Story by Margaret High
Graphic by Jeni Rust
WHITEVILLE, N.C. — Jamika Lynch stands in front of roughly 55 primary colored polos and pimpled faces. Some of her students shift nervously in their seats as they wait to hear what Lynch will say.
She sets her purse decorated with colored condoms on the table and makes a joke about chlamydia.
Day One, Year One, of formal sex education for ninth graders at Whiteville High School.
Sex education in the Whiteville City Schools has always followed the state-mandated curriculum. Meaning one week out of the semester, a male coach sat in front of the classroom with pamphlets and awkwardly asked if students had any questions.
Brett Harwood, head baseball coach and P.E. instructor at Whiteville High for almost 20 years, said he was perfectly fine with that. He didn’t feel like it was his place to teach some of the subject material.
Then Jamika Lynch came to Whiteville.
***
A few months after getting students comfortable in the classroom, Lynch introduces the infamous “transmission game.”
Each student gets an index card. One student gets a card with an “A” written on it. Two students get cards with “C,” one student gets a “D” and the rest have “U.”
“I usually give the ‘D’ card to someone I know can handle it,” Lynch says.
The classroom simulates a party. Lynch lets a student play whatever music they want, even if it has cussing. Students circulate, talk to each other and write down every person they interact with.
Once time is up, the students return to their seats with their card and all the names on it.
Lynch asks the person with the “D” card to stand up. That person has gonorrhea. Anyone who talked to that person has to stand up, too. They also have gonorrhea. Anyone who talked to someone standing up has gonorrhea, too.
At this point, everyone is standing up. But the “A” gets to sit down. They abstained from sex; they don’t have gonorrhea. The two “C” cards also get to sit down. They used condoms.
Only three students are seated. The rest of the classroom had unprotected sex, allowing the gonorrhea to spread like gossip.
The classroom erupts. There’s a bunch of banter, yelling about how they would never have sex with a certain classmate, or how some of them were gay for having hypothetical sex with another man.
Amirria Weir, a sophomore from Whiteville High, says the boy in her class who had gonorrhea, the “D” card, stood there for a little bit, soaked up the chaos, then looked up at Lynch.
“Dang,” he said, “that’s really all it takes?”
“Just like that,” Lynch said.
“That’s it, don’t touch me,” he joked. “Don’t talk to me. We all getting STDs if you do!”
***
Eight years ago, there were no teen pregnancy prevention programs in Columbus County. The Health Department provided sexual health care, but minimal education. The Whiteville and Columbus County school systems weren’t satisfying that void.
Whiteville is the county seat for Columbus County. In 2010, before Lynch moved to Whiteville, the county ranked eighth highest. Now, in 2018, it’s dropped to 15th.
Columbus County experienced a 13.2 percent decrease in teenage pregnancies last year. It’s part of an eight-year national downward trend of teen birth rates. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention attributes access to birth control and an increase in education for the decline.
Teaching comprehensive sex education is what Lynch does.
In 2010, Lynch was awarded a $75,000 Teen Pregnancy Prevention Initiative (TPPI) grant, which enabled her to start teaching community-based sex education.
That meant speaking to the two churches that allowed her in, information booths at the county fair and after school programs.
For more impact, Lynch had to saturate the two school systems.
“It took a lot of effort,” says Carol Caldwell, director of the DREAM Center, a local nonprofit. “Initially, it wasn’t something (the Whiteville City Schools) opened their arms to. It took a lot of perseverance and a lot of community pressure.”
That, and Coach Harwood didn’t want to teach sex education.
Because of Harwood’s long tenure at Whiteville High, he was able to use his influence to get Lynch in as a guest lecturer. He was the tiny crack in the glass that allowed her to break in.
Harwood talked to then-principal Jess Sealey, who approved the program in the school.
“Jess was always supportive of Jamika,” Harwood says. “We both knew this was something our school needed, and she was the person to do it.”
When Lynch arrived, she knew she was going to shake the fabric of the traditional, Southern high school.
It didn’t take long.
North Carolina law says parents are allowed to withdraw their children from classes they feel uncomfortable with, a privilege Kyle Hutchinson, the other P.E. coach, made sure to let parents know.
He sent students home with permission slips informing parents of Lynch’s class. If students didn’t return the paper signed, they would be withheld from the class. A half a dozen or so boys weren’t allowed to participate.
“That was covering my own butt,” Hutchinson says. “I didn’t want any parent mad. I mean legally speaking, we’re teaching the same curriculum, but she’s able to be a bit more blunt about it.”
After the first semester, school policy changed and students were only withheld from her class if their parents wrote the school, not if they failed to return a paper slip.
“Parents are the biggest road block,” Lynch says. “There are a lot of misconceptions about comprehensive sex education. They also don’t believe their children are having sex. Well, guess what? They are.”
After so many withdrawals from the class, Lynch grew disheartened. Saying the word “sex” was enough to yank curious minds out of the classroom.
“It’s so taboo,” Bush says. “If they would just listen to the program, because the very first thing she does it talks about abstinence. Complete abstinence.”
The taboo is what stops Randy Coleman, a member of the Columbus County school board, from allowing Lynch’s class into the county school system. Whiteville and Columbus County have different school districts.
