SexEd Part 1: Roped in.

I have been informed today that I am going to teach Sex Ed to the fifth graders.

I shouldn’t say I was informed- technically, I was asked to do it, and technically I could’ve had said no.

Technically.

But the reality is, I’m still new at the school, less than 60 days in, and taking over a job from someone who was well liked. It’s an awkward situation, and I’m finding I really have to bust ass to get accepted into the fold here.

You remember Sex Ed. It was that time where things were implied, where the class was divided into boys and girls. The girls went with the popular elementary teacher, the nurturing one, the one that is embarrassingly honest and forthright about her feelings, the one kids would go to if they had real problems, because she was an emotional rock they could tether too. The boys went with the gym coach, the same one that called you ‘girlies’ went you were running too slow during gym laps. I don’t really know what happened with the girls, but the boys were sat on a cold gym floor and shown slides of line drawings of genitalia, of penises and vaginas, of the internal plumbing of ovaries and vas deferens and all the odd canals- all of this alluding to, but never saying, that somehow babies and sex and some sort of illicit adult activity was involved.

They called me down to the organizational meeting where the fifth grade teacher, the elementary Asst. Principal, the kindergarten/P.E. teacher, and- duh- the gym coach were all seated. I can’t say I know much about the gym coach- he seems nicer than I remember my own coaches to have been, but that isn’t saying much. He is a little red-faced and paunchy, which is an odd characteristic that all gym teachers seem to share. I don’t know why physical education jobs are given to people who couldn’t run a mile if chased by a tank, but there you go. Its true, things really don’t change.

Before I can explain how this meeting felt, I need to make a relevant point; being a school teacher is weird enough as is. Every time you bring the fact up at a social gathering, people will start recalling their own school days, and the pictures they paint are clearly in soft-focus. A hazy memory is implied, and it’s difficult to listen to, as you are still, for all intensive purposes, in high school, and the distance and nostalgia they attribute to these visceral images is not one you get to enjoy. We, as teachers, all full well remember what it was ‘like’ in high school, because we just got to leave a few hours ago, and have to go back in just a few more hours.

This meeting, though, was different. I DID feel that odd nostalgia- although ‘nostalgia’ implies a pleasant sensation, whereas I just had a flood of awkward emotion, sweaty palms and other unmentionable physical reactions to the subject matter- and it made it peculiar to sit in a room with a closed door discussing the education of sex for small children. I am embarrassed to admit that I spent a good part of the meeting breaking out into 12-year old snickers. I couldn’t help it. The fifth grade teacher, a middle-aged mother who clearly loves children, was putting forth most of the ideas, being rather blunt and unembarrassed, as someone who spends every minute of every day with kids is wont to do. She’s coaching me as to how I should talk to the boys, suggesting I say things like,

“Well, you may start feeling different about girls as well, and perhaps you are noticing their boobs more now, and that’s OK.”

Man, It was difficult enough to suppress a huge 12-years old guffaw at this point, but she had to choose to day to be wearing a rather low- cut blouse, and it felt as if someone had filled my eyeballs half-up with liquid mercury, such was the gravity of my line of sight swinging directly to her cleavage. I was sitting directly across from her, so I just had to muscle through it, but it wasn’t easy, and I’m not entirely sure I succeeded, but at least I didn’t linger long enough to warrant comment or blushing. Not that I could embarrass this woman. I meant me blushing.

I really wonder if they chose the right person to do this.


I’ll admit, I did entertain a small hope that they would rethink their decision to ask me to do this and pass it along to the gym teacher- present at the meeting, of course- but there was some measure of just dumb fart-joke, penis penis penis vagina residual juvenile humor that I have not yet been able to expunge from my personality. I figured I’d give it a shot. I can’t believe I have to talk to 10-year olds about wet dreams.


And so I am about to check out the DVD’s given to me, the ones I must show on the metaphorical cold gym floor. I hope they don’t suck.