Resources for Teachers
Teacher Talking Points for Puberty Education
Teacher Talking Points for Inclusive Health and Sexuality Education
This resource is a script for teachers preparing their students for a week of puberty education. It helps teachers frame the program as a great opportunity for learning. If teachers set the stage for a positive attitude about health class, the students tend to follow their lead. Many teachers mistakenly over-empathize with students who express awkwardness, nervousness or disgust about health class. This inadvertently perpetuates sex-negative attitudes about bodies, hygiene and growing up. Try these talking points instead!
Question Answering Tips for Answering Puberty Questions from Kids
Question Answering Tips for Answering Sexuality Questions from Kids
Remembering these simple tips will make answering questions easy for adults. These pointers make adults look unflappable in the face of challenging questions. They also help adults keep good boundaries around personal sharing. Since we live in a multi-cultural world we also need to have ways to be sure we include the wide range of opinion in the community and encourage parents to be the most important educators of their children.
How to Answer Values Based Questions in a Classroom
This outlines in detail how to answer questions of morals or values in a classroom around controversial topic that have a broad range of opinion in the community. Examples of controversial issues that have a wide range of values in the community: Abortion, Birth Control, Masturbation, what age and under what circumstances it's acceptable to start having sex, etc.
Note: Parents, unlike teachers, should feel free to ask your child about his or her beliefs and to share yours. In fact, this sort of dialogue within families is very important. Employees of public schools and other public agencies have an ethical obligation not to side with one family or one religious perspective or one child over another. But children absolutely need a chance - at home - to explore feelings and beliefs with adults they love, just as they need a chance to learn factual information and to have universal, community values reinforced at school. In a public school setting it's inappropriate to teach particular values on controversial issues, but teachers can talk about the issues, as long as they do so with respect for the diversity of opinion within the community.