Sex Ed in Schools Just as Important as ABCs & 123s

Hi good afternoon everyone thank you all for coming to our panel sex ed in schools just as important as ABCs and one 123s um my name is Sarah flowers I am the vice president of Education and Training at Planned Parenthood Federation of America and I traveled here from Brooklyn New York my pronouns are she and her um give me a moment to introduce our Panelist today to immediately to my left is par Ramos hi everyone I'm parar Ramos she her um I'm the principal of arts and letters 305 United which is a prek through 8th

grade public school in bedy Brooklyn New York and Gabby Rodriguez hi everyone I'm Gabriella Rodriguez I am the sex ed and reproductive Justice youth organizing manager at advocates for youth my pronouns are she Hera and I'm just from Down the road from San Antonio um and I'm happy to be here today and last but not least Nora galin hey everyone Nora gelin she her pronouns I'm so not used to sitting when I teach so it's going to be hard to just like sit here for a while but I'm going to try my best to stay

still I use she her pronouns I'm the division director for sexed training I get the pleasure of working with Gabby at advocates for Youth and delighted to spend an hour With you talking about this critical topic thanks everyone so just to help us frame our thinking today what we're hoping is that all of us um walk away with a clearer sense of which topics are and are not taught in sex education at the elementary middle and high school levels we want to give you an opportunity to be introduced to or ref familiarized with best practices

around sex education at Those levels as well as um share with you some Creative Solutions because we understand that all of us are working teaching in different places and so the policies for sex education will be different so there's an opportunity to learn about how we're navigating those things and lastly we would love to share with you ways that you can engage with parents and young people to advocate for sex education in your community so before we jump into our content I Would love to invite you to please open a browser or take out your

device um you can go to mm n.com or take a picture of this QR code and when you get there enter the code 6332 9153 and when you get there you will know that you're in the right place because it'll be sort of a black screen with a thumbs up on it Ryan will you just click out of slides thank you when we Get there there's nothing not yet we are gonna move it along together thank you so much um and I appreciate that you mentioned that so we can just make sure everyone's chugging along

together so we'd love to learn a little bit about who's in the room our first question is where do you work do you work in a k through2 school high Ed maybe a community based organization or another nonprofit or maybe a different School and I too I'm having trouble sitting still I want to walk around as well um so what we're seeing here is a number of folks in the nonprofit space and a number of folks in education which is not a shocker for South by Southwest edu thank you what state do you work in

that's super important because we're going to learn about different state policies um and guidance for sex education and that's going to inform a Lot about what's possible for you in a k through 12 setting and Beyond and so really getting a sense here we see Brazil we see some folks are doing some folks are working nationally we see Hawaii Maryland Illinois Washington DC Missouri Florida Maryland oh we said Maryland excuse me Canada so we're seeing a lot happening don't mean to leave anyone out Ohio New York thank you so much it's great to get a

sense of who's here and where we all Traveled from and where we're doing our work a lot happening in Utah this afternoon there's a vote on sex education um moving on could you tell us a little bit about what kind of sex education you received growing up when you were a young person did you get nothing did you get one hour on puberty depending on how old you are they might have put people assigned male at Birth in one room and people assigned female at Birth in Another room did you get what you needed when

you needed it or was it pretty harmful and full of Shame what was what was your experience I'm standing up so that I can see folks who have the number of folks who have voted in the far corner so what we're seeing is the majority of the group maybe got a course on puberty and we're at the bottom of the chart mixing between nothing at all Figuring it out on your own or experiencing shame shame and fear around sex and sexuality thanks so much for sharing and it's really valuable to understand where how far we've

come we're all adults in this room I think um and what's possible thinking about that during our time together today what do you think about sexed being taught in schools some folks may have decided to attend this panel Because they absolutely absolutely do not think sex should be taught in school others might support it but actually be a little uncomfortable or maybe be thinking I don't want to be the one to teach it but I'm down if somebody else does um or folks are super supportive and it looks like it's super supportive which is incredibly

encouraging would you toggle back please Ryan thanks so Much so I've been working in this field in some form or fashion since I was 16 years old I mean I guess I wasn't working when I was 16 I was a student but I've been working in you know focusing on this work and one of the thing that keeps me in this field is the shared experience and so sexuality no matter how differently it shows up in each one of us for folks all over the world is an exper it's a common Human Experience there's a

