By Steve Hendrix
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, April 10, 2007; B01
Susan Soule was a sex education teacher for decades before she ever had a student identify herself as gay in front of the class.
It was in the late 1990s, and by then the subject that Soule began teaching in 1973 as little more than a guarded anatomy lesson had been buffeted by the emergence of AIDS, test tube fertilization, the gay pride movement and other earthquakes of the sexuality landscape. A few days into a class discussion that Soule had led countless times before, a sophomore at Montgomery Blair High School raised her hand and matter-of-factly declared that she was a lesbian.
For a breakthrough, Soule recalled, it proved an unremarkable moment.
"She was very comfortable saying it," Soule, 55, said. "The other students were like, 'Oh? Really?' And then we moved on. It was very simple."
It has become far more common for students to assert their homosexuality from their school desks, said Soule, who now teaches the same subject at Wheaton's John F. Kennedy High School. Last week, as Montgomery County schools prepared to wrap up pilot testing on a curriculum that would open the way for deeper discussions of sexual and gender identity, Soule noted that it is not the first time official lessons are playing catch-up with the students.
"One thing that has always been true is that the kids are much more at ease with all of this than the grown-ups are," said Soule, whose 18-week Comprehensive Health class includes units on mental health, violence, addiction and infectious disease. "Nobody blinks an eye."
As one of the county's most experienced teachers of one of public education's most controversial subjects, Soule has lived her professional life in what looks to many outsiders like a maelstrom. Few other educators see their lesson plans so regularly swept up into the culture wars. Few have to talk in such graphic detail to groups of teenagers about topics that make parents cringe. And few outside the school counselor's office are as likely to receive after-class pleas for advice from kids who might be abused, addicted or pregnant.
But Soule (pronounced Sule-ay) said her years in the sex-ed trenches have been not only uplifting but also surprisingly relaxed. The secret, she said, is to rely on her unflappable students as agents of calm in otherwise ferocious debates. As clashes over birth control, homosexuality and abstinence-only instruction play out at school boards and on talk radio, Soule said, the classroom has remained serene. Or at least as serene as a room full of 10th-graders can be.
"They're always joking, but they really are good sports to each other," Soule said of her students. "They are just very good at agreeing to disagree. For me, it's always been very positive."
In an austere second-floor classroom deep within Kennedy's labyrinthine halls, the walls are a gallery of teenage angst. Posters proclaim, warn and cajole on such topics as smoking, steroids, teen pregnancy and eating disorders.
One recent afternoon, students filed into the 12:30 p.m. class with exaggerated post-lunch lethargy, dropping book bags and draping themselves across seats and aisles. But Soule, a brisk, short-haired woman who is towered over by many of her students, drove them to their feet for an exercise on substance abuse. She called out the names of drugs and medicines, from LSD to Nyquil, and had the students move to displayed notices indicating "addictive," "not addictive" or "don't know." (Hint: More are addictive than you think.)
The energy level in the room soared in response to Soule's rapid-fire questions. Midway through the class, she was answering more questions than she was asking and listening more than talking. "Can you use crystal meth to lose weight?" "LSD is the same as acid?" "My cousin has tried most of those things."
For a demographic with a reputation for sullenness, the teens were as talky as group therapy patients. Soule has had students open up about their drug use, about their boyfriends hitting them, about their depression. She keeps stuffed animals in her desk for anyone who just wants something soft to hold during class.
"It just breaks your heart," she said. "The key is to make it comfortable for them. If a kid raises his hand and says he's bipolar, you want that to be a safe classroom setting."
The students grow more used to speaking out as the course progresses, she said. And that prepares them for the thorniest sessions at the end of the semester: human sexuality and sexually transmitted diseases. But, inevitably, the moment she puts the first transparency of male genitalia on the overhead projector is a moment of teenage hilarity.
"Heads will hit the desk, and they're like 'Oh my God, Ms. Soule!' " said Soule, who has taught the material more than 500 times. "I let them have maybe two minutes of that. Then I say, 'Okay, let's get started.' "
Despite having grown up in a media environment saturated with sexual images, the Class of 2009 came to Soule with the same percentage, albeit a small one, of completely naive students as she found when she started teaching sex-ed, she said.
Last year, a 15-year-old boy come to her when the other students had left and asked quietly, "What do you mean when you say 'sex.' " She gave him a quick, clinical explanation. After mulling the concept for a moment, he responded that those details would never come up in his home.
"Kids don't view parents as sexual beings, and parents don't want to view their adolescents as sexual beings," said Soule, who has two grown children. "A teacher can be an objective entity."
She is asked often for advice from parents on how to have The Conversation. At one of the informational meetings Soule holds each semester for the parents of incoming students, one father privately requested a basic primer so he would not be so flummoxed by his daughter's increasingly pointed questions.
"Susan has the ability to respond to both the kids and their parents depending on their individual needs," said Phillip Gainous, the longtime principal of Blair High School, who was Soule's boss for 12 years. "The subject matter tends to be more sensitive, and we have teachers who just would not want to teach some of these topics. But for her, health-ed is a passion. She's one of the best in the county."
Soule grew up in Takoma Park, where her father, George Miller, was mayor for almost 20 years. After college at Towson University and student teaching in Prince George's County, she has taught in Frederick, Silver Spring and Wheaton.
She lives in Gaithersburg and said she doesn't find much difference between upcounty and downcounty attitudes toward sex education. "In my experience, the vast majority of parents support it," she said. The health class is mandated by the state for all 10th-graders, but parents can request that their children not be exposed to any part of the curriculum.
According to Soule, fewer than 1 percent of parents countywide exercise that option. The material on homosexuality and condom use now being tested required, for the pilot phase, additional consent from parents. School administrators said about 91 percent got their parent's consent to participate.
Under current guidelines, teachers can talk about homosexuality only in direct response to a student's question. The pilot curriculum includes it as part of the standard lesson. "Before, students had to ask," Soule said. "Some classes got it; some didn't."
Soule spent most of her career at Blair, which is also where she was first exposed to sex education -- as a student in the 1960s. They divided up the boys and girls, and a male physical education teacher lectured the girls.
"There were no questions, no conversation," she said. "He basically did everything he could to scare us to death. If you were to engage in sexual activity, it was a guarantee that you would get pregnant."
This year, Soule has two students who are already teen mothers. She remembers her stilted sex-ed lesson, she said, as she works each semester to get her students not just to listen but also to talk.
In an interview, a group of her students said they cannot imagine telling other teachers, or even their parents, some of the things they say in Soule's class.
"We've known her for, like, three months, and I really, really trust her," said Gabriella Nesse, 15. "Sometimes, if I'm having a bad day, I'll go to her, and even if she's teaching, she'll take time to talk to me. She really cares, and we all know it."
