today was a hell of a day: sex talks, balloon races demonstrating Newton's Third Law, comparisons to No Child Left Behind..... This morning the girls attended a presentation given by a local girls' high school. at one point the woman representing the high school said something not too nice about community colleges, at which point i became super angry and waited until the perfect moment to spring a socially uncomfortable question on her. during the question-and-answer session, i asked her what type of health class they offer the girls. she responded with "oh, you know, the basic semester-long health course on hygiene, body image, diet, those sort of things." i then asked, or maybe yelled, "does that include sex ed?" she uncomfortably muttered "um, yes" then continued her rambling. i knew that the state of sex education in grade/middle schools is shockingly terrible, if there at all, but really had no tangible examples of it until we got back up into my classroom and students are asking me if sex hurts the first time, why they aren't taught about sex, and i at a point need to explain why calling someone a "dyke" is not appropriate (unless, i told them, you're a lesbian yourself). wow. wow. wow. shocking and sad and terrible. and i have officially offered my question-answering abilities to the students, which may or may not be kosher, but i could give a shit. it's messed up how little these kids know about bumping uglies.
as the day continued and i kept up with my mission to try to make kids feel ok with the fact that are getting a B, one student remarked that my reassuring kids that showing improvement and not the actual score on their freaking math drills are what i'm happy to see sounded like "No Child Left Behind." shit. on. bush. dyke.
and then there was the balloon race. this was a lab that involved the kids putting together a balloon + straw + tape contraption that could move up a string using the air released from a blown up balloon. i gave them all the materials then told them to put it together. before we even start, soren asks if i had seen the crab picture. um.. no. he then takes out his math book and opens it up to show me a picture of two people dressed as crabs in the middle of their chapter 2 math review. he's laughing insanely hard and says "they're people dressed as crabs." oh did i giggle. once the balloon building commenced, soren asked if he could be the announcer for the race, which of course i said yes to, and resulted in him standing on a chair and commenting on the building skills of each group and what they looked like and he used a pen as a microphone. i still cannot believe the volume of sound that came out of my classes as they raced the balloons to the front of the room. screaming and jumping and thrashing over balloons and string. i also had students ask me if they could have a piece of string to take home. sure. go nuts. and then... at the end of class soren asks me what i would think if he was getting an A-. which of course i knew he was because i told them their grades today and about broke my heart. i told him i thought it would be freaking fantastic and great and wonderful. and then he smiled. yay.
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