More Adventures in Sex Ed

Morning, Sex Ed with the 9th-10th grade class
I was talking about the similarities between the clitoris and penis with the 9th-10th grade class today.  I wanted to make the point that the clitoris, just like the penis, becomes engorged with blood when stimulated.
I asked the class where the penis went when it was sexually aroused, looking for them to say "out and up" or something similar.

One of the boys, without missing a beat, and responding as if I'd ask the most obvious of questions, answered, "the vagina".

It provided a good opportunity to talk about sexual orientation, but I was totally taken off guard by his completely different interpretation of the question.

Afternoon, Sex Ed with the 1st-2nd grade class
Later in the afternoon, I wanted to begin the 1st-2nd grade class with head, shoulders, knees, and toes.  I had hung up the anatomical diagrams we  had labeled last Thursday and  suggested we might substitute the body parts listed in the song with some of the body parts we labeled last week.  One of the boys shot up from the sharing circle and started singing, at the top of his lungs, "Head, penis, scrotum, vulva, scrotum, vulva!" over and over and over again.  When I suggested we limit ourselves to body parts that we all shared, he sang, "Head, shoulders, knees, and vulva, knees and vulva."  Hmm . . .

Later during the class, I drew a picture of my face and asked students to help me complete it.  "What color eyes should I give myself?"  They all got within inches of my face, in the way only little people feel comfortable doing, and yelled, "brown!".  "And what color hair should I have?"

"Brown!" they shouted.

And so on we went until I had a nose, lips, eyebrows, eyelashes, and a lion's mane (an addition made by the little boy who was drawing for me).

Pulling out a sheet of paper with instructions and a large blank box, I explained that it was now each of their turns to draw a picture of him or herself.

A hand shot up and one of the girls asked, "NAKED?????"

Beth and I explained that students could choose to depict themselves however they felt comfortable.  A few minutes later they were (relatively) calmly seated at their tables, colored pencils in hand.

I walked up to the same little boy who was singing his own version of head, shoulders, knees and toes.  He had just finished coloring a very large scrotum that, along with a segmented penis (think four sausage links strung together) represented the entirety of his self-portrait.

Beth had told me that it's always good to provide children with specific feedback, rather than by saying something generic like, "how nice."  By providing them with specific things you like about a drawing or work you avoid encouraging kids to look for mindless and meaningless affirmation.  With this in mind, I responded, "Wow, I really like the way you used orange highlighting in your picture" because that was the first thing that came to my mind.  It must not have been the response he wanted because he came up to me a few minutes later asking for a new piece of paper, on which he subsequently drew a more complete self-portrait.

Another boy created a fairly detailed drawing of himself urinating in a majestically high arc.

None of the girls included any depictions of their own (or anyone else's) genitals.

Faculty Meeting - 3:30pm
The school's director informed us that he had a chat with all of the boys in the school about bathroom hygiene and cleanliness.  Apparently there seems to be little effort to aim in the toilet when urinating and today he found two complete rolls of toilet paper in the toilet.

Faculty Meeting - 3:35pm
I sit contemplating the little person growing in my uterus, who (if his parents are any indication) will be as mischievousness as his father was, as rebellious as his mother was, and as stubborn as they both continue to be.  AND, with a penis.