Get Teaching Safer Sex at a discount!

Yep, that’s right! The Center for Sex Education doesn’t always offer manuals on sale, but when it does, it’s a good one! Why are we offering the sale, you ask? The website SexualHealthRankings.com just released a report identifying the BEST and WORST places to have safe sex. (See more here: http://sexualhealthrankings.com/shr3/safer-sex-index.html.) The survey measured a variety of indicators,… Read more »

Some thoughts on bullying and sex

Continuing my post from last week about bullying, today I am pondering what, exactly, constitutes bullying and how it relates to sexuality, sexual activities, etc. When we talk about bullying on a larger scale, I rarely see sexual contact as an integral part of that conversation. For example, bullying is rarely talked about as something… Read more »

No more bullying!

I am thinking a lot about bullying these days, and so as I’m going through CSE manuals, I’m looking for those lessons that support participants as they stand firm in their own identities and sexual decisions. I’ve already talked about many lesson plans that address this issue, like Protect Yourself from Positive Images (about partner… Read more »

Family worries

I had a parent ask me last week how I would approach a new sexual partner. She was getting at her concern for her daughter, who is single and sexually active, and whether her daughter would actually be able to ask about her partner’s STI status – or whether any sex at all was just… Read more »

Safer sex is all well and good when it happens to someone else

Yep, that is the approach that most people take. Safer sex adds teeny tiny additional points to talk about and consider to a sexual connection. We have come, in the US, to see sex as something that we deserve to have hassle- and worry-free. I’m sure that it’s all the media stories – movies, music, TV, even advertisements!… Read more »

The ABCs of HPV

There are two sexually transmitted infections that I find students are the most routinely confused about in class: HPV and Herpes. (It doesn’t help that Herpes is referred to medically as the Herpes Simplex Virus, or HSV.) Today I want to talk about HPV: There are so many strains, they do such apparently different things… Read more »

That thing…you know, THAT one!

Yesterday’s lesson was an STI game…bingo…or shall I say BINGO!! (Sing it with me now…B…I…N…G…O…and Bingo was his name-o!) Today’s lesson from Teaching Safer Sex is somewhat more staid, but no less important or impactful. Understanding STIs is apparently simple, and yet rampant misinformation plagues the popular conversation. From believing that anal sex carries little… Read more »

I win!

I’ll admit it, I’m a sucker for games. I’m blowing through the lessons in Game On! faster than any other manual, and I’ve decided I have to pace myself a little tiny bit. But…this game is from Teaching Safer Sex! So I’ve decided it doesn’t really count, even though it’s also included in Game On! … Read more »

Implicit to explicit

Sexuality education covers SO MANY different areas: law, biology, psychology, religion, history…I tend to say that if it’s something humans think about, it probably applies to sex too. As a subject matter to be taught and discussed, however, sexuality is often given a very short shift. Many of the schools I work in only give… Read more »

Lots of love

Someone recently mentioned an activity in Teaching Safer Sex to me that I hadn’t even heard of! Which means, clearly, I haven’t written about enough lessons from this awesome two-volume manual yet. So I’m going to dive deep this week, and maybe next, and maybe even the one after that if I get on a… Read more »

Talking sexting

Last week we dove into the communication section of Teaching Safer Sex – but I missed the last lesson plan in this section, so I’m going to catch up on it now! This lesson plan happens to be about one of my favorite subject matters: sex and technology. Because so much romantic and sexual communication… Read more »

Oh condom, my condom!

Coming off of yesterday’s post encouraging participants to talk about safer sex in general, today’s lesson plan from Teaching Safer Sex is about condoms and considering the reasons people don’t talk about them, the cultural stigma around them, and how to bring them up and talk about them anyway.   CONDOM TALK Practice Makes Perfect… Read more »

Responsibility

Safer sex – we talk about it all the time. We offer condom demonstrations and detailed information about contraceptive options. We give away condoms. We take trips to clinics to teach about STI testing. So much goes into the education we provide about safer sex. And we need to be sure that the conversations that… Read more »

Using the words that trip the conversation

Continuing this week’s focus on the communication lessons from Teaching Safer Sex (volume 1, section 4), today’s lesson has one of those classic and timeless titles. It gets to the point, it reminds you what you’re there fore, and it is a lovely little play on our culture’s hang-ups with language. And that’s what it’s… Read more »

Talk talk talk talk

This week it’s all about Teaching Safer Sex! Did you know that TSS was the recipient of the AASECT Book Award? Yep. It’s pretty great! All of the Teaching Safer Sex lessons were recently uploaded to the Sex Ed Network, so if you become a Network member you’ll have immediate access to this and hundreds… Read more »

Friends don’t let friends…

This morning I heard a young person talking about trust – and how organizations absolutely must develop trust with their clients or they won’t be able to do anything at all. Young people won’t accept help from someone they don’t trust. This is an idea that could boom around the world. What does it mean… Read more »

What lies beyond the clinic doors

Today my daughter left the US for ten days in Brazil. It’s overwhelming, as a mother, to put her on a plane for such a trip. (Important to note, she’s going with my mother, so it’s hardly like she’s without resources.) Leading up to this trip, though, we needed to access medical attention to address… Read more »

Quality healthcare: As good as a sunrise

You know what’s kind of a cool part of writing 500 Lessons in 500 Days? Learning – and deeply thinking – about all of the sexuality related days and months. This week is National Healthcare Quality Week. This summer my older daughter was hospitalized in Germany for heart issues, so high quality health care has… Read more »

September 27th: National Gay Men’s HIV/AIDS Awareness Day

It is not yet the National Gay Men’s HIV/AIDS Awareness Day – that will be this Saturday, on September 27th – but there’s so much going on this week I’m jumping ahead of myself, calendar-wise. The Center for Sex Education doesn’t have a manual about STIs – although I hear rumors of an old one about… Read more »