Ten things a sexuality educator should be able to answer

10 things a sexuality educator should be able to answer.
When teaching this spring at Front Range Community College (Boulder Campus) I had a brainstorm session with my class. The assignment was to break into groups and make a list of 10 questions a sex educator should be able to answer. Because it was difficult to narrow it down to just 10 questions and because the class had some amazing points of reference I am going to list the high points of what they felt a sex educator should know and know well.
1. How to correctly put on a condom.
2. What is the difference between sex and gender?
3. All aspects of all birth control. Side effects, how they work, where to get them.
4. Definitely should know anatomy and physiology of male and female.
5. All sexually transmitted infections and prevention.
6. Theories of sexuality.
7. Behavior vs. attitude.
8. All types of relationships, i.e Sternberg’s triangle theory of love.
9. Sexual abuse, harassment, assault etc..
10. SEXUAL DIVERSITY! (this was emphasized)
11. What is sex?
12. Sexual development throughout a life time for both male and female.
13. The stages of puberty. What is happening physically and emotionally?
They were then asked what they thought would be important criteria for a teacher to be able to teach this topic and came up with these:
1. Knowledge-have knowledge , training, education and DESIRE to teach in this area.
2. Comfort level-have the ability to teach this without being uncomfortable.
3. Bridge book with real life.
4. Relate to the age you are speaking to. Use “their” language. Don’t talk up or down to your class. Use correct terminology.
5. Make sure you help your class ask the right questions. Sometimes students don’t know enough to ask a question. Encourage them to think and ask.
6. They don’t think gender segregation is a good idea when teaching. Men or women can teach the class or men and women can team teach.
So after we kicked this around I explained to them what I felt the ideal class in high school would be. It would be a semester long. It would be team taught by two different disciplines. For instance, all the science information could be taught by the science teacher and all the psychology information could be taught by the psychology teacher. They could team teach it. The students loved this idea.

So the question is-are there any schools out there willing to take a chance and set the bar high for trying this out?

Betsy Cairo, PhD, HCLD, CSE

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