Telling Tales... Boys and Babies

 

Photo by Nicole Honeywill on Unsplash

 

I was a guest teacher (we're trying to change the substitute label and its respectability) for a 5th grade science class in Albuquerque, New Mexico.  Behold, on the right of the classroom, there was a model of the lower torso of a woman with a uterus and a full-term baby in it.  I can't remember what I was teaching to these 10- or 11-year-olds. But I do remember three boys sauntering up to the uterine model and inspecting it. (The model baby was a boy.)

One kid snapped the baby out of the model, and to my surprise, started cradling the baby like...a baby. The next kid wrested the baby out of the first kid's caring arms--and he began cradling it.  And the same with the third!  I guess they saw me looking at them endearingly--at the wonder of young, usually wild boys, cuddling a baby. Then things changed: the kids starting throwing the model baby to each other. Next, another boy pulled the baby's head off. I yelled at him for damaging school property, and then, with the help of one of his pals, he popped it back on.

Now, I couldn't believe this: I made the kids sit down. But one boy watched me as I struggled to get the baby into the model uterus. 

"That wouldn't be my baby," he says. As my eyes questioned him, him, he indicated the baby boy's little manhood. "Too small."

I think we guest teachers, anywhere from 10 to 50 years older than these 10 year-olds, have to do more to garner greater respect from kids than merely changing our title.

 

 

Comments

[Ilene Springer]

Hey, Michael--that is a great observation! :)

Ilene

[Michael Bregman]

Boys will be boys, whether real or plastic replicas. Oh, and another thing learned....delivering a baby can be a real struggle, but putting it back into the uterus is obviously more difficult....