shared Experience of our development growing up and that's what keeps us interest in like keeps me interested as a professional but like really unites um my drive and my commitment to this work and it's important to keep that in mind that no matter what this looks like it is something that is the real experience for someone else um with that in mind it's let think about what the purpose of sex education is the purpose is really to help young people as they are Navigating this part of human development right help them as they're navigating their

own sexual development which is a part of growing up the purpose of sex that is also to help young people learn how to have sex to have excuse me to have healthy fulfilling relationships with themselves and with other people in their community and in their lives and so when we're thinking about what sex education is and why it's important We really want to think about those things and what makes sex education effective sex education to be effective a must be medically accurate and two it must cover a broad range of topics so that would mean

that though we many of us in here indicated well I had a puberty class sex ed is not limited to thinking about Anatomy or puberty it really is Way Beyond that it's helping young people understand in a way that's appropriate for their age what does Consent mean what does a healthy relationship or a healthy friendship look like for me what am I what kind of media am I consuming and how does that content align with my values what my family thinks is important how I might decide I'm going to navigate away from this website also

thinking about communication skills so it's not just consent it's understanding how to think about your own boundaries and how to receive a no when somebody sets their Own boundaries it really encompasses so many things and we are going to tell you more about those topics moving forward I'm actually going to pass to Nora because while what I described for sex education when we were talking I'm going to go back for just one moment when we were talking about all of these different opportunities and what young people learn the skills people learn it's also really important

To know that as Norah is about to get into the national landscape this is the dream this is what's possible this is what we can be doing what young people can have access to and what it should be and there's also the reality so Nora tell us about what's happening um at the state level for sex education sure let me start with a colleague once said that sex education can bring around world Peace and I used to think what what does that have to do with and now at 20 years in oh yeah I just

think that sex education really can solve everything that ills our society today and as Sarah said there's a big difference between what the ideal is and what we hope for young people to receive and what is actually happening so we're using this map from our colleagues at Sea sued for social change they created state report cards so we thought it was appropriate For an education-based conference to look at the report cards that each state gets you'll see the guide up here on the top with the colors a b c d and f um one of

the things you may notice is that it's not universally one color right unfortunately there is no federal mandate or requirement for sex education in all 50 states so what that leaves us with is quite a patchwork right lots of different colors up here unfortunately not a lot of states are green and blue So we do have a lot of work to do um which is I hope perhaps why you're here in the room um one of the things that we know is about 39 states do require either sexed or HIV but sometimes it doesn't have

to be medically accurate um sometimes the laws that are tucked into various state requirements are uh not only inaccurate but downright harmful and dangerous um so we wanted to uh provide you with a comparison between a couple of states uh starting with here In uh Texas of course which Gabby will speak more to in just a couple of minutes one of the things that you'll see is that it needs to stress abstinence is the ideal uh for sexual behavior among all young people um it is an optin so that means parents have to actively sign

a consent form to allow their child to attend which we know for lots of reasons isn't always an effective way to get engagement we also know it's not required to be medically Accurate and the 5.1 million young people who attend schools here in the state of Texas make up 11% of all young people in our country so 11% of students are receiving this type of sex education which we would rate at a D minus compared to that is the state of New York which it may surprise you doesn't do much better we're going to give

it a d plus um it has HIV as a requirement across all grade levels which is fantastic but by itself is certainly not Sufficient um we also know that it is medically accurate but there is not a requirement to cover such basic issues is sexual orientation and gender identity Concepts we know each and every one of us um has as part of Being Human um they have 2.4 million students in New York state and half of those actually are in New York city so let me introduce a bright spot in New York state that's New

York City that as a city into itself decided hey this is not good enough for Our young people we need to do more and we need to do better and because of the involvement in a really big Coalition of people including the mayor's office and many other dignitaries um they passed a comprehensive sexed requirement in the city of New York City which by itself reaches uh just over 1 million young people and I'm going to turn to my colleague parar who's going to share a little bit about what that looks like on the ground uh

with the students that she Works with I think sorry I got ahead of so excited let talk about some other things excited thank you that was my big J there okay so actually what we're going to do um I'm going to talk to you about the national sexed standards um there are some stand standards that exist uh that have been around for about 10 years they are voluntary guidance so States use these to inform policy at the state at The district or even at the classroom level but they are not required um we see about

