So I've been absolutely awful at updating this blog for a couple of reasons. #1 Bernard and I got a new job and it's literally wolfing down all our time, #2 I'm extremely active in and outside of work so I'm always out and about or DAMN exhausted and therefore watching a show/reading and on my way to bed.
Also, everything that happens is blog worthy, but this is the most blog worthy thing ever, so I figured what better to update the ol' blog than my launching a sex ed workshop for grade 6 at my new school!
It all started at the beginning of October just after the Moon festival holiday. I overheard a grade 10 girl in the bathroom talking about a pregnancy test and I immediately wondered what kind of sex ed students get in Shanghai...
I took it upon myself to email the principal with my requirements (Master of Sexual Health and the future Sex with Sue) and inquired about sex ed on campus and if I could have the chance to work with whoever was in charge. And if no one was in charge, could I take this on? She emailed me back a few hours later and said she would speak with the Dean of students and get back to me.
I immediately thought, okay now I'll probably have to wait for like 6 months and/or this won't happen, but at least I put it out there. Nope.
The next day a woman came into my office and introduced herself as the Dean of students. She said she would LOVE for me to teach adolescence and puberty to the grade 6 classes. I was stunned. I couldn't believe it was that easy! Did I just get exactly what I asked for????!?!?!!
She told me I would meet with the psychology teacher that day and brainstorm ideas for an adolescence workshop that apparently the Chinese teachers do every year. I was excited to see what they had in place.
The next day, I met up with my what would be co-teacher and she showed me what she had in place. A "get to know you" activity, a Q&A about adolescence that she kept calling a competition because that's how China does things, and a body jigsaw.
I scraped the body jigsaw because the kids learned about body parts in science class. I scraped the getting to know you activity because it had been a month and a half; these kids knew each other. I kept the Q&A but inserted an alternative activity. Instead of a body jigsaw, I suggested we do a matching game. I would hand out words and definitions and the students must match them up and sit with that person. This gives the kids and opportunity to move around and take a guess at some hard definitions. I assured my co-teacher that it didn't matter if the kids didn't know the words... I just wanted them to become familiar with them and that I would explain each definition.
I created a new and improved adolescence class. I called it FLASH (Family Life and Sexual Health).
In an ideal world, I would have had plenty of time to draft up the most gorgeous and culturally appropriate sex ed class, but in reality I had like two days on top of my original classes and I had to come up with something that was less than 40 minutes and touched on EVERYthing puberty related. Oh boy...
I think I did an okay job. I had to convince my co-teacher to get rid of some of the questions that were essentially scare tactics. Very "don't have sex or you'll get pregnant and die" type things. There were lots of questions about periods and how "delicate" periods were.... which I believe is a cultural thing. I once again assured her that teaching girls that periods are natural and normal will help them prepare for something that can be really scary when you're a preteen. I told her that we had to inform these kids that all this stuff was normal and not uncomfortable.
I decided that I wanted to end the class with an anonymous question box. I would pass out paper and get students to write down ANY question about sexual health. This was their ticket to leave the class. They HAD to write a question. That was the point of the class... to answer questions. We ended up getting some candy and handing that out to students after they put the question in the box. Bribery like a boss, my friend.
THE CLASS:
Before I even taught the class, I had students coming up to me asking me about it. Their homeroom teachers informed them that I would be hosting a "teenager workshop" (?) because I had lots of education about it. Okay... Haha. I drafted up a parent letter that I wanted signed in order to alleviate shock, anger, discomfort, and any of that negative stuff around sex ed. I wanted parents to know exactly what I planned to teach. It was only fair. The students would have the option to leave class and do an independent study if their parents did not approve of the content.
25 kids. 25 signatures. *struts* THIS was the start of my giddiness and nervous excitement about the class. ALL the parents were thrilled that a foreigner wanted to teach their kids about the uncomfortable realities of growing up. AWESOME! The homeroom teachers were also really excited that I was offering to do this so they wouldn't have to!! Hahaha.
