On Sunday, February 26, I was one of 40 educators who had the opportunity to attend a Sex Education workshop hosted by the British Columbia’s Teachers’ Federation (BCTF). Even though this workshop was a follow-up to last semester’s Sex Ed workshop , I could easily follow along.
The workshop addressed the “what” (i.e. the content) of teaching the sexual health curriculum in BC to students at all levels from K-12. In this workshop I learned about the many valuable resources that teachers can use to develop lessons and satisfy the curriculum. I learned about the responsibility teachers have in delivering lessons that are sex positive, inclusive, and accurate. Since I entered this workshop feeling not completely comfortable with teaching students in this is subject area, I appreciated how the workshop was extremely sex positive and aimed to empower educators to create an inclusive and comprehensive sexual health education program. After completing this workshop, I feel more comfortable in teaching Sex Ed and feel better equipped to talk about and lead students in important discussions about sexual health.
Here is a link to the handouts from the 3 hour workshop!
While participating in this workshop, I wrote down some of the important points that I felt were most significant.
As Sex Ed Educators…
- We must be inclusive and positive.
- We need to be familiar with the language, curriculum, and resources.
- We need to be comfortable teaching this.
- We must model comfort and competence to students.
Roles and Responsibilities of the sexual health educator:
- Professional
- not personal. In an attempt to build empathy, teachers might try to share a story which is not appropriate. But you could tell a story that surrounds how awkward it can be to approach talking about sex ed.
- Rehearsed
- Youth do not share accurate info with each other, it’s often exaggerated.
- Knowledgeable
- Be aware as what you’re saying when your teaching. Your body language and facial expressions is also how you’re teaching your kids.
- Critical
- They need to know that they can trust our criticism, and we should teach them to be critical of some sources, ex. Porn.
- Open Minded
- be sex positive
- Trustworthy
- Students need to know that the information you share is reliable and accurate. Students must feel safe and respected in the classroom environment. Build and establish trusting relationships with students.
- Confident
Miss Webster Learns 