david taus

Birds, Bees, and Teens

music: The Velvet Underground- Nico

I’ve been busy counting squares. It’s that time of year.

I count eight rows of squares, seven per row, until I board a plane to Sydney. I count 37 more squares in which I have to wake up at 6:00 AM and tuck in my shirt. Now that my summer plans have solidified I’ve started counting down to the end of school. To be sure, there’s a lot going on between now and then. I’ve got some frisbee and some music to play, I’ve got some hiking to do up in New Hampshire and Maine, I’ve got to find a summer subletter, and we’ve got a party here at the 1-2. On a more monumental scale, G-Phatty is getting hitched and the last Star Wars movie is coming out. There’s a buttload of school-related obligations too. Fine, fine. But I’m still counting down. It’s that time of year.

The past two weeks have been trying ones at school. Besides being the first two weeks back from a most excellent spring break in Utah, I had the distinct honor and privilege of teaching the most…um…stimulating content ever to cross a teenager’s assignment notebook: human reproduction.

“Aw naw missa, we ain’t goin’ there.”
“Yes. We’re going there.”

Class time was spent stifling giggling (mostly entirely from the boys) and dispelling myths (yes, you can get pregnant your first time; no, birth control pills do not protect you from STDs; no, the withdrawl method isn’t good enough; no, douche doesn’t work either; yes, the female orgasm exists and it serves a purpose). I was embarassingly blunt and honest and played dumb as best I could when kids (kids? these most certainly aren’t children…) asked their hypothetical-i-saw-it-in-a-movie-i-heard-from-my-friend questions. By the end of the two weeks I think everyone had a better idea as to how to keep themselves out of baby and disease trouble.

The toughest part was probably teaching girls about the menstrual cycle. The scientific content was not hard; that I’d never (and never will) deal with menstruation firsthand made things awkward. Still, I was shocked to see that I knew more about fluctuating levels of estrogen than some of the young ladies. It grossed a lot of them out to think about nutrient-rich uterine lining. You’d think that if you had to deal with something on a monthly basis you’d know more about it than someone who didn’t. After one class some girls who were more well-informed said that I did a decent job talking about periods for a dude. I’ll take that.

There were a handful of kids that for whatever reason were completely clueless. Fifteen years old and they still didn’t know where babies came from. I just assumed that they might have heard something about it, even in a locker room from that 17 year old eighth grader somewhere…but I guess not. So I told them. They took the news pretty well. Lots of lightbulb educational moments we educators live for. It was funny to watch happen.

Of all the curricular units I could be teaching when my mother decides to visit…

To give them some credit, the kids handled the reproduction unit with maturity and honest curiosity for the most part. It’s something that they all really want to talk about, which doesn’t happen in school all that much I guess. The kids were really into their project for the unit (designing birth control info brochures for teens) and despite some egregious cases of plagiarism they turned out pretty nice. I get lucky teaching biology; we get free academic reign over the the Big Three topics for teenagers: sex, drugs, and poop.

We moved to the next chapter today, and some kids are sad we’re not talking sex anymore. The history teacher who gets the kids after me is relieved; she couldn’t get much done by way of the Cold War with kids who just finished talking about condoms and mastrubation. I’m glad that things are going to mellow a little again. Reproduction is an important topic but it requires too much energy on my part to keep everything…um…lubricated and running smoothly. At this point, though, it doesn’t really matter what we’re studying. The weather is getting too nice, the college kids are finishing up with finals, and the Boston Public schools has seven weeks left. We’re all getting stuff done, but at the same time we’re all counting squares.

Posted by davidtaus at May 9, 2005 05:59 PM | TrackBack