THE ACTUAL CLASS:
The day of the class was an extremely busy day for me. I was really nervous (for some reason) and I was running around like a damn chicken because I wanted it to be perfect. It wasn't perfect. First of all, we planned 4 segments in the class (1. word match; 2. Q&A quiz; 3. video; 4. question box). We scraped the video for time's sake. Correction: I scraped the video which was cheesy and arguably non-informative about realistic things. We had to cut the Q&A quiz short because of time as well. Everything just took so much longer.
As a teacher, time management is my weakness. It's my Everest. One day, I will conquer it.
Anyway, the class was great. The kids watched me like I was an intriguing piece of art, a dinosaur, and Taylor Swift all in one. They were in awe, engaged, fascinated, and horrified at the same time! The girls cringed when I talked about periods and the boys' eyes widened when I said the word erection. It was really cute and definitely unexpected for them to understand so much of what I said. They were SO inquisitive but apprehensive.
I constantly reminded them that they could ask me anything and to not be uncomfortable. They only giggled twice when I said penis, but hey! I'm sure YOU just giggled while reading penis... no? Dick. There. I bet you did then. I certainly did. HAH! Dick.
I think the most uncomfortable part of the class was when I explained pubic hair. For some reason, THIS was horrifying. The kids didn't understand WHY pubic hair had to exist. I longed to explain it all to them in tremendous detail with my dedicated passion to the art of sex ed, but TIME! There was just no time. Instead, I made a joke about the hair on my head and monkeys... I don't even remember it, but no one laughed... except me. It was awkward, and yet awesome.
The class was still VERY Chinese in delivery (kids at their desks listening to the teacher. Nothing extreme). In an ideal situation, I'd have everyone holding modelling clay sculpting labias and penises and all that jazz, but this is probably why I'm not a sex educator full time!!! I'll stick to the English lit... I know it best. Haha.
I can't even explain the feeling I got when reading the students' questions at the end of class. It was amazing. I could practically feel them inquiring as they wrote down the questions.
50% of the questions were essentially HOW DO I DELAY THIS?!?!?! in respect to puberty. They're all really scared about it. I kept repeating this is normal. I also explained that me and the teachers went through puberty before and that calmed the kids down a lot. They love relating to me... it's cute.
There were more girl questions than boy questions but more boys than girls in the class. This was really interesting! I think it's safe to deduce that boys too want to know about periods and menstruation. And so they should!!! I was a little surprised the class wasn't split into boys / girls. I think I'd like to split the class next semester to get into more detail and possibly make the class more student-centred. I'd also like to remove the desks and maybe rock a circle of chairs next time. I am a discussion heavy teacher. For the first class though, I think our set up was nice, and necessary!
One of the main messages in the class was about cleanliness. I tried NOT to talk too much about sexual health and more just about health health, but kids NEED to hear penis and vagina in a sex ed class, I'm just saying.
I called the class FLASH (Family Life and Sexual Health) to keep it general. Also, they could say FLASH in the hallway and others wouldn't know it's about "sex". Sex is scary for 11 year old Chinese kids... trust me.
So back to the cleanliness. I talked about pimples, which originally were called whelks in the powerpoint. I was like "the fuck is a whelk?! Is this a typo?" and my co-teacher didn't know how to explain it to me. After much googling, I discovered a whelk is essentially a pimple. OOOHHHH!!!! MAKES SENSE NOW! I changed the terminology from old English/Noah's ark ancient vocab to make it current. That was the biggest issue in the original plan.... it was ANCIENT and NOT RELATABLE AT ALLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL!
That's where I come in. I think I did a great job keeping it current. I drew a picture of pimples on the board (pictured above. Such an artist) to help clarify the language barrier. The kids had a lot of lightbulb moments. It was extremely refreshing and awesome to see that.
