Remember those days back in middle school when girls and boys had to be separated into different classrooms and were given the so-called “talk”? Oh, how we all enjoyed hearing those wildly awkward topics: puberty, safe sex, STDs, the list goes on. I’ve only recently begun to understand just how equally–if not more–uncomfortable it is to TEACH these topics. When you’re a college student and standing in front of a group of giggly sixth-graders about to go over the reproductive organs of men and women, things start to get madly awkward. Such is how I’ve found myself spending my past two Friday afternoons.
You may wonder why, and possibly how, I got myself involved in this situation. In actuality, I volunteered for this job. A few months ago, the UConn Pre-Medical Society starting working with current medical students at the UConn School of Medicine in coordinating the Hartford Health Education (HHE) program. Due to budget cuts, many schools in the inner-city Hartford area had to get rid of the health/sex education portion of their curriculum. The purpose of HHE is to provide this missing (and necessary) part of the curriculum to these schools by having volunteer med students and pre-med students teach it. Over the duration of five weekly afternoon sessions, volunteers intend to go over an entire sex-ed syllabus consisting of puberty, anatomy and reproduction, safe sex and STDs, drugs and violence, and nutrition.
My friend Sarah and I are both pre-med students and decided to volunteer for HHE. After being given the contact information of a particular teacher and school in Hartford, we contacted our teacher and arranged the times for our teaching sessions. Much of the time Sarah and I spend is in preparation to teach the material. A syllabus is provided for us highlighting major points and details to go over in class, but when you’re actually in the classroom, most of the teaching is done through improvisation. We teach a group of sixth-graders (not separated by gender, by the way), and boy, are they curious! We get plenty of questions each time we go there, and the challenge is to answer these questions while connecting it to the material.
All in all, despite the brief moments of uncomfortableness, doing this has been an awakening experience for me. I’ve always wanted to go into pediatrics, and I’ve found being able to talk to kids about these things is essentially what I’ll be doing as their doctor. The first time I went into the classroom, I was unsure about how things would go, and I figured that Sarah and I would just wing it. However, it turned out to be incredibly easier than I ever imagined. After hearing the first few bouts of embarrassed giggles from the kids, I grew comfortable and unfazed talking about these topics and even better, managed to convince the students to not be as embarrassed. It feels great knowing that I’m doing something to teach these kids something that they otherwise wouldn’t have been able to learn.
If you want to take a look at what the Hartford Health Education program involves, click here. This page is a part of the Pre-Medical Society website and includes the syllabi that Sarah and I used each week during our teaching sessions.
