This month, our Year 11 students (in their second-last year of high school) will be undertaking the
Crossroads course, which covers all sorts of issues related to personal safety and identity - sex and drugs and youth driver awareness and many more topics. I've been involved in this at my school for as long as I've been there, and present a couple of sessions - one on resilience, one on internet safety - and this year, on two of the three days, I'm doing the daily intro as well.
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Ha! Lots of fun to be had. Especially since the
Crossroads organiser and I laughed ourselves silly over a couple of picture books (that I'd also watched multiple kids laugh themselves silly over, too).
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Have you come across
Where Willy Went?
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Willy is a sperm. He's not very good at counting, but he's very good at swimming. And the pirate-style maps of Mr and Mrs Brown (with arrows) are absolutely fabulous! Well done Nicholas Allen!
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Also not to be missed:
Mummy Laid An Egg by Babette Cole.
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Mummy and Daddy fudge their way through airy-fairy explanations of where babies come from, until their kids take things firmly in hand and explain, with rather more accuracy and an hilarious paydirt page (which includes a space hopper...).
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These books are written for a younger audience than high school, but in a high school library, they have multiple uses. They're fun. Really fun. I like letting them loose on a wide reading class, just one kid and watch them going viral (the teachers have enjoyed watching this too). They aren't rude, but they're about naughty things, in kids' minds, and the frisson they get from these cleverly written and so amusingly illustrated books confirms in their minds, consciously or unconsciously, that books are fun and the library is a place where fun is to be found - and thus a place worth visiting (or at the least, a place you don't mind being dragged to with your class....).
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Sure, we've got more clinical books about sex, but the humour of these is great to include in the library as well (our picture book collection is in regular use by a number of faculties/subjects).
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For
Crossroads, it's going to start the day cheerfully, ahead of the serious nitty-gritty of the topics under discussion. One of the reasons I am involved in
Crossroads is because I think it pays for the kids and the library for me to be involved in an outside-library school activity like this. An opportunity to talk with and listen to some of our seniors. An opportunity to be seen in a different teaching role - as a presenter, group discussion leader, facilitator. I never know how much this pays back in the library, but I'm sure it does, and that it's another way to open up lines of communication that may lead to ways in which I can help kids in my role as teacher librarian.
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Although, I don't know if you've really lived until you've had a group of senior students with large print A3 cards which they have to get in order from "buy condom" to "dispose of condom thoughtfully" - that particular year, our venue was a university campus (during a uni vacation period), and I had to facilitate this activity in an open area near their library's entrance. You can just imagine the faces of the people walking by as the kids vigorously discussed (sometimes with unwonted optimism) the correct order of the cards, and the people glimpsed the subject matter. I needed something to lean against, I was laughing so much.
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(I do wonder how this blog entry will turn up in search engines, and just how disappointed some googlers may end up being...!!)
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If you don't have these books in your library, do consider them. And ways in which you can have a wider role within your school, and how it may have a positive effect on your work in the library.
Cheers, Ruth
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Images above are from The Book Depository, links to the books' pages are from each title.
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