Teaching Family Life

I teach fifth grade, so that means that every year I can look forward to teaching the Family Life and HIV/AIDS health unit. Call it Pre-Sex Ed for hormonal upper elementary school students. Every year it seems that the continuum along the developmental scale gets wider and wider. I have gone from not sure any of the girls have started their period when I first started teaching (17 yrs ago) to knowing that a few of them started last year.

Side bar: My wake-up call came a few years ago when a girl came up to my desk and asked if she could go to the nurse. The nurse had made an announcement that we should only send real emergencies down if possible, so I asked a few questions (playfully, mind you) to ascertain the level of need.
"What's wrong?"
"I need to go to the nurse's office."
"You have a headache?"
"No."
"Stomach ache?"
No real answer.
"You're not gonna hurl on me are you?"
"No."
"Did you break something?"
"No."
"Fever?"
"No."
"Dizzy?"
"No."
"Asthma?"
"No."
"Itchy rash?"
"No."
"You bleeding anywhere?"
Silence, followed by a worried look on her face.
Silence, followed by the sudden realization of the problem.
"Uh. . . here's a pass and . . . go . . . I'm . . .sorry, nevermind."
I felt like an ass.

Now I teach the boys and my teammates take the girls. We give each student a note card in which they are required to write either something they learned or something they have a question about. I review them and then answer the ones I can the next session. Some of the questions are straightforward. Some are just plain bizarre.
Here are a few highlights of their questions and comments from the boys:

1. Where do people have sex?
2. If they do like it, is it still sexual harassment?
3. Do steroids affect your dick?
4. Are there different kinds of sex?
5. What's the difference between yellow pee and regular pee?
6. Can you grow hair on your but?
7. I know that people are crazy in this world.
8. What if you get circumcised on the penis, does it still grow?
9. Do girls have sperm too?
10. I learned why my dick gets hard.
11. Does sperm affect a girl when you have sex?
12. Can you die from sex or rape?
13. Can drugs infect other parts of your body? If so, which parts?
14. Why are most of the sex laws about girls?
15. Does sex hurt?
16. Can a girl rape a boy?
17. Do you play basketball? <-------yes, someone asked this. Huh?
18. Why do people have sex to have a baby?
19. What happens when people make you drink or smoke?
20. Why do boys get circumcised?
21. Why do people pay to have sex?
22. What happens if you ran down the road screaming at night, drinking?
23. What happens if kids have sex?
24. What does homo mean?
25. Where do babies come from?
26. Why is having sex cool?
27. Why do people kill themselves when things are not right?
28. If you have sex, will you get HIV?
29. Why do people choose to smoke? It's not cool, it's bad for your lungs.
30. How do you get AIDS?
31. I learned about hormones.
32. If you rape someone, but they let you, is that rape?
33. What is a condom?
34. Is being gay against the law?
35. Why does my penis get bigger and hairier?

I had many questions about rape and suicide. They were mentioned briefly in a glossary of terms. It was amazing how some of them seemed to focus in on those items. Usually, it is about twins and all the different kinds - but we haven't gotten to that yet.

There were some questions I am not allowed to answer. For those, like specific sex questions and anything to do with birth control (i.e., condoms), I tell them the standard line: "That is a question that you would have to ask your parents."

I will post more during the run of lessons.