Coleman remembers what his sex education class was like. He says there wasn’t much learning going on. He never learned about condoms, STDs or a morning-after pill. As a parent of a son in college and a 10-year-old daughter, Coleman believes the school has no place teaching sex education.
“I would vote against having that class in my school,” Coleman says. “It’s the parent’s place to instill those values and morals. It’s the teacher’s place to support what I’m saying. And a lot of times, those school books contradict what the Christian values say.”
While the CDC credits comprehensive sex education for the decline in teen pregnancy in Columbus County, Coleman attributes an influx of new Christians in the area.
“Younger kids are getting involved in the church,” Coleman says. “My preacher tells us what we need to be telling the kids. I think that helps.”
Lynch’s class is far from Bible study. Things can get uncomfortable in the classroom, but Weir says Lynch makes everything seem normal.
That means going around the classroom and sharing preferred pronouns.
The first time Lynch introduced preferred pronouns, students scoffed. There aren’t many openly gay students at Whiteville High. There aren’t many transgender or queer students, either.
Students stared in shock as they realized Lynch was actually making them share their preferred pronouns. She gave a quick speech about what it means to choose your pronouns and allowed the teenagers to think about their response.
“Then,” Lynch says, “you start to see it clicking.”
After a handful of standard responses, like the football player laughing and saying “he/him,” the room grew solemn. They were taking it seriously.
Lynch’s nine-week course covers condom use, birth control methods, defining consent, defining healthy relationships, decision-making, peer pressure and understanding sexuality.
“You can really tell she takes her job seriously,” Weir says. “She lets us joke around and have fun as long as we understood the statistics behind it. She was telling us how to be protected but in a fun setting.”
A handful of curious teachers have sat in on her classes, bewildered as unexpected students participate in discussions.
Sometimes that means students asking about anal sex, but Lynch doesn’t flinch. Instead, she asks what they wanted to know about it.
“Because sometimes, they’re just trying to see if they’re normal,” Lynch says. “I don’t allow anything in my class to shock me.”
Lynch also doesn’t allow race, gender or socio-economic class influence her classroom.
In 2017, Columbus County reported 82 pregnancies among 15-19-year-old girls, which translates to 47.2 percent per 1,000 girls in that age range. Out of those pregnancies, 63.2 percent were African American and 34.2 percent were white. There isn’t enough data to provide a percentage on Hispanic teen pregnancies.
Lynch uses that data to tell students unprotected sex doesn’t care who you are, who your parents are, what kind of money you have, or how popular you are.
While teen pregnancies have steadily declined since 2009, sexually transmitted diseases and sexually transmitted infections are almost at crisis levels across the nation. North Carolina has some of the highest chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis rates in the country.
Lessons like the transmission game hit home with students about how easy sexually transmitted infections spread. Weir says it shows abstinence and condoms are the only way to be protected.
“Her class helps you make wiser choices on what you do,” Weir says. “At first, I didn’t like talking about this stuff, but she broke us in. I feel like I actually remember all the information she told us.”
Maybe it’s the flavored condoms everyone, including boys, get to taste, or maybe it’s the stickers she hands out about birth control. It just feels normal.
JoAnne Biser, school nurse at Whiteville High, says there’s anecdotal evidence of Lynch’s work. When Biser started at WHS in 2007, there were no teenage mothers programs.
After the inaugural teenage mother’s support program started by Biser in 2008, there were 13 girls enrolled. The girls were expectant mothers recommended to Biser to receive information about health care available to them.
This year, Biser has two girls enrolled.
“It’s the one thing where you’re like, I’m so glad there aren’t many people coming,” Biser says. “I’m so glad there are less people. They key to a lot of it is education.”
Education about sex, STDs, consent, condoms, respect. Education that prevents teenage pregnancy. Education that keeps more girls in school.
“My whole point is for them to be informed,” Lynch says. “These are my babies, too. I have their best interest in mind.”
It’s an emotional controversy that has prevailed in the county for many years, county school board member Coleman says. He wants his children to follow the Bible, which he calls the blueprint for life. Hutchinson, who also leans conservative, says there are some things Lynch talks about that no other teacher would dare mention.
She’s aware what she’s teaching is unconventional for the area. It’s evident her mission isn’t widely accepted; her office in the Columbus County Health Department resembles a closet. A bulletin board is tucked away on the back wall, filled with stickers advocating for LGBTQ rights, condom use and birth control.
Most of the content on that bulletin board used to be on display right underneath her nameplate. A nurse filed a complaint, saying the queer rights sticker made them uncomfortable.
“I have hopes that my small voice will make Columbus County open minded to sexuality,” Lynch says. “And that isn’t just intercourse.”
55 students? Is that legal? Why are they wearing primary colored polos?
Sorry to nit-pick. Overall, your story is making very valuable points. And the principal is absolutely correct, if parents don’t believe their teenagers are having sex, then they are in denial and they are doing their children a serious disservice. If students don’t learn these lessons in the classroom, then they are not equipped to date or have healthy relationships; didn’t they learn how to say “No” and won’t learn that they have to listen.