Giving Your Parents “The Talk” – High School

Summary: This lesson was designed to help students initiate a conversation with a parent or caregiver about sexuality. Students brainstorm and discuss creative and useful ways to approach the subject of sexuality with a caring adult. The activity is designed to do with class before assigning My Communication Diary.

My Communication Diary

Summary: This lesson was designed to help students initiate a conversation with a parent or caregiver about sexuality. Students interview a caring adult on the topic of  sexuality over the course of several days. Should follow the activity Giving Your Parents “The Talk” – High School

Back in the Day Homework – Middle School 

Summary: This lesson was designed to help students initiate a conversation with a parent or caregiver about sexuality. Students interview a caring adult on the topic of  sexuality over the course of several days. Should follow the activity Giving Your Parents “The Talk” – Middle School

Giving Your Parents “The Talk” – Middle School

Summary: This lesson was designed to help students initiate a conversation with a parent or caregiver about sexuality. Students brainstorm and discuss creative and useful ways to approach the subject of sexuality with a caring adult. The activity is designed to do before assigning Back in the Day Homework.

View all these lessons at: http://www.sexedlibrary.org/index.cfm?pageId=737

Pregnancy Options Discussion

View these lessons at: http://www.sexedlibrary.org/index.cfm?pageId=762

I Just Wanna Be Me! Bodies in the Media

Summary: Students work in small groups to identify the media’s unrealistic expectations of men’s and women’s bodies, while also setting realistic guidelines for self-esteem and body image.

View this lesson at: http://www.sexedlibrary.org/index.cfm?pageId=772

Prom season is in full force, which can only mean a couple of things — teen dreams turn to fancy dresses, party buses, last hurrahs, after parties and making the most of an evening built up as the night to end all high school nights.

For some, the festivities also means sex, sometimes for the first time, sometimes for the 101st time. That choice, regardless of how many times prior, can also mean unintended consequences like sexually transmitted diseases or pregnancy. Neither are probably the crowning achievement on which a senior wants to end his or her high school career.

A condom company a week or so back sent out a press release apparently trying to curb these issues. NuVo Condoms announced it would give free supplies to any high school for distribution specifically before prom. The company quoted a report finding one in five 17-year-olds plan to go all the way the first time on prom night and added it was not condoning post-prom moments but wanted to make sure they were safe.
Sounds good.

Sure, underneath the altruism was obviously a marketing ploy. But generosity and good deeds don’t always come unwrapped in strings and gimmicks. If the outcome of the offer is still prevention, isn’t that all that really matters? The bigger question was if the offer is even a good idea. Would even open-minded Peninsula schools and parents balk? Would students even be confident enough to grab a condom or two under the watchful gaze of school administrators?

First, I tried the company itself just to see if anybody nationwide was taking them up on the offer. Crickets. Absolutely no response which frankly does not send a good message about their strategy and maybe even their product. Scratch that then. But specific marketing aside, was prom-specific distribution a good idea?

Confessing ignorance on the secret or maybe not-so-secret lives of teens, I asked a few what they thought. They mainly looked uncomfortable and offered up the popular “I don’t know” response which is more a reflection on our generation gap than their lack of opinion. They didn’t want to talk about those kinds of things with anyone twice their age. So how in the world would they ever be comfortable stockpiling contraception in public?

Again, I turned to someone much more educated than I.

Perryn Rowland, program director at San Mateo County-based Teen Talk, said teens are much more knowledgeable and open than previous generations. She called the idea interesting but said any prom condom distribution should be more than just a bowl in a bathroom. Instead, she prefers it being part of a comprehensive sex ed program and communication with parents about values and their own experiences.

Taking out the threat of not knowing what your kids are up to or learning can make parents more receptive. Giving kids the tools to discuss with their parents what they think rather than just assuming the worst can make students more willing to seek out contraception at prom or otherwise.

Like me, she’s not a big fan of the marketing — the reality is any clinic, organization or school can nab 1,000 condoms for $55 or so. “But I always think if it prevents one teen pregnancy or one STD infection, that’s a good thing,” she said.

Truth is, for all the marketing gimmicks and programs, some teens will still get pregnant or infected. Just offering condoms doesn’t necessarily ensure the teens will actually use them. Even adults might cringe a bit if they had to go ask the school nurse for a supply.

But it’s a start. And while NuVo’s offer may not be the best answer, it certainly could spark a conversation in local districts and schools about possibilities for next spring’s batch of formals or maybe all dances.

