that covered the entire province. I really don’t see that forthcoming from the current Ministry of Education, I don’t really see it as high on their list of things to do."

Richard, who dropped out of school last month, says he’s aware of another gay teen at his school. But he never talks to him. "It seems kind of awkward. I see him at school. We even stand pretty close together outside in the same group. I think the reason we don’t talk is because we know about each other and other people around us know too- we don’t want any gossip going around. I’m sure if there was nothing wrong-if people wouldn’t gossip about it and stuff- we’d be hanging out. I went to school with this guy since kindergarden."