Everybody's Doing It

Before I had my own classroom, I knew that teaching was hard, and that I wouldn’t make a lot of money. I had heard of violent students, students who could make their nose bleed on command, and students who knew and shouted words that I hadn’t even heard of until college. And when I was hired as a 1^st grade teacher, I braced myself for a year filled with all kind of bodily fluids—blood, spit, snot, vomit, urine. But the thing that no one ever mentioned or prepared me for was how often I would have to deal with, well, poop.

Yes, I have poop on the brain. The following conversation is one that I had with a student yesterday, after he returned from the little boy’s room.

“Are you feeling better?”

“No. My tummy still really hurts. And it had red in it.”

“What had red in it?”

“It.”

“What it? Did you go number one or number two?”

“What?”

“Number one or number two?”

“Huh?”

“Did you go pee or poop?”

“Oh. Poop. I had diarrhea.”

So as you can see, trying to gloss over bodily functions with juvenile euphemisms doesn’t really work when having a conversation with a juvenile. Eventually we got the problem sorted out, and he went home early. Unfortunately it led to a follow up conversation today in which he informed me that it hurts whenever he has diarrhea, and that he gets diarrhea when he doesn’t eat good foods.

As you may have guessed from reading that heartwarming scenario, working with first graders has really redefined my opinion of what qualifies as too much information. One of my favorite stories from my second year of teaching also deals with an unabashed willingness to talk about the need to defecate. One of my students, who a colleague so aptly described as looking rather like Suffleupagus, was notorious for being a little light on the marbles. He would wander about my room during lessons with a dreamy look on his face and cartwheel down the hall to the cafeteria. He was cute, but flighty. Once he came back from the bathroom during rug time, sat down, and immediately raised his hand to go to the bathroom again. Thinking that it was a ploy to get out of working, I denied his request. Without a trace of shame and in a voice clear enough for everyone to hear he announced, quite factually, “But I have to go poop.”

While some first graders seem very open about their bowel movements, others seem to trend the other way. While my poop story from last year was hilarious, a fellow first grade teacher encountered a much more distressing scenario. Her room had been smelling odd for several days, so while the children were out at recess, she took the opportunity to search their desks for a spoiled snack or something of the kind. Unfortunately, what rolled out of one child’s desk was human excrement. Upon questioning the culprit, it was discovered that he had had an accident on the playground. The poop had rolled out of his pants and, choosing not to simply walk away or kick it into the bushes, he picked it up, put it in his pocket, and carried it back into the school. Then, in lieu of flushing it down a toilet or throwing it in a trashcan, he decided to hide it in his desk. Isn’t that what you would do?

Now you might be arguing that these were all stories of normal bodily functions that were linked to a lack of social awareness. However, I have also known a child who purposefully used fecal matter as a way to manipulate me. After an accident that involved wetting his pants and going home early, a student decided that wetting his pants was actually a good thing. When grandma found out that he had started deliberately wetting his pants to go home, she threatened punishment. Undaunted, he stopped wetting his pants, but would come back from the bathroom telling me that he had missed the toilet. Because I am a very savvy teacher, I could deduce from a quick glance that he was lying. Unwilling to give up so easily, the child decided that it would be best to deliberately defecate in his pants. Unable to easily ascertain whether or not his claims were true, the office had to call grandma. I don’t know what the punishment at home turned out to be, but it must have been stringent. He didn’t have bathroom problems for the rest of the year.

Yes, it is true. Everybody poops. But first graders take it to a whole new level.