Sex & Relationship Education

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To fulfill the government requirement that all high school students in the UK receive Sex and Relationship Education (aka, SRE), my school has hired a lady from the Luton City Council to teach my Year 11 students during our enterprise lessons.

Of course, we lay down some ground rules like, "No laughing at other people's questions" and "Don't ask personal questions or share personal information." But....can you imagine a room full of sixteen-year-olds talking about sex and relationships? Yep, that's exactly what it's like.

The kind lady from the City Council travels to different schools teaching SRE. Since she doesn't know him, she doesn't realize Mitchell is just trying to be funny when he raises his hand and says, "Miss? I have gonorrhea."

Everyone cracks up, trying to cover their smiles casually.

"Mitchell," I say in that scolding teacher-voice and giving him the teacher-look.

The lesson continues until Jo mentions sexual orientations, and then Mitchell's hand shoots up again. "Miss? I'm gay."

It's totally not true and everyone knows it, so the kids start laughing and I try not to smile. "Well," says Jo, not being able to distinguish if he's bullshitting or not, "we'll be talking about homosexuality in other lessons, so we can discuss that then, if you'd like."

"Mitchell," I begin, shooting him another teacher-look. "What did we say about sharing personal information?"

"What?" he says with a smile, trying to play the innocent. "I am!"

"If you really have a question about your personal life, you can discuss with with me or Jo after class is over," I say. "In the meantime, stop interrupting."

Most of the students handle SRE with a maturity I've never seen in the students at this school. They ask good questions and listen to one another.

Most of the girls sit shyly and quietly listen. Some of the boys try to show off and make each other laugh, especially when we talk about birth control. Jo has brought in examples of all different methods of birth control to show the kids and explain how they work. She goes through the steps of how to properly put on a condom, demonstrating on a plastic blue penis. (Actually, she has Mitchell do put it on the blue penis, which is really funny because he fumbles a bit and other boys rib him for it.)

"Now what do you do with the used concom?" Jo asks the class.

"Check it for holes, then throw it away!" one of the girls announces.

"Or you can slap her in the face with it a couple times," Richie says.

I have to turn my back and let Jo handle that one, because I don't want the kids to see me crack up.

Then she shows them a T-shaped device that is inserted into a woman's uterus, and the copper along the top of the T kills the sperm. "The copper?" Richie asks. "Oh OK! So I could just put a couple pennies in there instead."

The boys roar with approval. Again, I try REALLY hard not to laugh. "It's not a slot machine, Richie."

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