Schools already utilize breathalyzers to keep students safe — yes, also to make sure they aren’t breaking the law or won’t throw up mid-dance, but safety is a component. Are condoms much different?

Prom can still be the night to end all nights. Offering a little protection just helps make sure it’s also not the night to end — or at least drastically change — young dreams.

Find the article at: http://www.smdailyjournal.com/article_preview.php?id=234461&title=Overly%20protective

Jessica Bowen Bazyl is a Sexuality Education Consultant, currently working with Teen Talk Sexuality Education based in Redwood City, California. She developed a passion for working with adolescents during an internship with Planned Parenthood while completing her undergraduate degree at Northwestern University.

After graduating, she continued to work in reproductive health care and research, as well as sexuality education. After positions with the Youth Leadership Institute and University of California San Francisco, she earned her MPH in Community Health Education from San Francisco State University in 2005. “For me, getting my CHES certification immediately after my MPH was a no-brainer. It indicates that one takes the field of health education seriously and is dedicated to advancing one’s career,” she says.

In recent years she has worked with the American Lung Association, the Teen Pregnancy Coalition of San Mateo County, and San Francisco State University’s Center for Research on Gender and Sexuality. In her current position as Consultant with Teen Talk Sexuality Education, she is designing a puberty curriculum and teaching comprehensive sexuality education in middle schools and high schools throughout San Mateo County, California.

She sat for the first MCHES exam in October and received one of the two Top Scores for the inaugural exam. “Especially in the field of sexuality education, which is all-too often seen as controversial, earning the MCHES credential was very important to me. It shows colleagues, school administrators, teachers and parents that I am qualified to teach health education, that I follow a strict code of ethics, and that I am a leader in my field. Those five letters, which I am very proud to have earned, help to set me apart.”

Please view the full piece at Common Ground.

FREMONT (CBS 5) — As CBS 5 Investigates first reported last February, Fremont middle schools have been violating state law by teaching a curriculum called “abstinence-only until marriage”—a conservative sex education program which was giving kids inaccurate information about contraception.

Now, as the school board gets ready to vote on new programs that would meet state law requirements, it appears opponents are still fighting. But they’re fighting dirty, say health advocates, by sending out an anonymous e-mail to board members and parents.
The “S-O-S” e-mail attacks a proposed new curriculum called “Teen Talk”, that the e-mail calls “extreme sex training for children,” and which it claims includes giving kids “flavored lubricant and condom lollipops for your child’s sexual pleasure.”The email comes from a group calling itself “S-O-S”, which stands for “Save Our Schools”. There was no other identification, and CBS 5 Investigates received no response from a return e-mail to the group asking who they are.

But Teen Talk’s co-director Kris Ahmed says none of that is true.

“No, ‘Teen Talk’ is not giving out flavored lollipops for their child’s sexual pleasure. The statement is ridiculous,” Ahmed said.

“I feel that this email was written to scare parents so they would write to their school board members so that sex education will not happen in Fremont Unified”, Ahmed added.

Ahmed says “Teen Talk” is designed to meet California state law by teaching comprehensive sex education. Fremont has not been teaching a comprehensive program as required by the state.

Contrary to what Ahmed calls “inflammatory” accusations in the emails, she says Teen Talk does teach kids to abstain from sex, while also teaching contraception and health information as required by state law.

Ahmed believes some of those vocal opponents don’t have children in Fremont public schools.

“There’s a small minority group of people–some of which don’t even have children in the district”, Ahmed said. “And they do not wish for these students to receive sexuality education in the schools. They are a minority. And the majority of the parents want this education, they want their teens learning about birth control, and condoms, and abstinence.”

Even the district’s secondary education director, Dennis Brown, says tonight that much of what was in the email was inaccurate, but he says judging by the emails he’s received about it, he told us he believes the email got “significant distribution.”

It’s a clear attempt to influence the board and their vote Wednesday night; the email urges parents to email or call board members and show up at the meeting. The problem, advocates say, is that some of those parents will be responding to inaccurate and sensationalized information.

(CBS 5) – In the week since John McCain announced his choice of running mate, much has been learned a lot about Alaska Governor Sarah Palin’s beliefs. She endorses drilling for oil in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Palin supports teaching creationism, alongside evolution, in schools. And she believes in abstinence-only education, though she hasn’t tried to enact legislation reflecting that position.

