EEK! I accidentally showed a nude scene to my 8th graders

Tell me the truth. How bad is this??? I showed them the John Adams DVD (1st episode) on a recommendation from someone since we're discussing the Boston Massacre. I screened it up to the end of the trial of the British soldiers because I thought that was all we'd have time for in one class period. I noticed one instance of inappropriate language so I sent home a letter to the parents basically warning them that for this and other videos I might show in class, there might be inapproriate scenes and language.

However, I miscalculated how far we'd get in the DVD and we went a bit farther than I had expected (and screened for). Before I could hit "stop" on the remote, a man was being stripped naked to be tarred and feathered. So for a second or two, full male nudity was on display in my classroom.

How bad is this? Do I have to tell my principal or am I covered by the note home (which he saw before it was sent out)? I'd be absolutely mortified to go in and tell him that I showed a naked man in the classroom. I really don't want to do it especially since my special ed students are more than likely not going to tell their parents anything about it anyway. To be truthful, there was very little reaction at all - they just giggled for a second.

I feel sick over this.

 

I would tell the principal, for sure! Someone else will, trust me.

 

Oh, and it's not the end of the world. Not lovely, but you'll survive.

Hate to be that person, but you really must screen everything completely. I did the same once. I was only planning to show the first few minutes of this clip on WWII...that's all I needed to demonstrate my point or whatever I was attempting to do, but the kids were so interested I let it play. Yeah, then a veteran busted out a loud GD. I felt terrible!

 

I agree that you need to tell the principal immediately. Kids won't keep something like that to themselves.

If they're anything like my middle school kids, a good half of them probably weren't paying that much attention and missed it.

I once showed a video clip to sixth graders, and there was a naked breast in it. The woman was feeding a baby, but there was a second or two of a full breast. Oops!

 

Thanks!!

I told my mentor and she said she'd come with me to tell my principal since I was such a nervous wreck. We told him and he was very cool about it. Then to make me feel better, my mentor and my principal traded anecdotes about inappropriate film scenes accidentally shown and inappropriate web sites accidentally visited with students in other classrooms.

I definitely feel better and am glad I told him. For a moment there, I thought I was going to cry, puke and get fired all at once!

How true to my luck, though, that the whole film is a snoozefest (from my student's point of view) about a trial and discussions of taxation only to morph into violence and nudity in the 5 minutes that I didn't prescreen!!

 

Yeah, that portion was a bit... shocking the first time I saw it. Wasn't expecting to see that

I knew exactly what you were taking about when I read John Adams haha

 

I remember my English teacher showed us Romeo and Juliet when I was in the 8th grade. She stepped out into the hallway to talk to another teacher, and as soon as she did that there were boobs on the TV. She casually returned to the room, glanced at the TV, stopped, then ran to the TV and shut it off. It was pretty amusing, at least to us.

 

We were accidently shown her boobs as well!

 

I remember that movie (Romeo and Juliet). My 9th grade teacher showed it to us. She told us what to expect. She told us what she expected. There were no notes home. And guess what? We, my class, did exactly what she expected us to do. No one snickered or laughed or even commented. No parents complained and that teacher was around, showing that same movie until after I graduated, at least. Mind, this is in the rural south.

 

LOL...my teacher covered the tv when we got to that part.

 

Tell the principal. And screen the rest of the miniseries if you are planning on showing it- there are other scenes that are inappropriate for classroom usage.

 

We still show that version at my school on our Promethean Boards. A co-worker of mine was showing it and when it came to that part, she covered her laptop with her hand, not thinking that it was showing on the board! Whoops!

 

I'm sure there are alot of teachers who have been in your position. I remember my co-teacher showing a movie and having cuss words thrown around. OOPS!!! It really was no big deal though (some hells, and one GD).

I also remember the Romeo & Juliet scene from HS.

 

LOL

 

I remember my English teacher in HS showed us a movie (I think it was Macbeth) and for a few moments in the movie 2 characters were...you know....and there was full nudity of a woman on a man!!! And he knew this!!!! He warned us not to laugh. Looking back on it, I can't believe it...

 

I can't think of many more scenes that are objectionable as the one cited.

I found the later episodes to be more interesting than the initial, to be honest.

