SexEd Part 6: Day 2

It’s the day the boys are supposed to learn about the girls. I’m blessedly not required for the first half of class- I have 7th grade to teach- and so the fifth grade teacher and Larry are taking care of the first part. I’m supposed to leave the transparencies on the overhead projector, and just for fun I leave the penis diagram cast on the screen so the kids will have something to talk about when they get there.

I spy in a few times, as I’m right next door, and the fifth grade teacher has really got them going. She’s throwing a ball around the room, and if they catch it, they get to answer a question. It’s brilliant, this Tom Sawyer approach, and the kids are all ape-shit about wanting to answer a question and get the ball. How come this doesn’t work in my high school classes?

I duck out, finish class, and join them. They’ve moved away from the pituitary gland and all the relatively benign stuff, and are full on taking about the Parts, and their names. This woman has not an ounce of shame, and more power to her, because she’s got them saying everything.

“Say ‘cervix’ ,” she’ll command.

“Cervix,” they’ll reply.

She does defer to us on all things male, and at one point, sort of alludes to the scrotum being the same thing as the testicles. I interject- we should be anatomically accurate here- and explain that it’s the sac that holds the testicles. I may even have made some comparison about marbles and the bag they come in, which may have been a good analogy circa 1909, but sort of fails here. Still, though, I’m getting the hang of what fifth graders will understand, and bring up something that will cross the age gap- shrinkage.

It works- we naturally roll into a discussion of why the testicles need to be kept at a lower temperature, and how the scrotum modulates that by alternately bring them closer and farther away from the body- the heat source- hence the shrinkage in cold water. Even typing this, I realize I’m becoming the embarrassingly honest male version of the Sex Ed teacher. It should feel a little creepy, but in fact, feels fine. They are actually understanding this stuff, and don’t seem too scarred by the discussion

We’re on a roll, and the fifth grade teacher deftly switches to female anatomy by way of the Transparency, rather abruptly for my taste. One minute were just getting comfortable with saying ‘ejaculation’, and the next, there it is, on the screen in black line anatomical correctness, the female organs, hovering above us like the disembodied head of a praying mantis, ovaries on what look like alien eyestalks, and conspicuous labels with words like ‘fallopian tubes’, ‘cervix’, and the dreaded ‘Vagina’.

“Who can say Vagina?” She asks, “Teddy, say ‘Vagina’.”

“Vagina!” extorts Teddy.

“You can say that really well!” she compliments.

“It’s like saying Spaghetti!” offers Teddy.

She goes on for a bit, and asks me if I have an overhead pen. I’m scrambling through my desk drawer- the one you were only allowed in if you were the teacher’s pet, although that I think holds true more for women than men, because mine is essentially a school supply junkyard. I finally dig up a black marker and hand it to her, and there is just a touch of derision in her face, as if the marker were encased in a rubber chicken. For some reason rooted back in my elementary school days, I really want to please this lady, and so I’m scrambling around for a different color. All I can find is red. Her face lights up.

“Perfect!” she says, and immediately starts coloring in an ad hoc menstrual lining on the uterus.

“This is the menstrual lining. Everyone say ‘menstruating’”, she commands.

“Menstruating”, they chorus.

She goes on for a bit, ad libbing her speech as well, and I’m just watching, wide-eyed and a little disconnected, although I’m shaken a bit out of my own private thoughts when she starts talking about boobs.

“Just like you have a penis that grows, girls have breasts that grow.”

I thought that was going to be the show-stopper, but no. She actually throws down The Line.

“You may start feeling different about girls during puberty, and perhaps you are noticing their boobs more now, and that’s OK.”

I spy out the two kids who I thought may just barely be in the early throes of puberty, to see if they had the same response as I did to this statement. Sure enough, they were wearing that universal male expression of trying very hard to look as if they are not looking at boobs. I felt immediately vindicated and, a beat later, a little mortified that I shared this impulse with 10 year-olds. What can I say? Boys will be boys, even when we’re supposed to be men.