At the end of the day, what I expected was to say things and have kids listen and semi-retain. What I experienced was motivation, engagement, and 27 questions out of 21 kids! Amazing!!! I couldn't be happier with the results. At the end of class, and spilling over to the next day, I heard kids talking about FLASH. This is what I wanted. Hopefully, the conversations will continue and soon my sexpertise will flood through the ENTIRE school. One can dream, right?
It's a lot of work taking on another class with my current course load, but it's SO worth it to build these relationships. All I need is for a student to trust me and then BOOM, relevant questions and life-changing badassery will ensue.
Gotta love this life!
Alright, and now to feed my never-ending hunger.
Yours truly,
Sarah the educational Wun
Also, everything that happens is blog worthy, but this is the most blog worthy thing ever, so I figured what better to update the ol' blog than my launching a sex ed workshop for grade 6 at my new school!
It all started at the beginning of October just after the Moon festival holiday. I overheard a grade 10 girl in the bathroom talking about a pregnancy test and I immediately wondered what kind of sex ed students get in Shanghai...
I took it upon myself to email the principal with my requirements (Master of Sexual Health and the future Sex with Sue) and inquired about sex ed on campus and if I could have the chance to work with whoever was in charge. And if no one was in charge, could I take this on? She emailed me back a few hours later and said she would speak with the Dean of students and get back to me.
I immediately thought, okay now I'll probably have to wait for like 6 months and/or this won't happen, but at least I put it out there. Nope.
The next day a woman came into my office and introduced herself as the Dean of students. She said she would LOVE for me to teach adolescence and puberty to the grade 6 classes. I was stunned. I couldn't believe it was that easy! Did I just get exactly what I asked for????!?!?!!
She told me I would meet with the psychology teacher that day and brainstorm ideas for an adolescence workshop that apparently the Chinese teachers do every year. I was excited to see what they had in place.
The next day, I met up with my what would be co-teacher and she showed me what she had in place. A "get to know you" activity, a Q&A about adolescence that she kept calling a competition because that's how China does things, and a body jigsaw.
I scraped the body jigsaw because the kids learned about body parts in science class. I scraped the getting to know you activity because it had been a month and a half; these kids knew each other. I kept the Q&A but inserted an alternative activity. Instead of a body jigsaw, I suggested we do a matching game. I would hand out words and definitions and the students must match them up and sit with that person. This gives the kids and opportunity to move around and take a guess at some hard definitions. I assured my co-teacher that it didn't matter if the kids didn't know the words... I just wanted them to become familiar with them and that I would explain each definition.
I created a new and improved adolescence class. I called it FLASH (Family Life and Sexual Health).
In an ideal world, I would have had plenty of time to draft up the most gorgeous and culturally appropriate sex ed class, but in reality I had like two days on top of my original classes and I had to come up with something that was less than 40 minutes and touched on EVERYthing puberty related. Oh boy...
I think I did an okay job. I had to convince my co-teacher to get rid of some of the questions that were essentially scare tactics. Very "don't have sex or you'll get pregnant and die" type things. There were lots of questions about periods and how "delicate" periods were.... which I believe is a cultural thing. I once again assured her that teaching girls that periods are natural and normal will help them prepare for something that can be really scary when you're a preteen. I told her that we had to inform these kids that all this stuff was normal and not uncomfortable.
I decided that I wanted to end the class with an anonymous question box. I would pass out paper and get students to write down ANY question about sexual health. This was their ticket to leave the class. They HAD to write a question. That was the point of the class... to answer questions. We ended up getting some candy and handing that out to students after they put the question in the box. Bribery like a boss, my friend.
THE CLASS:
Before I even taught the class, I had students coming up to me asking me about it. Their homeroom teachers informed them that I would be hosting a "teenager workshop" (?) because I had lots of education about it. Okay... Haha. I drafted up a parent letter that I wanted signed in order to alleviate shock, anger, discomfort, and any of that negative stuff around sex ed. I wanted parents to know exactly what I planned to teach. It was only fair. The students would have the option to leave class and do an independent study if their parents did not approve of the content.
