A friend recently asked me if teaching sexuality education was my dream job. Indeed, it is. I feel I am able to offer students critical, life-saving information and support that is rare and so particularly important. I feel very blessed to have this opportunity to make a real difference, to offer real acceptance where it [...]
Archives for sex education
What’s wrong with abstinence?
Nothing! Abstinence is great. In fact, we talk rather extensively about abstinence in all of my middle and high school sex ed classes. It’s abstinence-only-until-marriage sex education that is the problem. But while I can tell you this - and in fact, you may believe me - I think you’ll have more fun learning about [...]
How To Lose Your Virginity (And Maybe Reclaim the Other-V-Word While We’re At It)
The first book on virginity loss that I want to talk about is How To Lose Your Virginity (…and how not to) by Shawn Wickens.
Shawn describes his book as: “shocking, humorous, dangerous, sweet, & scandalous stories of the first time taken from 1,000 face-to-face interviews.” Shawn presents pretty much exactly what he promises. I’m not [...]
Suicides and tears
Today was a very emotional day in my college class. The topic was sexual orientation, which is generally a fun, thoughtful day where we pick apart the differences in ways of defining and understanding sexual attraction. Today I raced us through that part of the class so I could devote a substantial portion to a [...]
What is the purpose of (sex) education
In his back-to-school speech yesterday, President Obama had this to say about education in general:
But the truth is, an education is about more than getting into a good college or getting a good job when you graduate. It’s about giving each and every one of us the chance to fulfill our promise; to [...]
Why Middle School comprehensive sex ed?
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 [...]
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 [...]
What does prevention mean?
A friend of mine with a 7th grade daughter and I were just talking on the phone, and as we were saying goodbye, she mentioned that her friends with 7th grade children have disparate views on what prevention means. She didn’t have time to into what she meant, but wanted to save the conversation for [...]
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 [...]