 

We watched that Romeo and Juliet movie when I was in 9th grade. My teacher told us about the scene, too. I was expecting something pretty major but when that scene came, I was like, that's it? Oooookay, that was really tame.

 

At my old school we had free basic cable. I was turning on the tv to put on a video (I still don't know why I turned the tv on first - I never did after!) Smokey and the Bandit was on. Before I could turn anything off or turn off the volume it sounded like they were trying to say every cuss word they could. I wouldn't even look at my kids to see if they had heard, I just chose to pretend it didn't happen. I could feel how red my face was, though!
Our computer lab teacher had an interesting story, too. When we first got our adapters that put our computer screen on the tv she had kindergarten in the lab. She sat them around the tv and had them call out things they wanted to see. One called out rodeo. She did a search and pulled up the site. That's when she learned that there were all sorts of "rodeos" out there. She said she stood up and covered the computer screen so they couldn't see it, then realized it was all up there on the tv! lol

 

Good God we live in prudish sissy culture when parents still get wound up about human anatomy. Odd how they have a serious issue with a kid seeing a boob on TV in school but don't seem to care that little johnny can pick up a prostitute on Grand theft auto....

 

Heh, no kidding. Then again, I'm European (dual citizenship) and grew up with those types of movies and magazines with full frontal nudity from a young age.

 

lol! I did that once. Same thing as you, but it was full female nudity to a bunch of religious boys...their eyes were bugging out of their head, and I played it off like I didn't see it. They never mentioned it to anyone, and neither did I. If you are in public, I would def. tell the admin.

 

It's no worse than the science books and charts we use in 8th grade. Like someone else posted, I had to let the kids know my expectations of their reactions -- before viewing. So don't sweat it.

:dunno:

 

My story is a little different. In college I worked for the resource dept. that delivered AV equip all over campus and also
ran movie proj. in the large teaching auditoriums. One summer they had a Human Sex Ed course in the biggest aud. And they had visiting profs doing the classes so each session may have a different teacher. One prof. (from Harvard I think) gave me a 16mm movie to put on for the class. SO I cued it up and it was an oldie called positions in coitus. It was all sex. I thought to myself "self, this is gonna get me arrested because you could not show that back in those days to the public much less young folks". I ran to my boss a block away to tell him and many of the fellas in the dept followed us back to see what was so interesting. You never saw so many rigid sitting up straight students in one aud. as they watched that movie. No police were called and my record is still clean.

 

I'm with you 100%. Oh my!!!! They actually saw that last little bit that is covered by a bathing suit at the pool and isn't covered by the photos they text to each other.



I do have an even better OOPS story for you from my engineering days. The company I worked for assigned laptops with air cards (get high speed internet anywhere your cell phone works) to all the project managers and they didn't have internet blocks on the laptops.

A friend of mine who surfed a lot of porn while he was on the road went to give a presentation to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers on a project we were doing. He accesses the internet to pull up our GIS data and gets a big pornographic pop up right in the middle of his presentation to about 20 of our clients (complete with sound.) The Corps razzes him about it to this day.

 

Honestly! I mean junior high....they've seen it all anyway. Younger kids would be more inappropriate, but even then I'm not a fan of making the human body seem shameful.

 

We do live in a strange society. Soaked in sexual images or nudity via the media but heaven forbid any other way. One day our society will grow up and treat it maturely where we DONT hide from kids things that will occur naturally in their lives and have them prepared to deal with the changes instead of hysteria and stonewalling.

 

After reading the story Pollyanna in my 6-8th grade SPE reading classes, I showed the movied at the end of the week. Well, the intro scene - a bare butted boy swinging on a rope swing into the river. I made sure to fastforward the intro for the next class!

Thanks, Walt Disney!

 

I've seen that movie a bunch of times, and never noticed the bare butt - now I'll go look for it (smile!) Maybe my version of the movie is censored!

 

The Apple Dumpling Gang and 20,000 Leagues Beneath the Sea both have cuss words. (1 each) I never noticed either until we were watching them in class and I have seen them literally hundreds of time each. (I love my classic Disney!)

 

A co-worker showed a parent-donated copy of The Best Christmas Pageant Ever every year for quite a few years. One year she let the credits run while she finished grading a paper when hard core porn came on the screen! She vaulted over the kids to cover the tv and turn it off!

