Shawn Loftis was a popular sub at Miami Beach High and a handful of other Miami-Dade schools until he was abruptly canned in January 2011. His crime? A past life as a gay porn performer under the screen name Collin O'Neal, including his own erotic series -- "World of Men" -- featuring Loftis cavorting with hunks around the globe. Loftis challenged the termination, and surprisingly, the Florida Department of Education has agreed to let him return to teaching.
"I'm proud of my state. I was really shocked that the state of Florida was going to do this. I'm happy," Loftis says.
By the time Loftis decided to pursue his long-time dream of becoming a teacher, he was famous to web viewers for two different reasons.
First, under his porn name, Loftis was the star of such classics as Mo' Bubble Butt and Pumping Iron, plus his more innovative travel porn that featured him filming sex scenes in locales as far flung as Lebanon and Cuba.
But Loftis -- who has an international relations degree from FIU and a master's in public administration from UM -- also made his name on CNN, where his self-produced iReporter pieces earned tens of thousands of viewers.
When he quit both jobs in spring 2010 to take sub jobs at Miami-Dade schools, he was chasing a lifelong dream to teach, he says. But someone ratted on his past career to Nautilus Middle principal Allyn Bernstein, who canned Loftis under the school system's ambiguous "good conduct" clause.
Loftis went back to his globe-circling porn ways while his challenge worked its way through the school system (and earned a starring role in Miami New Times' Sex Issue last year to boot).
He plead his case to the Florida Education Practices Committee in Orlando, and on Friday they ruled in his favor.
"I can use my experiences in life to teach kids," he tells our sister paper L.A. Weekly. "The key point is that they said when you go back to the classroom and a student brings this up to you, you will be able to handle that. I thought that was highly progressive of them."
Loftis plans to again quit porn and return to the classroom, and after two years on probation, he can apply for a full-time teaching gig.
Follow Miami New Times on Facebook and Twitter @MiamiNewTimes.
