Let's talk about sects.

They’re growing up right before my eyes. Literally. I’m watching them. My students are crossing the divide from neutrons to romantically charged particles. They seem to have felt the sting of Cupid’s arrow and don’t know what to do with themselves. Valentine’s day is around the corner, but so is the 100th day of school. In past years, my students were always giddier about collecting 100 M&Ms or exercising for 100 seconds than distributing Valentines and swooning over each other. In elementary school, the 100th day of school is a milestone that students and teachers alike value, just for different reasons. Students love any day that comes with themed activities and teachers love the fact that year is more than halfway through. Teachers nationwide wake up on that morning singing, Hooray! We’re all still alive and actually doing well! Students wake up on that morning singing, Hooray! We get to eat candy, play games, and sing songs!

But this year is a little different. There are new kids on the block. A few weeks ago I projected a large world map onto the overhead and began teaching my class about the bodies of water. I got to the Pacific Ocean and said, “This is the Pacific Ocean. It borders the west coast of the United States. See it right here? The Pacific Ocean.” Then instead of seeing a gaggle of nodding heads, I heard one boy lean into his friend’s ear and whisper, “Pa-sexy Ocean.” Nice. Happy they’re taking it all in.

Which takes us to math. Recently we began our geometry unit—the study of shapes. Angles, sides, vertices… What could go wrong? Well, apparently, geometry isn’t as vanilla as I had always thought, and is in fact just as easy to corrupt as is geography. (Is it the common prefix? I am not sure.) I started by saying, “These aren’t just regular sides on the rhombus. These are parallel sides! They are like train tracks and will never run into each other. But these sides,” I said, pointing to two adjacent ones, “these are also special. They intersect. This one intersects that one; they run into each other at one specific point. When a line intersects another line, they are not parallel.” And as I was delivering this little lecture, I noticed my slight lisp on S-sounds mix dangerously with the –cts ending on the word intersects. And then there was laughter. Just a little bubble of giggling, but it was all I needed to raise my eyebrows in a telltale the-crazy-teacher-is-coming-out manner. “Off the rug. Please get up, and write me letter explaining what it is that is so funny about this lesson.” (I couldn’t have sounded more like an old-school teacher or mother if I tried. Now being a teacher myself, one of the many lessons I have learned is that teachers and parents only inflict such “adult-isms” when they’re experiencing a sudden loss of power and surge of vulnerability.) I knew the boys were snickering at me, and I had an inkling as to why, but it wasn’t until I received their letters of apology a few minutes later that my suspicions were blown out of the water. One letter read as follows:


When you said intersects I laughed because you said intersects. When you said intersects it sounded like intersects, like when two people have sects.

Like when two people have sects. Obviously, my first instinct was to laugh out loud, which I did. And the letter has proved to be the gift that keeps on giving, as I’ll spontaneously chuckle each time I think about my student’s way with words.

Then, just as I began to chalk up these incidences of immaturity to just that, I picked my class up from recess yesterday. One of the boys was extremely frustrated and couldn’t wait to tell me all about how Brian had betrayed him. If there is anything I am loath to do everyday, it’s pick up the kids and hear the laundry list of complaints that crop up from the time I drop them off at lunch and gather them up in the yard. But this time seemed different, there was a sincere urgency to Andy’s request and I was rather curious about what had come to pass between them. When we returned to the classroom and the students settled in, I pulled Brian and Andy aside.

“I told Brian a very deep secret of mine and he told Ms. Holly’s class! He told all of them my deep secret! I trusted him and he told everyone!”

“I didn’t! I didn’t tell Ms. Holly’s class!” Brian retorted.

“Ok, let’s say you didn’t tell Ms. Holly’s class. Do you know why Brian would think that?” I asked.

“Well, I turned toward them when I said it, but I didn’t mean to tell them. I just said it out loud.”

“You yelled it! You yelled it at them,” Andy protested.

“Take a deep breath, you two. Andy, would you mind telling me your secret, so I know what we’re dealing with here?”

Andy, a boy who acts fairly tough, is on the older end of the class, and has a slight strut to his step, looked up at me with widened eyes and got up on his toes. I was sure that I was about to learn some family secret, a new dirty song he made up, or how he bullies kids in the bathroom. I hesitantly leaned down, already wincing, and he whispered into my ear, “I love Jane.”

He loves Jane! That’s all! I wanted to scoop him up and jump for joy. I opted to keep my cool and nod politely. Brian got the speech and consequences he knew were coming and Andy, heart slightly bruised, returned to his seat, past Jane, looking at his feet as he walked by. I later explained to Andy that even though Jane might not feel the same way (and in fact Jane then rushed up to me and said, "Andy likes me and I really don't like him." Oh girl, you're in for a long haul!), she would be lucky to be his Valentine. He didn't seem to care. I don't blame him.

And thus, in third grade, our fuzzy understanding of love and sex begins, and I am now wondering, does it ever really clear up? As adults we often still find sex (or sects as the kids are calling it) funny and amusing, confusing and awkward. Our hearts can still be spontaneously set aflame as we realize a close friend is more than a friend—and the love can also be extinguished just as quickly when the love goes unrequited. Just as the kids in my class, some of us adults go after sects, while others go out in pursuit of love, while still others are basically just perverts when you get right down to it. At the end of the day, however, we’re all in search of something—be it sexiness, sects, or the sting of Cupid’s arrow. And all we can hope for is that we find what we’re looking for. I’m just praying all this romantic energy is snuffed out over February break with the aid of some cold showers.

Happy Valentine’s Day indeed.