Friday, November 25, 2011

Bullet dodged

As I've mentioned before, I have private classes with two boys every day after work (Every day being Monday through Thursday). The family is Spanish, but the kids go to a British school, so I help them with their homework in English.

Yesterday I was helping the older of the two, who is eleven, fill out diagrams labeling the parts of the male and female reproductive systems (always a fun topic, but wait, it gets better). He had his textbook with more or less the same picture, so all he really had to do was copy. There was just one small problem. The worksheet had more organs, glands, etc to label than were in the book. But never fear, the teacher had anticipated this. His suggestion: If you can't find all of them in the book, use the internet.

Yes, my student had instructions to do his own research on the human reproductive system online. We all know that the internet contains nothing inappropriate for eleven year old children. Even he knew he was likely to see things he didn't want to see. Thank goodness super-tutor Amy was there to save the day. I haven't taken a biology class since ninth grade and don't remember which gland is which, but I do know how to choose my search engine criteria carefully, and we arrived safely at our destination without scarring anyone.

Biology teachers around the world, please don't tell your students to google the reproductive system. I can't be there to shield all of their eyes.

Please excuse the lack of pictures in this post, I assume you'll understand.

1 comment:

  1. Hahaha! I can totally imagine this scenario with some of my private students. Googling anything these days seems to result in strange pictures...

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