105. Health
July 13, 2008
Carla stood at the front of the classroom, looking out at all those young eyes. The evening before, she’d spent four hours trying to decide on an outfit that would command authority—fashionable but grown-up, hip but professional. It turned out she didn’t have anything like that, and she compensated by dressing down a too-formal suit with large plastic bangles. They clicked when her arms moved. She thought she wouldn’t wear the bracelets again. They were too easy to ridicule. Ninth graders were cruel. Still, it was already fifth period, and none of them had made snide comments about her bracelets or her suit.
She thought she was communicating the material pretty well, despite her tendency to blush. She would have preferred to be teaching literature or social studies, but the available position had been in Health. At Carla’s school, “health” meant “sex and drug ed,” and she was gamely plowing her way through the syllabus, even though it included units like “anatomy of the penis and vagina” and “opiates: effects.”
image: LexnGer on flickr
