Grammar, Sex, and Literature

by Kayla Branstetter

It was fall of 2012, and I stood in front of my newly installed Smart Board in my classroom, giving instructions to my fifth hour freshmen English class; a class of twenty-eight talkative, squirrelly, and smelly fourteen- and fifteen-year-olds, crammed into my light blue concrete teaching space. I’d finished my lunch and daily gossip with my best friend and fellow English teacher, and the Special Education teacher. “Please, grab the green grammar books and turn to page 118. We are going to practice strong action verbs. To be effective writers, we must recognize strong verbs,” I said.

            Like most teachers I know, we are certain that not every student will follow directions. “What’d you say?”, “What page was it?”, or “What’re we doin’?” they’ll say, all the while engaging in their own side conversations, “Hey, did you read the Harry Potter series?” one student asked.  This simple question sparked a controversial debate with a strongly devoted Christian who wasn’t afraid to verbalize his beliefs on the series, “Harry Potter is the devil, and anyone who reads that evil will burn in hell.” 

            “Alright, let’s move on from hell, and talk about verbs,” I said.

            The students gave me the look that said, I think she means business, or that’s what I told myself as I directed them to page 118, action verbs. And so it was that statement, “turn to page 118” that a young Asian girl darted her hand in the air. I locked eyes with her, and with my telepathy, I told her, read the directions, then raise your hand. She inched her arm toward her desk surface before shooting her limb back into the air. I had assumed for some reason that the student’s look of shock and horror was connected to the exercises involving verbs, but instead it was situated on a condom, the length of the grammar book’s page, appearing well loved as it rested on the slick sheets of the book. This was a moment my classroom management classes failed to mention during their many lectures on classroom strategies. They ignored the “how to respond when you find a condom in a grammar textbook” section during the first 100 days unit. Since I live in a conservative region of the United States, our approach to sex education is to ignore the activity. We accost the subject as if every single one of our students abstains from sex. I’m glad some individuals believe that bullshit because the number of students who walked into my classroom with hickeys told a different story of their extracurricular activities on backroads.

~

            There was a student I encountered a few years later into my career, who, in all honesty, was a real pain in my ass, but he called me his “white momma.” The student was of Mexican descent, and possessed zero issues with calling me out on my “whiteness.”  I stood near my classroom door on most days, and on one such occasion, I existed at my post wearing my black knee-high boots, drinking my McDonald’s mocha, and welcoming my students to my lair of hell called American Literature. This student stomped up the stairwell, took one glance at me, and said, “Damn, can you be anymore white? I guarantee you wearin’ Uggs and drinkin’ a mocha.” I looked at him, speechless, because he was right. I was that White.

            I found the opportunity to return his insults a few months later, when he attempted to rush into my classroom without me seeing him. I took the student to the side and saw large purple spots scattered across his tan skin. “What is that on your neck?” I asked.

            “I got into fight with a vacuum,” he said with a snicker.

            “Looks like you lost.”

            “Why do you even care? My own mother didn’t even question me as much as you. Are all of you white mommas this annoying?”

            “Listen, when you leave my classroom, I like to pretend you all are perfect little angels. I don’t need proof of your extracurricular activities. I hope you wear a turtleneck before you wait on tables tonight.”

~

 I mimicked my student’s shudder as I made the decision to reduce our embarrassment by closing the book in discreet and sliding the hardcover into my hands. This plan sounded fault proof until a vocal blonde girl sitting in front of the scarred student made the fatal decision to turn around and witness the proud open, and slightly used, condom on display. “Is that a condom?” she announced to the class. My plan for an inconspicuous getaway diminished amongst the sound of the remaining twenty-six freshmen bodies shifting in their desks in hopes to lay eyes on the culprit. Their eyeballs needed answers to their classmate’s question.

Under different circumstances I might have joined the class in their curiosity and laughter, but in this specific moment, I was the adult in charge.  I slammed the book and grabbed it, and as my heels clomped, clomped, clomped down the aisle, I said, “Please let your health teachers know I’ve addressed sex ed for the day. Let’s continue.”

I arrived to the front of my classroom, placed the sinful grammar book on my desk, and completed my lesson on action verbs, all the while thinking, that book saw some action.

When the bell rang to dismiss school for the day, I marched into my principal’s office, shut the door, and announced, “Do you know the classroom management class in college is bullshit?”

“Rough day?” he said, noticing my frustration and horror painted on my face.

“If a parent calls, and claims I taught sex ed today, it’s not too far from the truth. A student found a condom in one of those ancient green grammar books. I apparently missed the lesson on finding contraceptives in textbooks in my classroom management class.”

My principal pressed his lips together to keep from bursting out laughing.

