Most middle school students are not yet sexually active. Many of them are not even on the skinny end of the sexually active bell curve (that is, they don’t have boyfriends or girlfriends yet, they haven’t had a first kiss, they might not have even started their periods or had their [...]
Archives for educational psychology
Why are we learning this again?
I spend a lot of my time teaching, and I love it. Sometimes I teach classes that are associated with formal schooling, and so I need to formally grade my students. Other times I teach informal classes through churches, private schools, or parenting groups and I do not grade my students.
Ultimately, I prefer the non-grading [...]
Summer school
My first college summer class teaching human sexuality starts today. I’ve taught summer school before, but it’s generally been developmental psychology or educational psychology or one of those other topics I teach on occasion. Experiencing a classroom that is focused on sex is just different than other topics, and so I wonder what this whip-lash [...]
Teaching about rape
Rape is one topic that I have a harder time covering than most. Part of the issue is that I’m never quite sure how the class is going to react. Here are two extreme examples from my college classes:
Last semester one of my college classes on rape was dramatic and emotional. Every single woman in [...]
What they need to know about gay
Through a round-about series of events I ended up having a late Saturday night dinner with a lovely woman from a local non-profit who teaches sex and health educators how to teach their content effectively. We spoke specifically about how - and what - to teach young people about sexual orientation. It’s gotten me thinking [...]
A letter to parents everywhere
Dear Friends,
I’ll be frank: I understand that the young people in your family are probably very busy, far too busy to enroll in another class. I know your kids are going to be tapped-to-the-extreme this year. I also know that most - not all, but most - young people have an absolute need to have [...]
The pedogogical decision to teach sex education
There has been a lot of talk recently about how Toronto teenagers want more sex education. They’re asking for it all over the place, apparently, given the number of excited newspapers and blogs who are going on at length about it. And don’t get me wrong - I am so glad that adults are listening [...]
Educational psychology and sex ed
My Ph.D. is in Educational Psychology. My time in graduate school was relatively evenly split between researching, reading, and talking about (1) how teenagers grow and develop, particularly around issues of sex and sexuality, and (2) how people learn, and how to support their learning in the most effective ways possible. This prepared me pretty [...]