41% of uh school districts across the country use the national sex head standards to kind of figure out what is age and developmentally appropriate um but we know in those standards are actually what we would call the minimum core essential content and skills so in the field of sex said we call standards the floor and we want at the very minimum for young people to Get everything in these standards and wouldn't it be great if they could build on those because young people are ever present uh they're evolving and we know these issues change um

and grow so at the K5 level let me highlight a couple of those a lot of people ask me well for kindergarteners what do you what do you teach in K you know kindergarten for sex said no it's not condoms and it's not any of those kinds of topics it's about families it's about safety it's about Bodily autonomy it's about being a good friend right those are some of the key issues then in Upper Elementary we're really starting to get into what is puberty and why do I have hair there and why do I smell

and all those kinds of things that are part of puberty and growing up we want to make sure that people feel normal um and they feel accepted and seen in their communities and then their schools um and using a variety of materials to allow them to do So so now I believe I am passing to my colleague P thank you yeah so I'm going to talk a little bit about what this actually means in practice in a school um so I um am very fortunate to be able to run a prek through 8th grade school

so I see students over a decade of their life in growth and development um which is pretty incredible um and we think about sex ed um less specifically to sex eded sort of more generally into how we want Students and communities to be together um so we have a framework um that's the six C's their values um by which we come together we learn and start uh teaching these values explicitly in prek when students are four their Community courage compassion Clarity curiosity and creativity um and we embed them in all aspects of our school throughout

um so already we have our values really explicit um and we create the opportunities by which we can discuss Those values and purposely embed different um topics related to the sexed standards um and so when we get into Early Childhood in second grade for example um we uh so across the entire School uh we start every day with a morning meeting so that's prek through 8th grade um prek through fifth grade has the the morning meeting in their classroom 6th through 8th grade we come together as an entire Middle School um where we talk about

those values and Learn how to be in community in compassionate um ways with each other and so in second grade uh we would have morning meeting uh students sit in a circle they have different prompts from their teacher that are intentionally placed in the prompts they're getting to know each other they're getting to learn how to trust the adults in the room and their friends they're having fun by playing improv games um and different kinds of roleplay and scenarios um They're reading read alouds about different kinds of families um they're putting themselves into the into

those shoes what do my family look like um and they're all having fun and learning about each other um and also sticking to to our values as a school when we get into fifth grade um we have a standalone sex egg class we use a grounding text sex is a funny word um our classroom teachers uh teach that text um and remember students already they're Still having their morning meeting they're still sitting in a circle they're still building on um their relationships and how to be with each other still meeting those standards um and now

we're introducing some new topics about Anatomy um about puberty that might get some Giggles um and and so once we're in fifth grade we send home a letter to fam saying we are doing this class this is what this class covers um and we share what the what our City policy is around teaching sex ed um in that class um and then as we get into eth grade um and um we continue to have our Circle model and now students have a class called advisory uh that is a smaller class where there's um say 15

to 18 students in that class they have a teacher who is their advisor um who is really the support throughout um that they can go to um and this is a class that is devoted to social emotional learning media literacy um we uh sex ed Um and other topics but students have since they were four um been really learning about these topics how to be with each other um and in 8th grade uh we uh use a school created curriculum uh where we um the three Rs is one of our curricula I know that um

Nora will talk about that in a little a little later um and uh and we send home a letter to families again with more specific topics about what they will be covering in that class um and uh sort of As we saw in New York City you cannot opt in or out of sex ed in New York City um so everybody takes the class great thank you so much par for sharing how this works in practice at United 305 Nora let's get into what the standards look like for middle and high school yeah absolutely so

this is our topics that probably are more familiar to you uh particularly at the middle school level we want to talk about things related to relationships and Unhealthy relationships in particular talking about how to end unhealthy relationships skills that young people are often really seeking out um we also want to talk about sexual consent now we've laid the groundwork for what consent is like can I borrow your crayon um those kinds of things in the younger grades and now it takes uh sometimes a more romantic turn or something related to peers so that's an example

of what would be taught at the Middle grades um And then in high school um oh and also it's it's blocked by the little thing there but um we know also uh issues related to sexual orientation come up at middle school as well and then going into high school this is when a lot of schools touch it at the nth grade level usually a freshman health class is very common where you'll see sexed show up but we know over the four years of high school young people need a lot of information um and so we

really Encourage them to talk about the full range of contraceptive options in particular emergency contraception as some of our Reproductive Rights are being eroded in states around the country we know that's really critical um as well how do you access Sexual Health Care how do you stay safe um in today's climate and particularly what are the laws that govern um adolescent sexual healthare for minors um so those are some of just the key topics that Would come up at a middle or a high school and some examples of this in the next slide would be