I returned to my classroom as the janitor began her shift in my hallway. I sought the opportunity to shake the condom from the book and into my trash can, but when she entered my classroom, I felt like I committed a sin and confessed the book’s transgression. She stared at me for a second before analyzing the condom, “Well, whoever it was didn’t have much to brag about,” she said before tossing my trash, along with the infamous condom, into her cart.

~

I couldn’t help but think of my undergraduate years as a young English Education major with a minor in psychology when I created my lesson plan for plot, specifically for William Shakespeare’s tragedy, Romeo and Juliet.  It seemed like only yesterday that I sat in the Human Sexuality class learning about the different phases of coitus.

“Do you ever think about how much sex we really teach our students?” I asked my fellow English teacher during one of our lunch sessions in her classroom.

“Did you find another condom?”

“No, I’m reviewing my lesson plan for plot.”

I began my explanation on how teaching plot is code for learning the sexual response cycle. I  n every story there must be a starting incident, and in sex, two people share desire. A rising action follows the starting incident, in other words, the arousal excitement phase to sex. Then, the part everyone is waiting for, the climax, or orgasm, and then it’s over. Many students confuse the climax for being in the middle because of the shape of the plot arc, but that phase happens toward the end. Like an orgasm. After the climax, there’s the resolution, or denouement. “I like saying denouement. I feel the French word adds a little romance to the end of the story,” I said as my friend looked at me.
            “I know. I try to keep from smiling each time I teach plot,” she said.

“So, I’m not alone.”

~

During my fourth year of teaching, a student of Middle Eastern descent announced, “Hey, Branstetter. Do you know that a high school student did a little something something to a middle school student in the teacher’s lounge?” as I pulled the door toward me to begin class when the tardy bell blared through the hallway. My first thought was, this couldn’t be true. I paused and pushed the door out into the hallway, and opened my friend’s classroom door.

“Can you watch my class? I think I heard a rumor that’s so crazy, it must be true,” I said.

I found myself, once again, trudging into my principal’s office. “I heard a rumor that’s so crazy, it must be true.”

He paused and allowed me to continue, “Apparently, a high school student had sex with a middle school student in the teacher’s lounge.”

“Do you have names?” he asked.

“No, but I can get names,” I said as I returned to my classroom with a mission.

I completed that day’s lesson, and prepared to interrogate my last hour class. Once the seventh hour tardy bell rang, I announced to my class, “Is there anything in student world that a teacher should know?”

Ten sets of eyeballs locked eyes with me; searching for which story they knew I already knew, but no one stepped forward. Before I would allow the subject to eclipsed into obscurity, I asked again, “Anything?”

“Snitches get stitches,” one student said.

“I ain’t no snitch,” another student claimed.

“Bonus points,” I offered.

The students paused as I stood by classroom door with my best friend.

“How much?” one student asked and I knew I entered the negotiating zone.

“300 points” a student proposed.

“250” I countered.

“I’m not talking for 250 points.”

“Then I will offer the points to another class who will accept the agreement.”   

            “Okay. Is this about the pop machine?”

            Before I could ask the question, my friend projected, “What did you little punks do to the pop machine?”

            All of the students began talking at once, and I recorded the names, witnesses, and the incident before returning to my principal’s office after school. We had not been talking long before realizing we had a statutory rape case.

~

            Every new principal is different but the same. As teachers we see the candidate strolling through the hallways in their professional attire, fake smiles, and bogus promises. After surviving my second principal that put my teacher’s union on speed dial, I found myself in the principal’s office engaging in conversation with principal number three.

            “What areas do you see need improving?” the newly hired administrator asked.

            “Siesta,” I said. “I believe productivity will increase if you allow teachers and high school students to nap.”

            “Are you being serious?” he asked me.

            I smiled before offering, “I believe we need to teach a comprehensive sex education curriculum.”

            “Do we not?”

            I thought of an incident that happened the previous school year when a student drew a cartoon stick version of me being fucked in the ass by him. This kid wasn’t going to be a hired cartoonist for The New Yorker anytime soon. The principal number two gave the eighteen-year-old senior boy one day in-school suspension for his drawing.  This experience still angers me all these years later. I waited for the school district to support me, and this was the best they could offer. I’m guessing we took sexual harassment seriously.

Then I remembered a sexual assault case that involved a female student being raped by her classmate on school property. Because principal number two didn’t take the proper action, less than four years later, that same former male student raped another one of my students when she agreed to join him on a date. Unknowing of the student’s past. It’s probably best that my second principal left his position as administrator. He lacked a backbone and conscious. Still, I advocated for some curriculum in sex education to protect students with principal number three.

The new principal had no interest in my request. Perhaps because ignoring sexual assault, harassment, misconduct, and teen pregnancy were easier than facing the reality of our young women living in rural America. Our bodies are objects for men’s eyes, use, abuse, and entertainment.  We are property.