My Student Who Mastered the Recorder

I am continuously amazed at the deep and profound knowledge about sexual acts that elementary children know about. Back in the dark ages, c. 1963, when I was in fifth grade (not sure if that year is correct, but it's in the ballpark. My math skills rival those of my 2nd graders). But anyway, in fifth grade we, the girls, were asked to go to a special assembly to see a movie with our mothers. I can't swear it was a Disney film, but if not, it would've been the way Disney would've handled the topic. The topic was "THE PERIOD." I learned about what happens when you get YOUR PERIOD, which wouldn't be until five years later, when I was 14.  Today the age of puberty has been pushed back a LOT.  I have 2nd (SECOND!) graders who have started to menstruate and I've seen mustaches on  boys in Kindergarten (double exclamation point)

 I don't remember anything romantically sexual about the film; just the facts, ma'am about what happens during The Fenine Cycle. When I got back to the classroom, the boys were busy looking in the dictionaries to see what they could find about PERIODS. They were disappointed to find only definitions reflating to grammar or measurements of time. One boy asked aloud, "Why did the girls see a film about punctuation?"

 Yesterday during my fifth grade clown college class, one of the boys who was sitting on the carpet turned around to face the girls, who were sitting on chairs. They kept giggling and I realized that this boy was not facing me. You'd think I'd have noticed him sooner, but my class is like whack-a-mole. I put out one brush fire and another pops up in its place. After class the girls came up to me to tell me that this boy was rubbing the recorder as if he were masturbating. Yup, they used that word to describe what he was doing. I asked them why they didn't tell me immediately and one girl said,"Because it was funny." Yeah, I guess it's funny if you're an adult in the Catskills listening to
                                               \
                                                           Buddy Hackett

 I try not to be curmudgeonly and yearn for the good old days. But yesterday I wanted to turn back the clocks to a time when children didn't know about adult sexual activities until they were at least pimply faced and were half-way through puberty. I am wondering, how does knowledge about sex affect the children's emotional well-being? Back in the Victorian ages, a mere ankle viewing would set males swooning. I don't want to go back that far, but if 9 year olds are exposed to oral sex, then what will it take to set them swooning? The bar is set kind of high.

 It's difficult to teach children who are not children. I am no longer am able to read Puss and Boots to my kindergartners. I can not say booty or booties when referring to shoes. Ok, I can live with that. But I can't say vibraslap or vibrate without getting hysterical reactions. A few years ago I saw one boy turn around and make the international sign for oral sex with a woman. All this information without any emotional or social context can not be good. And just because yesterday was master your recorder day, when I walked into my room to get something, the AP was taking a deposition from a 4th grader and I overheard him say that another child was touching the penis of his classmate in the bathroom.

It is difficult to teach children who are so street savvy.  Because they lack so many fundamental music skills and knowledge, it's a challenge to find literature that teaches the basics without being cute or sweet.  I was doing a lesson from Artie Almeida's book called IMPROVISATION.  There's an echo section to introduce each instrument, like, "Xylophones are in the zone, let's hear from metalophones"  I allowed my fifth grade boys to modify the text and for awhile they did some fun things, but then sexual innuendos starting  creeping in--something to do with big booties, which, I admit, does not rhythm with wood or glockenspiel, but somehow the boys decided that they had won poetic license to go completely into after dark HBO hours.

And that's why I'm home on a mental health day.  Also, I think I woke up with a hangover.