Open letter to the school nurse--RE: Puberty Talk

Dear School Nurse,

Thank you for taking the time to talk to our fifth graders about puberty. Unfortunately, it is ten days from the end of the school year, so it may have been too little too late. I am thankful you did not talk about reproduction. Although, I fear some kids need to hear about that, too. I am not naïve about what happens when kids go to middle school, and I have seen plenty of girls at the high school who are also new mommies.

Yes, every fifth grader should be showering and wearing deodorant—everyday. I agree, as we do live in Texas, where it is hot 9 months out of the year. “We” are quite smelly and sweaty even at 8am after P.E. Additionally, I wish you would have given some advice to those poor kids whose parents simply don’t allow them to wear deodorant? Should they sneak it? Should their teacher have some spray on deodorant for them to wear when they are at school? Should the children just wear a lot of perfume or perhaps don my personal favorite AXE body spray? (UGH, that stuff is awful.)

I was fortunate enough to sit in on the girls talk, and I did not think it was inappropriate. Yes, they did laugh from time to time, but I had to chuckle here and there, too. The girls had a lot of questions. I could gather that many of their parents simply don’t talk to them about the various “changes to their bodies.” I remember when I was in 5th grade, our school had their puberty talk at night and if you went, your parent (mothers for the girls and fathers for the boys) attended with you.

I will say, some of my female colleagues felt as if the talk for the boys was a little on the risqué/awkward side. Perhaps it is because we are women? Perhaps our society says it is not polite to talk about the “E” word? I don’t know, but I am thankful I did not have to lead them in that conversation.

Lucky for me, your discussion opened up the door to many, many more discussions. But, I am hoping that these discussions are taking place with their parents, rather than with their friends via Facebook, or texts.

In closing, I thank you for scheduling this conversation at the end of a day on a Friday. I am hoping they will get all of this newly learned information out of their systems, and they will have forgotten about it by Monday.

Thanks again,

Better you than me

April Fools Day in Elementary School...

Today was April 1st—obviously April Fools Day. My 5th graders were quite excited about pulling a few pranks on me. I on the other hand, warned them yesterday that I have no sense of humor, but I do have a huge pile of referrals that I would be happy to write if they tried to pull anything crazy. (This is a total lie, I don’t even know where the referrals are—but they believed me.)

Let me just say, the classes I have taught before in middle school/high school were always uneventful on April Fools Day. Usually one of my students would say something like, “Oh today was April Fools Day?” “Yep, its April 1st my friend.”

So, the day began. Our school has an all school assembly in the morning where we hear the lunch menu, say the pledges of allegiance and the Texas pledge. After the kids were invited to sit down, one of my students said to me with a very somber look on his face, “Mrs. Campbell, my dog died last night.” I love dogs, (and I am very gullible) and he knows this, so I said to him, “Ohmygosh, I am so sorry to hear that.” He looked at me and said, “April Fools!” Ugh. And so it begins…

Next, during recess a group of my darling girls, came up to my 5th grade counterpart and I; they were holding various body parts, one her head, another her elbow, another her knee, and one more was limping. (Strangely enough, my class is notorious for getting injured on the playground during recess. I usually have about one injury a week.) Thankfully the girls were smiling, and proudly said, “April Fools!”

During lunch one of my parents is a PTA officer, she was selling “Smencils.” Yes, pencils that have various scents, like cotton candy, watermelon, orange, etc. She had a bag of Fritos for her daughter that she had put celery and carrot sticks inside, and glued the bag shut. Oh, April Fools.

Then, with about ten minutes to go in the day, one of my boys rushes out of my classroom to go to the restroom. He returns about two minutes later with a Kleenex covered in red marker. As he is holding it up to his nose, I tell him, “Ok, I see that is red marker.” He was disappointed and said slyly, “but it’s April Fools Day!”

Ok, so fifth graders are lame. Luckily, no ones dog really died, no one got hurt on the playground and the day ended without a bloody nose. I think I will live to next year…Oh, and I just checked the calendar. April 1st, 2012 is on a Sunday.