How Can You Teach Middle Grade Students about HIV/AIDS in a Conservative Community?

Abstract

While keeping with the values expressed by our conservative community, we wanted to come up with an innovative way to pro mote an understanding of AIDS. Since the community h d recent ly experienced one of its young people dying of AIDS, it was ready to hear about this issue. Availing ourselves of recent research (Ford, 1992; Hyde, & Forsyth, 1989; Silverstein & Silverstein, 1986), we decided to undertake an interdisciplinary approach (Vars, 1969,1993), giving each teacher an equal share in the process. Rather than taking the chance of defending a specific unit on AIDS, which had met with opposition in the past, we decided to include the disease in the con text of a unit on communicable diseases. Children need to learn how diseases are transmitted, how diseases can be treated, and how diseases can be prevented, so we included the HIV virus and AIDS with other diseases such as chicken pox, tuberculosis, and hepatitis. We ottered a knowledge base through science, a historical perspective through social studies, a concept of numbers through math, and a means of expression through language arts. Stress was taken off the teachers, students were eager learners, and not one parent com plained during the five-week unit. In fact, most parents became actively involved in the preparations and pre sentations, complimenting us on providing such a cre ative learning experience.