School Nurse Perspectives
Thoughts, Tools, Resources and Inspiration for School Nurses
Gerri Harvey, RN, MEd
School Nurse's Hygiene Class Grade 5
Inspired by Shel Silverstein's poem, The Dirtiest Man in the World, I wrote the kid version, The Dirtiest Kid in the World, to use in my fifth grade classes. I begin the class by doing a dramatic reading of the poem.
The Dirtiest Kid in the World
By Gerri Harvey
With thanks, inspiration and a few borrowed lines from Shel Silverstein's poem
The Dirtiest Man in the World
Oh, I'm Dirty Sid, The World's Dirtiest Kid
I never take baths or showers
I can't see my shirt, it's so covered with dirt
And my ears have enough to grow flowers.
Whenever my mother sends me to bathe
I gingerly get in the tub
I try not to get too much of me wet
And I never "Rub-a-dub-dub"!
The showers are either too hot or too cold
But sometimes I stand there and rinse
I've always felt if I get wet I might melt
So I am pretty hard to convince.
I don't brush my teeth, I don't wash my hair
I try to avoid touching soap
My clothes often reek cuz I wear them all week
And my sneakers stink beyond hope.
I think that my sneakers wouldn't be bad
If I wore socks on my feet now and then
I tried that once, kept them on for 6 months
But they smelled worse than they'd ever been.
I don't wash my face, except once a year
And my nails, I don't scrub or cut them
In my hair can be seen glitter from last Halloween
And my eyelashes stick when I shut them.
The thought of a towel and soap makes me howl
So when people have something to tell me
They don't come up and tell it- they stand back and yell it
I think they're afraid they might smell me.
Now what I want to know, what I want to find out
The changes that need to be made
To change this whole scene and make myself clean
Now that I'm in fifth grade.
So kids can you help me and possibly tell me
I think there's some secret knack
I don't want to stink and I really do think
It's time that I clean up my act!
The kids laugh and grimace, but then we set to work on the lesson, doing a head to toe analysis of what the dirty kid, Sid, needs to do to clean up his act. The kids volunteer advice to Sid, coached by me. I make sure we cover hair, ears, face, teeth, nails, arm pits, clean underwear, socks, feet, smelly sneakers, and the need for daily baths now that they are getting closer to having teenage bodies. I discuss apocrine sweat glands and how they differ.
It's fun in to include a few polls in the discussion, like
'How many of you don't take a bath unless your parents say you have to?"
Many kids raise their hand on this one, so it's a good time to introduce the idea that they are old enough to take responsibility themselves.
We also coach Sid through the steps of taking a shower, including the importance of soap (it makes water wetter!) and friction from a wash cloth. I remind them that standing under the running water doesn't count, and explain how germs hang on to the oil and dead skin cells for dear life.
I also make sure I give them a graphic description of microscopic odor-causing germs munching away and excreting in unwashed arm pits and skin folds, causing body odor, or in their mouths if they don't brush.
Far from being a sterile hygiene lesson of old, I strive to make the lesson relevent to the students, suggesting how a girl Sid likes will react to his smile if he has gunk on his teeth.
I end the lesson by letting kids know that if they do not have access to hot water, shampoo, soap, or a tooth brush, that they can see me privately to get some they can take home. I do have a shower in my office and also let them know that sometimes, families have problems and there isn't a way to get a shower at home, and that students are allowed to use mine, to just come see me privately.
The key to this lesson, as with all the others, is not to do all the talking, but to engage the students in a dialogue that allows them to come up with their own answers, which you can then discuss and expand upon.
