This week I seem stuck on anatomy. It’s not my usual focus – I prefer the more social and emotional sex ed topics – so it’s probably good for me to focus on the more practical every now and then. Today’s lesson from Changes, Changes, Changes is about anatomy and vocabulary. These topics are inevitably… Read more »
Yesterday’s post was about anatomy – the kind with penises and testicles and ejaculation. So today’s lesson from Changes, Changes, Changes is about another kind of reproductive anatomy: the kind with ovaries and a uterus. This particular lesson just cracks me up. I haven’t actually run through it with a group of middle school students,… Read more »
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 »
I frequently use an analogy when I talk with parents about how to manage their own emotions during their children’s adolescence: Your teens may be on an emotional and physical roller coaster. But that’s no reason for you to get on. Stay on the ground, your feet firmly planted, watch your teen ride, and be… Read more »
I am a fan of crowdsourcing information, which is what this activity, from the Puberty Basics chapter in Changes, Changes, Changes, asks students to do. Or rather, what it can do, depending on how the teacher decides to implement it. EXPERIENCING PUBERTY True or False Exercise By the end of… Read more »
The Puberty Basics lessons included in Changes, Changes, Changes are as follows: Physical Anatomy And Puberty Changes Experiencing Puberty How Hormones Affect Puberty Changes Life Is A Roller Coaster Ride Puberty Sketchionary Pop Goes Puberty Cleaning Up Misconceptions About Acne Good And Secret Touch As I read over this list and considered which lesson to… Read more »
I am still in Zimbabwe this week, and I am still listening, learning, and taking in this amazing country and people. I may blog about my experiences here, but I feel the need to just drink everything in right now rather than talking about it quite yet. In the meantime, I am going to… 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 »
Ontario Sex Ed Update! Ontario, Canada’s new sex ed curriculum, which we reported back in February would include issues of consent, premiered two weeks ago. The Windsor Star reported on March 8th that a poll released by Forum Research showed a 49 percent approval rate for the new curriculum, with 34 percent of Ontarians disapporving,… 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 »
