Kids Say the Darned-est Things

     Yesterday, my mentor teacher mentioned to me that a parent had emailed her recently asking about conversations concerning sexuality potentially taking place at school. He asked her if that was something that we had talked about, or noticed being talked about, in the classroom – particularly the topic of gay marriage. Of course, sexuality is NOT something (obviously) that we bring up in the classroom with kindergarteners, and neither of us had heard anything like that being discussed amongst our students. 

     However, today as the kindies were doing their morning work, I walked past a table that was a-buzz with conversation. These five- and six-year-olds were happily cutting their sight word morning work while discussing whether or not two men could marry each other. They were curiously asking each other and trading information on whether or not they believed that was allowed, what it would be like, the possibility of children for this imaginary couple, etc. Not knowing what to do in this situation, I tried to re-direct them by saying something along the lines of, “Hey, friends. Let’s try to focus on finishing our morning work! You won’t get anything done by chatting right now!” Of course, I was met with the practical response by one of the kids, “But we are working and talking at the same time. We aren’t going slow!” – and with this they resumed their conversation. 

     Not knowing what to do, I asked my mentor teacher for help, and she went over and told them that that kind of conversation was not appropriate for school, and if they had questions they should really ask their parents when they were at home. 

     I was so confused and embarrassed. First of all, it was clear that they had a lot of misconceptions, and I almost wanted to butt in and just have an open conversation with them. However, I knew that this truly WASN’T an appropriate conversation for the classroom, ESPECIALLY with kindergarteners, and I was totally thrown off by not knowing the right way to handle it right off the bat. I was embarrassed that I had to resort to asking my mentor teacher to handle the situation, especially when her response to them seemed so obvious. I was embarrassed by the situation in general, because clearly this was the same conversation before that had spurned the previously-mentioned parent’s email. It was just uncomfortable all around, and something that honestly was so unexpected when I went into student teaching.