I’ve been reading through Changes, Changes, Changes recently, and so I want to focus on puberty education this week. When I work with young people, I am always interested to know what they know and what they don’t know. Some groups seem beyond their age, knowledge-wise. They come into the classroom full of information (and… Read more »
This lesson is the one that gave the manual its title: Positive Images. When I first held this manual in my hands, I wasn’t quite sure what the title meant. The subtitle helped me out: Teaching about Contraception and Sexual Health. And then I could piece it together a little more: these lessons are all… Read more »
I love history, the kind of history that offers meaningful, engaging, contextualizing information about something relevant to my current life and culture. I hate the kind of history that has devolved into a list of facts and names that I can’t connect to. I’m glad that there are people out there who enjoy that kind… Read more »
Young people are often more able to talk about safe sex and sexual decisions with their friends than they are their partners. This makes sense for a lot of reasons. Friend groupings tend to segregate by sex from middle through late childhood, as conversations about sex and sexuality start to become more frequent within friend… Read more »
Happy Monday, everyone! This week I’m looking into Positive Images. This manual focuses on contraception, with a specific focus on how people judge contraception and the people who access it. The introduction of the third (and current) edition includes the following: “This edition of Positive Images continues the tradition of creating positive images of contraception and… Read more »
My friends and family are trivia geeks of all flavors. From Star Trek to baseball, they do love the details. Trivial Pursuit was one of the most often games played in my house when I was young. I’ll admit to being a sex trivia geek. So a game called Sex Ed Trivia? Sign me up!… Read more »
Last weekend I was at a huge swing-dance-camping-party that I help host every year, and fell into a conversation with a young woman who wants to get pregnant sometime in the next year. She and her partner are starting small, with education and prenatal vitamins and will get more serious about conception in a few… Read more »
Continuing with our Game On! week, today I’m talking about the fifth game in the manual: Private One: The What, Where, and How of Privacy. Privacy is such an important issue for all people. Learning the art of disclosure is often a life-long process. There are so many ways to go with this topic, I… Read more »
It’s a game week again! I’m almost half way through Game On!, which is both exciting and a little sad. It feels like it’s going to be a good week when I dive into this little manual, looking for something that will engage, educate, and enliven my sex ed classrooms! I have mostly focused on… Read more »
Moving away from Sex Ed in the Digital Age, but staying with our week’s theme on how to encourage intergenerational conversations about sexuality education, we are picking up a lesson from Teaching Safer Sex. Regardless of the age of the participants in this lesson plan, they get to have a really good conversation about responsibility…. Read more »
Following up on yesterday’s post on parenting in the digital age, today’s lesson plan also comes from Sex Ed in the Digital Age. It takes yesterday’s topic and builds on it, engaging parents (and professionals) on a deeper level of analysis of adolescent developmental needs. I love this focus on adolescent needs and how, when,… Read more »
I am away this week, working with the United Nations Population Fund in Zimbabwe to create parent-child communication materials. I’ve posted a little bit about materials for or about parents here in the past, but this week it will be my focus. The lesson today comes from Sex Ed in the Digital Age. It’s an… Read more »
The last lesson for this week focused on parents and other adults comes from Making Sense of Abstinence. I was pretty sure I had already written about this lesson plan, but I can’t find the blog post, so I guess not! It aims to support youth in beginning (or continuing, I suppose) an intergenerational conversation… Read more »
Yesterday I wrote about women’s second sexual wind in mid and later life, and today the focus is on men. The assumptions that exist in our popular culture about male sexuality during the aging process is not a particularly rosy picture. Popular opinion seems to hold that good sex for men requires a strong, firm,… Read more »
There are two lesson plans in Older, Wiser, Sexually Smarter that are called Get a Second Wind. The first is for women, the second for men, and the focus is sexuality at mid and later life. Today and tomorrow I’m going to highlight these two lessons. The assumption that older people slow down sexually is… Read more »
I love it that the second lesson plan in Older, Wiser, Sexually Smarter is all about sexual humor. Humans turn to humor so often when we feel unsettled, uncomfortable, or unsure about how we should be approaching something. And so our extravagant repertoire of sexual jokes has no shortage of jokes about sexuality and aging…. Read more »
I’ve been thinking about the illustrious Peggy Brick recently, and her amazing and groundbreaking work with older adults and sexuality. So this week we are delving into Older, Wiser, Sexually Smarter. This manual, written in 2009, includes 30 sex ed lesson plans for older adults. I’ve pulled a few lesson plans from this manual into… Read more »
Yesterday’s post was all about decision making and values clarification about abstinence. Today’s lesson is for young people who want to move forward with abstinence in the immediate future. When someone chooses to remain abstinent, they need to talk with current or potential romantic partners about that decision in a way that offers love, support,… Read more »
It’s time, today and tomorrow, to dive into supporting students in re-visioning abstinence. The choice to refrain from sexual activity is such an important one! It remains unclear to me why people would restrict this opportunity to people who were willing to do it all the way until they were married. Instead, I think we… Read more »
Abstinence means many things to many people. Among other things, it may or may not include masturbation. Being sexual with yourself carries none of the risks of being sexual with another person (physically or emotionally) and has loads of benefits. And so, included in Making Sense of Abstinence, is this awesome lesson on masturbation. (The title… Read more »