 

When my sons were 'school aged', they did not play Grand Theft auto. Nor do they play it now that they are of 'age'. (as if there is an acceptable age for such trash).

Parents are not prudish or sissy because they don't want their children exposed to human anatomy-like most parenting decisions, it's PERSONAL. I've never had a problem with my children at any age being exposed to great works of art in which the human form is depicted. Most parents have little qualm over health and science lessons in which human anatomy and body functions are taught. Responsible schools proudly share their curriculum scope and sequence with families so that there is a shared awareness and responsibility over what is being taught.

In this case, the students did not see a 'boob' (I would use the term 'breast') on TV with their families in the privacy of their own homes. They were exposed to it accidentally in a classroom setting- which in most cases would lead to 'hoots and hollers' and lots of 'school talk' amongst the kids and a lot of 'clean up' work on the part of the teacher. It's not about prudishness, it's about responsibility.

 

If I remember correctly, in the OP, it was full male nudity, which is more than a "boob", and many parents would be upset if their daughters saw that at school.

 

It was admittedly a terrible mistake but in my defense, it was extremely brief (no more than a second) and not at all in a sexual context.

However, I do have to ask: are you saying that male nudity is more offensive than female nudity?

 

I think they were saying that full male nudity would be more offensive than a breast.

Personally, it was an accident, very brief and in context of history so not a big deal, IMO. Just wait till they get to 9th grade and see the stuff they are exposed to.

I don't really see a 'prudish, sissy, culture' either. As far as I have heard the OP has not even had a parent complaint!

 

It's not that any nudity is, in of itself, 'offensive'. It's that this was a social studies class in which impressionable (and hormonal!!) middle school students were inadvertantly and unneccessarily 'exposed' to nudity. While I'm sure you are doing what you need to do after the fact to rectify the situation, it's a good reminder to all professional educators to preview materials in their entirity before using them for instructional purposes.

 

Our culture is perceived as prudish because of the strict puritanical values ingrained in our society.

While in England, they're the opposite - okay with nudity, totally against violence.

 

I don't know if this is totally related, but for my 10th grade English class we watched a version of MacBeth that was produced by play boy and Roman Polanski. (There was no sex, but some nudity.) Notes were sent home and this was approved by my public school. This was not in the US and while it caused quite a stir among students, it wasn't considered a big deal in our community because there was no sex and minimal violence (considering the plot).

I think this supports bros assertion that what is OK has a lot to do with local norms and acceptable behaviors. I don't believe any of us were damaged by watching that version of MacBeth. The main nude scene involved three elderly women. It was not sexual. (Like the tar and feathering scene.)

If it helps the OP at all, it was a mistake, but the kids will all still grow up healthy and fine. Some parents will be more upset than others, but this is not the end of the world. The important part is that you learned from it how to protect yourself by preventing this from happening again.

 

I remember the Romeo and Juliet video in HS, we had to have permission. I don't remember that part.

In history class and in French we'd watch videos, they showed full frontal male nudity. (children and adults)

I think from a historical context some parents may not have a problem with it.

In 7th grade, we watched a documentary called "Symphony" (I think) it was of the aftermath and clean up of the Holocaust. It showed full nudity and masses of dead people. It was sad and terrifying. Most of us had a very hard time with it. We had to have permission, it was rated R. There were extra counselors at the school and we were allowed to walk out at anytime. After the film we had to talk about it. We also had permission slips for watching films that showed some hangings from the KKK. The whole year we studied Civil Rights and Racism.

 

The United Kingdom in 2009 actually had the worst rate of violent crime in the European Union, worse even than South Africa AND the US...http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...ry-Europe-Britain-worse-South-Africa-U-S.html

How on earth does that relate to the topic, though?

We live in the US, the OP is in the US. Our public schools do not generally show movies with nudity in them (I'd be surprised if Brit schools do, despite your opinion that they are 'okay' with nudity). Call it prudish, call it sissy, call it puritanical. What ever you call it, be guided accordingly if you are a professional educator...

 

I was simply stating the nudity is more accepted in other cultures. I was not stating that nudity or violence is okay in school. Just society in general.