Oh abstinence-only-until-marriage…you disappoint me so much. Seeing this job, this work that I love so much forced into a mold that is so distorting of what is good and meaningful about sexuality makes me sad. Which is why, given that I am here, in Texas, where so many students receive poorly conceived, distorted understandings of… Read more »
Ontario Sex Ed Update! In an update on the Ontario, Canada sex ed curriculum revisions, which we brought to your attention in the January 20th Sex Ed Roundup, Premiere Kathleen Wynne held a press on January 26th to announce that the topic of consent has officially been included in the sex ed curriculum that will… Read more »
I’ve been attending basketball games regularly for the first time this academic year. My older daughter is playing basketball – and really loving it! In fact, I just got back from a game tonight. (My daughter wasn’t playing – but we knew many of the girls who were.) It was one of those games where… Read more »
I’ve been thinking about puberty more recently, and how to go about addressing a topic that can range from the very, deeply emotional to something that is barely noticed. My own experience with puberty was relatively easy. I certainly wasn’t traumatized by the experience, but I know people who were. And so this week I am… Read more »
Merry Christmas-Eve-Eve, if that’s your holiday of choice. It is for me and my family. We usually note Solstice in one way or another. We talk about Hanukah and and Kwanzaa as they relate to families we know. But for us, it’s all about a secular Christmas morning after Santa has visited. We model new… Read more »
Today, the Monday before Christmas, I find myself sitting at my father’s kitchen table. My family is bustling around, working, cleaning, cooking. There are laundry and dishes being washed. A lot is happening. A lot of good. It’s making me grateful for family, communication, and other good things. So today and tomorrow I’m writing about lessons… Read more »
Today I’m wrapping up the conversations around the first section of Volume 2 of Teaching Safer Sex. This awareness of contraception education as needing to include a wider range of both topics (like pleasure!) and audiences (like people with special needs!) is fantastic, critical, life-changing! And this last topic of the section falls right into the trend of addressing a… Read more »
Learning your ABCs…it happened so long ago, in such wonderful, family-oriented, sing-songy ways, right? I mean, surely everyone’s early childhood was filled with Sesame-Street-style-goodness? No? Hm. Well, okay then, maybe at this point at least, as adults, literacy comes easily to everyone? Wait, what? That’s not so? Okay, okay, okay, then at least we all… Read more »
Yesterday I wrote about LGBTQAI individuals being left out of safer sex conversations. They do, however, get included in many conversations about healthy relationships and more. People with special needs, however, are endemically left out of sexuality education in all ways. Today’s lesson goes a little way towards addressing that vast gap as it applies… Read more »
On to Lesson 2 from Section 1 of Volume 2 of Teaching Safer Sex! (And if all of those designations being needed to differentiate the variety of options that Teaching Safer Sex offers educators doesn’t make you want to run out and buy a copy I don’t know what will!) This lesson lands near and dear to… Read more »
Continuing my ongoing conversation about Teaching Safer Sex, I want to dive into the first section of volume 2. This section, called “Getting Into a (New) Groove,” and is described this way: “These are not your everyday safer sex lessons! Lessons in this section examine STI prevention through the lens of sensuality, decision-making and inclusivity… Read more »
It’s November 19th today. That means the National Sex Ed Conference is a short thirteen days away. This year, I’m co-chairing the event, which means I’m neck deep in emails with varying levels of frantic tones behind them. Because I’m not quite keeping up with the pace of emails and I’m a few more emails… Read more »
I was flipping through lesson plans, looking for something on adoption to note National Adoption Month, when this activity leapt out of the table of contents and demanded that I pay attention. I mean, National Adoption Day is still a week or so away, and how on earth could I pass up something about reality… Read more »
While today’s lesson plan isn’t focused specifically on LARCs, as the rest of the week has been, the organization of the lesson definitely focuses on the differences between LARCs and other common hormonal contraceptive methods. LARCs stand in a class of their own regarding ease of use and effectiveness – something students benefit from knowing,… Read more »
On to the third lesson plan about LARCs in Positive Images! This time we’ve moved on from general education about LARCs and the misconceptions associated with them to the contraceptive decision making process. When I teach college level Human Sexuality (generally in a Psychology Department), I teach content like the details of contraception as a… Read more »
Continuing our LARC conversation from Monday, today I’m going to focus on a lesson called, quite cleverly, On A LARC. This lesson plan is also from Positive Images. I like that it builds on Introducing LARCs, dispelling myths, addressing benefits more deeply, and making the idea of a long acting contraceptive more accessible to students…. Read more »
Last weekend I taught a pregnancy options counseling training for nurses at the New York City Health Department – a program called Connecting Adolescents to Comprehensive Health (CATCH). The program generally and the specific nurses and health educators who I met just impressed the pants off of me. The program is entirely data driven –… Read more »
October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month. I’ve already written a little about my personal relationship with domestic violence, so today (and for the rest of the week) I want to focus on domestic violence, but in a slightly different sort of way. Today, I want to talk about the Declaration of Sexual Rights from the… Read more »
Every now and then I wander over to Yik Yak, that location-based nightmare of a web app that swept the country last year, leaving a swath of social media wreckage in high schools. (And continues to on college campuses.) The app has been disabled on and near high school campuses, but not until it raised… Read more »
October is LGBTQ history month – and I’m thinking about that today, as I sit here at my computer. And so I’m also thinking about Jallen Rix’s movie Lewd & Lascivious: 1965: Drag Queens, Ministers, and the SFPD, the Stonewall riots (June 28th was the 45th anniversary), and Matthew Shepard (October 6th was the 16th… Read more »
