Today's tale starts back with my McLoud subbing adventures.
They really loved me as a sub because I was willing to teach
junior high and I was willing to teach special needs students. Many of the other subs wouldn't go near the junior high. They do get kinda crazy at that age.
There was a resource classroom that I frequently subbed.
That was absolutely the best. I just sat in there all day, and kids would come
to me from other classes for extra help with their assignments. I’d sit at a
half-round table, sometimes with just one student, sometimes 2-4. Basically, I
was a tutor.
One little girl who came to me pretty regularly was very
sweet but struggled with everything. She could read at an elementary level but
really had difficulty with retention, and she was completely lost when
it came to finding specific information in a book. Tables of content and indexes were a
complete mystery to her.
One day she came down to see me with her health class assignment. I was
unfamiliar with the heath curriculum, having never subbed that class. She sat
down and I read through her worksheet. They don’t really teach sex ed in
Oklahoma, but the worksheet was for what passes for sex ed there.
One of the questions was about preventing sexually
transmitted disease. I took the book and glanced through the chapter. Then I
turned to the index and read that. I closed the book and pushed it aside.
“This book is worthless,” I told her. “For people who have
sex, the way to prevent STDs is to use condoms.”
She giggled and looked down at her worksheet.
“Do you know what condoms are?”
More giggling. A nod.
“You can buy them at Family Dollar,” I told her. “They
prevent pregnancy too. But they only work if you use them every time.”
“Okay!” she said, giggling some more.
Is it any wonder Oklahoma has the second highest teen
pregnancy rate in the country? If the administration had found out I had conversations like
that with kids, they’d have thrown me out on my ear.
Fast forward to the middle school in Oklahoma City where I taught the next year. I had morning duty at the metal detectors pretty much every week (see previous post - why the principal hated me). I found out that you actually can smuggle a cell phone through a metal detector if you have large enough boobs. But what usually triggered it was foil gum wrappers. Kids would hide gum in their shoes because they'd figured out that their shoes set off the metal detector anyway. But the 8th grader who set of the detector one fine morning in March didn't have any gum. He had a condom in his wallet. Guess what? They have foil wrappers too.
"Son," I told him sternly. " You really shouldn't carry condoms in your wallet. It can get easily damaged in your wallet, and then it won't be effective. You don't want that to happen!"
"No ma'am," he told me in surprise.
"So keep your condoms in that pocket in your backpack instead," I suggested.
"Good idea!" he said cheerfully as he trotted down the hall.
Now honestly, I don't know if he was using condoms or just carrying one for the glamour of it.
But I bet he remembered not to keep them in his wallet.
