Teaching out of specialism can be intimidating for any teacher. What makes us professionals is that we can connect our subject knowledge to our understanding of how students learn. Often a big part of that is finding ways for students to see the relevance of our subjects; not by making things up, or having them learn algebra through the medium of hip-hop, but by highlighting how this material relates to the people they are or the life they want to live. Our personal knowledge and experience provides one way to do this.
Except, of course, when it doesn’t.
As an early-career teacher and physics specialist, I was already out of my comfort zone when teaching biology topics. Some of it was fine; I was an experienced first-aider and had a keen interest in genetics and evolution. Cell biology, not so much. And the final Year 7 module was going to be a stretch. Reproduction, to include pregnancy and menstruation.
Not something, to be honest, I had much experience with at that point.
Over my time in the classroom - when I taught biology to GCSE as my second subject - I worked out a few approaches that helped me to become more confident for these lessons. How well they can be applied depends on both your setting and your personal confidence. It probably helped that pretty much nothing leaves me flustered.
It’s worth finding out how the school supports students, officially and otherwise, who may be menstruating. Are there dispensers for menstrual products in the toilets, and are they maintained? Does the medical room and/or school nurse have supplies to hand? Are there colleagues - for example, heads of year or sympathetic teaching assistants - who students know to ask if caught unprepared? Recent increased awareness of period poverty - the Guides even have a badge about it - means some schools are doing more to help than you might expect.
What I needed to cover in science was, well, the science. Double-check when the equivalent topics are covered in PSHE, and how this is done. Just as you would suggest that some questions about sex are best addressed in a PSHE classroom, there are times when you will want to direct students elsewhere. Hopefully this will be about a second opinion or a different viewpoint, rather than, “I don’t know and I want to make it someone else’s problem.”
Exploding myths
Understandably, I wanted to brush up on my subject knowledge. How could I teach something that I didn’t know much about? What I needed to remember was that in physics we teach about black holes and gravity on the Moon, nuclear reactors and car crashes. I’ve not been into space (yet) and when I’ve been involved in car accidents I wasn’t taking readings of speed and impact force. I didn’t need personal experience, and nor do you. It might even make it easier in some ways.
A little reading helped me realise that the personal experience of women is much more varied than the paragraph in most textbooks would suggest. Some women hardly ever menstruate, with reasons that shed light on the biological process. It can last a couple of days or more than a week, and be clockwork-regular or totally unpredictable. Menstrual cramps can be mildly uncomfortable or so painful that strong painkillers or time off work are the only choices. Some of your pupils will be used to menstruation, and others may not start until their mid-teens. So when teaching menstruation, a lack of personal experience is much less of a barrier than you might think, because it’s conscious. As with so much of the reproduction topic, discussing the common range of experience and avoiding the word “normal” is often a good idea. There are plenty of myths, too: women who live together don’t become synchronised, for example, despite it being commonly assumed.
It’s probably not a surprise that I found very few students asked me personal questions about menstruation. (I don’t know if female colleagues have more queries, positive or negative.) I think most of us find the start of the reproduction topic a good chance to remind students of the ground rules for invasive questions, to us or each other. But we must also remember that for some pupils, this will be pretty much all they get. I was shocked to find some Year 7 girls had absolutely no understanding. I hadn’t expected them to know the names of the hormones involved, but was bemused that parents had left them unprepared for the practical details - something which must be pretty unsettling if you’re not informed.
And it’s a good idea to have some stock answers ready for the other inevitable question: “But why?” My starting point was always that this was a science topic and science is for everyone, but to carry on that, of course, the boys need to know about menstruation, too. Because the odds are pretty high that at some point they’ll have partners, friends, family members, colleagues or patients who menstruate.
Even if they don’t end up as a science teacher with a class of giggling Year 7 pupils.
Ian Horsewell is a former science teacher and is now part of the education team at the Institute of Physics. He blogs at http://teachingofscience.wordpress.com and tweets as @teachingofsci
You can find free PSHE Association-accredited resources and curriculum-linked lessons about periods at betty for schools. They are the perfect way to kick-start the period conversation in your classroom.
