a day in the life of an SAT instructor

I recently explained the word "abstemious" to some SAT students, which required me to explain what sorts of things a person might abstain from.

But that wasn't as uncomfortable as when I was teaching the Latin root "gen," meaning "birth, creation; type, kind," as in generation, gender, genesis, genocide, ingenuous, and ingenue. One student asked about "genital herpes." I always try to be encouraging, so I went on to say that, why yes, the "genitals" are the parts one uses to make ("generate") babies.

But that wasn't as uncomfortable as the time I was teaching a vocabulary class to some thirteen year olds, with a manual that suggested that students could use common expressions and phrases to decipher the meaning of new words -- for instance, "abominable" in "Abominable Snowman." Or ... "surrogate" in "surrogate mother." Except that no one in the class knew what a surrogate mother was. The students were, in fact, quite baffled to learn from their English teacher that "doctors can take a man's, er ... genes ... and a woman's genes and put them together to make a baby and then put the baby in another lady if the first lady can't do it herself."

Forget "abstemious" -- maybe I should just start teaching sex ed.