Too sexy for my students

IWAS HIRED BY one of those after-school enrichment programs in Los Angeles -- I think there are about 14 million of them -- to help Korean American kids improve their verbal skills. “Their parents want their kids to get very high test scores and to make their language more sophisticated,” the school director told me. It was a simple enough directive.

“Words are stupid,” the kids whined, and something about their profane lack of curiosity endeared them to me. And who could blame them? The way they were learning vocabulary was, to my mind, boring, unnatural and, most important, ineffective. Their study materials sometimes defined words poorly, and sample sentences -- “She treated her house like a hovel” -- didn’t help.

I made them use their new words. When I got stuff like “I don’t want to candor my uncle,” I decided to read them a book that actually contains complex words in eloquent sentences. I chose Nick Hornby’s “About a Boy” -- partly because the older narrator, Will, is my age (36) and the younger narrator, Marcus, is theirs (12).

I was a little nervous about Will’s observations about his adult romantic life, but the few times he mentioned sex, I referred to it as “dating” and totally got away with it.

One afternoon, I was reading along when it dawned on me that I was about to get to a section in which sheltered young Marcus is cruelly mocked by his classmates for not knowing a common euphemism for fellatio. I considered skipping ahead, but it was important to the plot. Besides, it wasn’t about someone receiving fellatio, it was about how Marcus is less sophisticated, less worldly, than his peers. Like the movie adaptation, it was all very PG-13. I read on.

I was prepared for the fact that this two-word term was going to flip them out. What I had not considered -- and what ended up being the case -- was that they had no idea what it meant. Only one kid knew, and he and I howled as the other three frantically guessed. One boy gave himself a sort of raspberry on his arm and cried out, “It’s that, right?” Part of me knew that I’d miscalculated the appropriateness of the chapter -- and possibly the book -- but another part of me was overjoyed to see them interested.

So I told them, in very inexplicit terms. It has to do with sex; it involves these two body parts; and they would not have to worry about it for a very long time. “How long?” one terrified girl wanted to know. I felt for her. “Not until you get married,” I said. Then, to the whole class: “And don’t tell your parents about this.” They laughed. Why would we tell our parents? We would get in trouble!

Six weeks later, the program director told me two kids had quit the class, so she didn’t need me. I pressed a friend who worked there and got the truth: A parent had complained, and I had been let go for saying “inappropriate things.”

At first I was mad. Those little Judases! I took them on walks. I told them they were smart, and I meant it. I bought them doughnuts.

Then I felt sad and ashamed. What kind of a lunatic, I asked myself, alludes to oral sex around 12-year-olds? I called my dad, sobbing. “I’m such a horrible person,” I said. “I have no morals. I have no sense of right and wrong.”

He felt bad for me. Both of my parents are lifelong educators. “It’s hard to know whether to tell kids about the world,” he said, adding, “I’m not sure that in this day and age someone with your personality should put herself in an official capacity with 12-year-olds.”

Days after, I read that a teacher in Chicago was fired for showing sixth-graders “Brokeback Mountain.” My first thought, honestly, was, “Geez, 12-year-olds? ‘Brokeback Mountain’?” Then I thought about how, if not policed, my students would spend the entire 2 1/2 -hour class period calling each other faggots. If you’re old enough to call someone a faggot, aren’t you old enough to watch “Brokeback Mountain”? And what about the kid who watches it and thanks God that there are other people like him -- and that they look like Heath Ledger?

My friend Heather used to teach eighth grade at a private school in Brentwood. On the very first day, she came out to her students. The school received two calls. One parent requested to have her child removed from the class, and another asked to have her child moved in -- she suspected her daughter might be gay and was thrilled to have the chance to expose her to an openly gay adult.

I would never suggest that Heather’s coming out as a lesbian and my teaching dirty words to sixth-graders carry equal significance. But the anxiety and fear around our actions is similar. What do you do as a teacher when you see something as educational and important but you know parents, administrators and even the kids themselves may only see it as corrupting?

I did not set out to teach this term to my kids. Their parents wanted their language to be more sophisticated, but sophistication is about context, not vocab lists. It’s almost impossible to learn adult words without occasionally treading on adult themes. Good luck, for example, finding a Shakespeare play without a reference to sex.

I’m not sorry I read them that book, that chapter, those words. Knowing that term isn’t going to hurt them. And now, no one will ever laugh at them for not knowing it. When it comes to introducing adolescents to the realm of the sexual world -- whether in books, or movies or life -- it seems like one person’s discomfort is another’s salvation. No one has ever died from discomfort.