Palin’s stance on sex education has received a lot of attention since she revealed that her 17-year-old daughter is pregnant—because abstinence-only proponents believe kids should not be taught about contraception, but simply be told not to have sex until they get married.

Her view is in line with a Bush administration program that will hand out over $200 million this year to promote the abstinence-only philosophy in schools across America. Palin’s home state of Alaska accepts more than $700,000 of that money each year. But California has rejected that funding.

“Abstinence-only is illegal in California,” said sex education researcher Phyllida Burlingame, who helped write the law. “Sometimes people think, ‘Well, what’s wrong with abstinence?’ There’s nothing wrong with teaching about abstinence, and that’s true. But abstinence-only denies young people the information that they need about condoms and contraception.”

“We all want to believe that if we tell teenagers to not have sex that they won’t have sex,” said Kris Ahmed, director of the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Coalition in San Mateo County. But in fact, she said, nearly half of all U.S. teens have sex at least once before they leave high school.

That’s one reason California law requires sex education classes to teach not only abstinence-but also medically accurate information to help prevent disease or pregnancy.

“We need to teach them about birth control,” insisted Ahmed. “We need to teach them about condoms. We need to teach them about sexually transmitted diseases. And not just tell them to not be sexually active. It’s not working.”

In fact, numerous studies show that abstinence-only programs are ineffective in reducing teen sex or preventing disease and pregnancy. Burlingame said abstinence-only is based on ideology, not health science.

“There are no mainstream science and public health agencies that support abstinence-only sex education. None,” said Burlingame.

But just because it is against the law to teach abstinence-only in California doesn’t mean it’s not happening here. A CBS 5 Investigates probe found Fremont schools using an abstinence-only curriculum with misleading information about condoms, in apparent violation of state law.

“We need to do whatever we can to make sure that our young people are safe,” said Burlingame. “So denying them information, providing them with misinformation is doing them a huge disservice.”

Over the past decade, the federal government has given states more than $1 billion for abstinence-only education. California is the only state that never took the money. Recently 24 other states have stopped accepting abstinence-only funding as well.

by Nicole Neroulias, STAFF WRITER

REDWOOD CITY

THE BIRDS chirped, the bees buzzed and the teens giggled while a PBS television film crew recorded the sex education program Wednesday at Sequoia High School.

Teen Talk, the 10-hour program taught by Teen Talk Sexuality Education, will represent one type of sex education course in the Journal Editorial Report, a series produced by the Wall Street Journal and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

The program, which airs next month, will juxtapose Sequoia’s students with footage of an abstinence-only-until-marriage education program at a Texas school.

During his interview with the film crew, 14-year-old Erick Rivera strongly opposed abstinence-only programs, although he admitted some Sequoia students “rebelled” against Teen Talk’s instructions to use condoms.

“The program is perfect the way it is. They’re doing everything they can to keep people safe,” he said, swinging his legs from the picnic bench in the schoolyard. “I think it’s a person’s decision to do what they want.”

Upstairs in Room 133, the film crew documented the lastgroup of ninth-graders to go through this year’s Teen Talk course.

Seven students remained seated in the back of the room, either uncomfortable with the cameras or lacking permission slips to participate. At the front, 15 of their classmates blushed and stammered through instructor Kris Ahmed’s review of different types of birth control and their effectiveness.

But when Ahmed asked why sex education was important, several hands went up.

“You’re too young to have a baby. You can’t support it,” Manuel Andrade said confidently.

“If you don’t use a condom, you might get an STD,” another student offered. “You want to protect (your partner).”

Although Teen Talk educates teenagers about types of birth control and sexual behavior, abstinence — nicknamed “100% Pure Fruit Juice” in Ahmed’s diagram — is still emphasized as the only foolproof way to avoid pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases.

The Teen Pregnancy Coalition began in Redwood City in 1988 as a way to help young mothers finish their education. Seven years ago, it expanded to offer comprehensive sex education to eighth-through- 12th-grade students in public schools around San Mateo County.

For more information, visit www.teenpregnancycoalition.org or call (650) 367-1937.

Staff writer Nicole Neroulias covers Redwood City, East Palo Alto, Menlo Park and Atherton. She can be reached at (650) 306-2427 or nneroulias@sanmateocountytimes.com.