um at advocates for youth we have a free K12 curriculum called rights respect responsibility which P was just talking about um it's lgbtq inclusive 115 lessons in English and in Spanish and schools are welcome to take it and adapt it to better meet the needs of their students um so we kind of think of it as a starting point but not the be all end all because There's no curriculum that's going to work for everyone um a lot of times people ask us about well who teaches sexed when you you know make these great curriculum

and these programs that are out there if you're lucky enough to find one who actually is doing the implementation um so we know for better for worse it's Health PE teachers just like The Stereotype from those movies you see um so oftentimes those PE teachers are told they have to teach Health they often times don't have any training in health or in sex education particularly they tend to be very uncomfortable and as a result of that discomfort May overly censor um not only some of the lessons that they utilize but some of the conversations and

the questions that they'll answer so we need to give our Educators more support and more training um that's something that we do at advocates for youth um I know we've got Dr Karen rain here from un Hushed as well who's a great practitioner in our field and got a terrific curriculum and does teach a training go visit her Booth it's in the 400 aisle um anyway there's lots of us that do this work um we'd be delighted to help if we can fabulous and I would i' encouraged Nora to mention the Avatar but she didn't

so I'm going to there's also by advocates for youth um a teacher training Avatar where the avatars engage right and you Get to practice if you are the person who might be interested in teaching it but want to practice not with real 14-year-olds yeah it's um it actually we've done it a few different times and it is amazing and those are also opportunities when you think about training especially if you're not able to bring in um a trained sex educator yeah thank you for that Sarah I'm sorry sometimes I'm a little too humble um so

one of the the simulation that we've got Is called virtual professional development we like to think of it practice on the Avatar so you don't actually cause any harm as you're learning to be a better sex educator with real students so think of it like student teaching but with robots um and so we get to work with we've got a classroom of kindergarteners we have a classroom of fifth graders seventh graders ninth graders and adults um and so we are able to help you uh polish Your skills of being a sex educator anything from answering

difficult questions to asking for pronouns to um working with parents who might be concerned about sexed but all in a virtual environment so it's kind of marri's tech and sexed it's it's a lot of fun we'd be happy to talk with you about that so thank you for that I appreciate great so moving forward um we're going to go back to to these report cards because it's really Important to also understand what the experience is growing up and being educated in the state of Texas since this is the example that we're using today so Gabby

tell us as someone who grew up in Texas is currently living in Texas was educated in Texas what was your experience like what does this look like in practice so as many of you know we saw on there Texas was quite big so I'm sure there's a few of you who are Texas natives who Are teaching here um in Texas it's opt in and it's also absence only based so I was someone who went through private school here in Texas I did not get sex education the closest thing I got to sex education was like

uh one day in like an assembly a guy came he told us like keep your virginity till you're married here's a virginity card and if I turn that card into my teacher that I signed it then I got to drop my two lowest test grades that was my sexed so I did go to That class I hated it but I passed my religion class and that's all I wanted um I will say that like some of my family members who were not in um the private schools got pretty much the same sex ed so that

was what was so like intriguing was that there was nothing different from going to the private school the public school which is a conversation a lot of parents have had over the years it's a hot contention here in Texas right now with everything That's going with school choice but in reality what's happening is the censorship of sexed is happening whatever school that you go to so I'm a product of a person who did not have sex ed um I ended up working later in life in um when I transitioned into college in Louisiana and running

the my Louisiana sex ed project which was other students my age 19 and younger that were like hey we went all through school we don't have sex head now we're out in the World and we have no idea what we're doing um so in those cases students like myself uh banded together and created different resources so I predominantly work with students who are in the South and we created the sex educat us Alabama resource toolkit in the state of Alabama our young folks found everything that they could to meet their Community whether that's linking them

to Planned Parenthood whether that's linking them to places they can get free testing Students found what they needed to share with other students and that's kind of the importance of peer education and what it's like being a person who grows up in a school that ALS or in a state that has a D- rating similar to what belad was talking about they have a D- rating but the school and the community came together to make sure to advocate for their students to get what they need and here in Texas I'm a product of somebody who

didn't have folks banding Together and didn't have that so what did they do leaned on policy to make sure that my education was limited thanks for sharing that Gabby and there there's there is an opportunity in that story to be had and so there's an opportunity to think about in Texas in Alabama in other areas Louisiana is another state that you worked in There's an opportunity to really explore the ways that okay maybe sex ed in school isn't feasible but out Of school there's tons of ways to engage with young people um in addition to

