the rix mix

Teacher Reassigned for Anatomy Drawings

A teacher has been barred from classes after having his seventh-grade students draw male genitalia on the blackboard during health class, a school spokeswoman said Friday.The teacher, whose name was not made public, was assigned to administrative duties and Superintendent Bernard Pierorazio will ask trustees to fire him, said Yonkers school spokeswoman Jerilynne Fierstein."There was no way we were going to let him be in front of children," she said. Fierstein said the state's seventh-grade curriculum calls for lessons in human anatomy and sexuality, but "as a teacher you have to be sensitive and you have to look at the age-appropriateness of any activity that you ask a child to do. And this was just not appropriate." Pierorazio said the teacher had began his lesson by asking students to volunteer to come to the board to draw male anatomy.

Jon Klibonoff, a father of a student at the school, said he did not believe the material was inappropriate.

"This is biology, it's anatomy, it's human sexuality," he said. "They're in puberty. They're aware of it on one level or another."

For a knowledgable opinion on 7th grader health ed, who better for a reporter to ask, & quote by name, than a 4th grader?

Fourth-grader Noah Klibonoff disagreed.

"They're not supposed to know what it's supposed to look like at this age yet, so I think it's a little embarrassing and it's also a little inappropriate," he said.

Difference of opinion in the Klibonoff home.