The reason we ASsET teens are compelled to fight for a comprehensive sexuality education is because we feel that we must counter the message and example given by the popular culture of today: sex is appealing and frivolous and portrayed without consequences. On the other hand, the government promotes abstinence and minimal sexuality education, which is not the kind of education we deserve,

We the ASsET team feel that in order to make decisions regarding our sexuality, teens need full and complete, scientifically-backed information, just as anyone would want truthful information regarding any other decision. ASsET feels that we have a right to get our sexuality education in the classroom because it is often the only place we can be assured of a safe, neutral environment to receive this type of information.

Many parents are not comfortable giving sexuality information to teens, meaning that information will come from other places. Sometimes the only places left to go for this information are peers and the popular media, both of which often give confusing, misinformed, and even dangerous information regarding sexuality. We teens at ASsET would like all of our fellow students to receive the same level of truthful information, whether or not their parents are able to give it.

Comprehensive sexuality education is offered at all of the schools in our district, but it is a program requested by the teacher. Teen Talk is provided by an outside nonprofit organization, Teen Talk Sexuality Education, and follows the SIECUS Guidelines for a comprehensive sexuality education program. The program includes activities that involve youth in the process of our education. It includes information regarding contraception, anatomy, reproduction, communication, sexual identity, dating, feelings, and forming values.

The Teen Talk program encourages questions using an anonymous system, allows for discussions and uses visual aids and role-playing. We feel this program accommodates many learning styles and does not put extreme pressure on us to make a decision as many other programs do. It also does not dictate what is wrong and what is right, encouraging participants to make our own decision based on the information we collect. Teen Talk stresses abstinence as the only 100 percent method to protect yourself from pregnancy and STDs, yet they also teach you how to protect yourself in case you do decide to have sex.

While the ASsET team wants abstinence to be stressed, we know that for many teens this is not the option they will choose. In addition to Teen Talk, we have had programs that lacked a description of alternatives like contraception and educated decision-making skills.

We feel very fortunate to have comprehensive sexuality education provided to us in high school. However, we want to ensure that it is available for us throughout the rest of our high school years and for future classes. Such education is not currently mandated by our district or the state of California. We have one common goal: to make certain that comprehensive sexuality education is mandated in our district during all four years of high school.

To support our efforts, we have collected data from parent, student, and faculty surveys. We have analyzed the data and found overwhelming support for sexuality education in the schools from all the surveyed groups. We will develop a report which we will present to the community and the School Board. We are currently in the process of planning a community meeting at which we hope to gauge the reaction of the local community to including comprehensive sexuality education in our district’s curriculum. From there, we will write the proposal for the School Board and work to be allowed to present our proposal to them. So far, the ASsET team has been pleasantly surprised by the lack of opposition to our project. Having talked to many parents, students, school administrators, and community members, we have found that very few have been opposed outright and several have even been persuaded to view things differently.

The ASsET team is very proud of our initial findings and responses. We look forward to continuing our work to make comprehensive sexuality education a reality for the teens in our district.

As a group, we have accomplished an enormous amount of beneficial information to aide in our cause. As individuals, we have gained a significant measure of knowledge about comprehensive sexuality and advocating for policy change. In addition, we have formed great friendships with teens in our community, and we all look forward to getting together and tackling our next project.

The ASsET team expect to complete our goal sometime in the year 2003 and plans to visit the School Board to present our findings by December 2003.

Robyn Klopp, 17, and Solitaire Miguel, 17 San Mateo, CA

Teen Talk and Plain Talk for Parents, two programs of Teen Talk Sexuality Education in San Mateo, CA are exceptional examples of programs that are “getting it together”:

Teen Talk is an 8 to 10-hour comprehensive sexuality education program for teens, and Plain Talk for Parents is a two-part workshop designed to teach parents and caregivers effective communication skills to help them comfortably discuss the subject of sexuality with their children. Both of these programs are committed to developing positive and honest communication between adults and young people and both curricula consistently address the prevention of unintended pregnancy, STDs, and HIV infection as interrelated social problems. More than 4,000 youth in 21 schools participated in the Teen Talk program in the 2001-02 school year, and more than 900 parents have participated in the Plain Talk program in 3 ½ years.

“To advance the health and well-being of young people, these outstanding programs have tackled the critical interrelated health issues facing young people,” said Tamara Kreinin, president and CEO of SIECUS. “These initiatives represent unique examples of bridging the gap across teen pregnancy, and STD/HIV prevention programs to strengthen health promotion policies and ensure that our young people are sexually healthy,” Kreinin continued.

For more information on the programs, or to receive a copy of the SIECUS Report please contact Nicole Cordier at (212) 819-9770 or siecus@siecus.org or visit http://www.siecus.org.