Sex Ed and First Graders

As many of you know, I am teaching human sexuality at the Monteverde Friend's School this quarter. I have six multi-grade classes and I see each class twice a week. The youngest class consists of first and second graders, followed by a class of third-fourth graders, and so on, up to the eleventh-twelfth grade class.

Trying to teach first and second graders is much like herding cats high on catnip. I totally understand why educators get a specific degree in elementary education to handle this age group. To say that I'm unprepared to teach or manage children of this age is a gross understatement. Luckily, the school has an amazing staff and many people have been willing to help me with the group.

I should mention that the kids in the 1-2 grade are incredibly sweet, bright, and engaged.  One-on-one, I think I'd have a blast with all of them.  The little girls greet me with hugs and rub my belly like a genie will emerge.  The boys give me high-fives and share random facts with me. They are not the problem.  Rather, my complete and utter lack of understanding of early childhood development, elementary pedagogy, or behavior management for this particular age group are the problems.

Need an example of how ill prepared I am to teach first and second graders? Beth, who is the school's support staff member (and my savior), has been attending the 1-2 classes with me to help facilitate (and make sure things don't spiral into absolute chaos in the first five minutes). I was waiting for the students to come in from lunch and she mentioned that the 1-2 teacher often used the water bottle post-lunch and that I might find it helpful. I responded, a bit surprised but also with a glimmer of behavior-management hope, "So you use that when the kids are misbehaving?!?"  She kindly responded that the spray bottle was a reward -- that the kids loved to be misted post-recess to help cool off.  "Oh," I said, somewhat sheepishly and while marveling that I could feel even less prepared to teach than I already felt.

So on Thursday I introduced anatomy terms. We began with two posters of a little boy and a little girl, both naked. The students got to come up, point to a body part, and name it. Then Beth would write the term on a piece of paper and the child would tape it to the correct body part. After the kids named about ten parts, staying well away from the genital zone, I had to move the game along. The cats were showing signs of catnip consumption.

"Does anyone know what this part is called?" I asked, pointing to the penis. A hand shot up and one of the second graders correctly identified it as the penis. "Very good!" I said.

"Do you know the word in Spanish?" I ask.

"Pene!" several of them shout.

"Muy bien!" I respond.

"How about the area of skin under the penis?" I ask, pointing to the scrotum.

One of the little girls shouts out, "Huevos!" (literally, "eggs", but the equivalent of "balls" in English).

"Hmm, well, sometimes this body part is called huevos, but that's not the proper term."

She thinks hard and shouts, "huevos de gallo!" (rooster balls!).

"Hmmmmmm, not quite. Does anyone else want to take a guess?"

A second grade boy's hand shoots up in the air. "I know, I know!!!!! . . . Ball sack!"

I ended up having to tell them the proper term, while trying to calm the giggles and squirming that had erupted since the terms "huevos" and "ball sack" were uttered.

We moved onto the next activity. Each student received two sheets of paper. One sheet had a smaller version of the male body on it, the other sheet depicted the female body. The students were asked to label as many body parts as they could. Things were going relatively smoothly when one of the little girls walked up to me, looking as if she was about to cry. I ask her what was wrong and she began to explain that one of the boys did something to upset her. I was having a hard time understanding her in Spanish. Something about her, a bad name, and a body part. After asking her to explain the problem twice, I gave up and asked her if she could tell another teacher (who was also helping me) what was wrong. Turns out one of the boys at her table had drawn an arrow pointing to the model's anus and written her name as the label. Wonderful.

All things considered, however, it was one of my better performances with the first-second grade class.

Stay tuned for more adventures in primary education.