25 kids. 25 signatures. *struts* THIS was the start of my giddiness and nervous excitement about the class. ALL the parents were thrilled that a foreigner wanted to teach their kids about the uncomfortable realities of growing up. AWESOME! The homeroom teachers were also really excited that I was offering to do this so they wouldn't have to!! Hahaha.
THE ACTUAL CLASS:
The day of the class was an extremely busy day for me. I was really nervous (for some reason) and I was running around like a damn chicken because I wanted it to be perfect. It wasn't perfect. First of all, we planned 4 segments in the class (1. word match; 2. Q&A quiz; 3. video; 4. question box). We scraped the video for time's sake. Correction: I scraped the video which was cheesy and arguably non-informative about realistic things. We had to cut the Q&A quiz short because of time as well. Everything just took so much longer.
As a teacher, time management is my weakness. It's my Everest. One day, I will conquer it.
Anyway, the class was great. The kids watched me like I was an intriguing piece of art, a dinosaur, and Taylor Swift all in one. They were in awe, engaged, fascinated, and horrified at the same time! The girls cringed when I talked about periods and the boys' eyes widened when I said the word erection. It was really cute and definitely unexpected for them to understand so much of what I said. They were SO inquisitive but apprehensive.
I constantly reminded them that they could ask me anything and to not be uncomfortable. They only giggled twice when I said penis, but hey! I'm sure YOU just giggled while reading penis... no? Dick. There. I bet you did then. I certainly did. HAH! Dick.
The class was still VERY Chinese in delivery (kids at their desks listening to the teacher. Nothing extreme). In an ideal situation, I'd have everyone holding modelling clay sculpting labias and penises and all that jazz, but this is probably why I'm not a sex educator full time!!! I'll stick to the English lit... I know it best. Haha.
I can't even explain the feeling I got when reading the students' questions at the end of class. It was amazing. I could practically feel them inquiring as they wrote down the questions.
50% of the questions were essentially HOW DO I DELAY THIS?!?!?! in respect to puberty. They're all really scared about it. I kept repeating this is normal. I also explained that me and the teachers went through puberty before and that calmed the kids down a lot. They love relating to me... it's cute.
One of the main messages in the class was about cleanliness. I tried NOT to talk too much about sexual health and more just about health health, but kids NEED to hear penis and vagina in a sex ed class, I'm just saying.
I called the class FLASH (Family Life and Sexual Health) to keep it general. Also, they could say FLASH in the hallway and others wouldn't know it's about "sex". Sex is scary for 11 year old Chinese kids... trust me.
So back to the cleanliness. I talked about pimples, which originally were called whelks in the powerpoint. I was like "the fuck is a whelk?! Is this a typo?" and my co-teacher didn't know how to explain it to me. After much googling, I discovered a whelk is essentially a pimple. OOOHHHH!!!! MAKES SENSE NOW! I changed the terminology from old English/Noah's ark ancient vocab to make it current. That was the biggest issue in the original plan.... it was ANCIENT and NOT RELATABLE AT ALLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL!
That's where I come in. I think I did a great job keeping it current. I drew a picture of pimples on the board (pictured above. Such an artist) to help clarify the language barrier. The kids had a lot of lightbulb moments. It was extremely refreshing and awesome to see that.
At the end of the day, what I expected was to say things and have kids listen and semi-retain. What I experienced was motivation, engagement, and 27 questions out of 21 kids! Amazing!!! I couldn't be happier with the results. At the end of class, and spilling over to the next day, I heard kids talking about FLASH. This is what I wanted. Hopefully, the conversations will continue and soon my sexpertise will flood through the ENTIRE school. One can dream, right?
It's a lot of work taking on another class with my current course load, but it's SO worth it to build these relationships. All I need is for a student to trust me and then BOOM, relevant questions and life-changing badassery will ensue.
Gotta love this life!
Alright, and now to feed my never-ending hunger.
Yours truly,
Sarah the educational Wun