the examples that Gabby gave um Planned Parenthood has a peer education program called team Council and so a local Planned Parenthood affiliate may have a team councel or another peer education group I know that there are some that are theater groups and there's all different opportunities to use teen Council as an example um it aims to provide accurate unbiased sex education And also to end ignorance promote tolerance and improve communication between teens and the important people in their lives so again an opportunity to think about workarounds what else is possible when you're engaging with young

people when we are sharing these stories today we had hoped to give you a chance to think about the areas where you said that you are working what might be possible as Norah explained each state might be beholden to different Requirements or restrictions but there are ways to support young people their families and their Futures when we are um coming together we want to acknowledge the differences of where folks are coming from and also remember that there's something that you as caring adults and as leaders in your communities there is a role for you to

play and we'd love to share those with you as we are wrapping up and then we'll be inviting questions so the first thing That we hope that you'll think about in terms of what you can do when you go home is be the supportive adult what are the things that you can be doing that will connect your community's values to finding a way to get sex education for young people and one important point for the that I'd like to make sure that you understand is that we have nationally representative data that parents and families caring

adults from across the country regardless of a political Affiliation support sex education they might not realize that it's some a place where they could Advocate at their school board or with their school principal but parents want their young PE people to grow up healthy and safe and to have fulfilling relationships and so across the board that is one thing that you can do as a community leader another thing is support sex education what are the ways that you might be clear find out does your school Board make that decision there's ways that you can support

sex education um or if it's not a possible in a school environment what are opportunities in the after school or weekend space there are community- based organizations or other nonprofits that might be offering programming for young people so those are things to explore last ly be a helper think about sharing this information think about what asking young people what they want And then being the resource to help them make moves put those building blocks in place so that they can begin to have their voices heard whether it's advocating on a Lobby day or just convening

a group with a trusted adult who maybe took a training with the avatars but there's a lot of ways to make connections we hope we will be sharing with you a folder of resources as well as our contact information that will Give you more concrete links and documents so that you can um really refer back to a lot of the tenants of what we spoke about before we wrap up with our time together this went a little faster than we thought but we are hoping that you all have some questions so what I'm going to

ask you to do is pull out your device again please um and Ryan if you would click the button again um please log back in and we are going to invite You to put your questions here while that's happening and you're percolating your questions um I'm going to kick us off with a question first for p and then for Gabby so P despite knowing that parents overwhelmingly support sex education nationally in my experience working with principles trying to get sex ed into schools a lot of times I've heard teachers or administrators say I support it

but the parents what are we going to Do when the parents come or the parents upset so even though in New York City they don't have an option parents might also reach out to you they got that letter that you mentioned how have you responded in those instances um so I still get um folks who come to me uh who have concerns about their children receiving sex ed often it is around fears about lgbtq plus issues um and that their students are going to be exposed to things that they and their Family don't have as

their own personal beliefs um and so I sort of have three different areas that I go back on um so as you remember Community is our one of our values it's our first value um and I value my parents and my and their children and their feelings and want them to feel good about all the things that we're doing in school um and so I engage in dialogue I go back to our school's beliefs and values I use those six CES um we also have posters up all Over the school um with all kinds of

um affirming messages for all different identities queer affirming trans affirming um uh and so remind families that our school believes these things and we all have different beliefs at home and you still have those beliefs whether we have them here at school or not um and when we come to school we are one Community we are sort of unapologetic about our beliefs um so I try to engage in dialogue around that um And uh and that is sort of the the first line um the second thing that I try to do is remove sexed um

or inclusive curriculum from a theoretical political idea into the students in your child's classroom this is where talking about their classmates we're talking about the families of their classmates how would you feel if somebody tried to opt out of real louds that included what your family looks like um and try to appeal like this isn't we're not talking about An idea here we are talking about a person this is a person who your child is actually friends with this person's seven um and their family comes to do drop off every day just like your family

does um and so engage in those dialogues as well um and then the last the last um point is this is policy uh I have copy and pasted the New York City Department of Education website policy on lgbtq plus um inclusive curriculum many times and sent that in emails to people um I Have read it out loud to people I have walked in the hallways and read our posters out loud um and this is the policy I'm sorry you cannot opt out of a read aloud um about what different families look like uh we that's

not allowed in New York City um and most people realize that they're you know whether they agree or not realize that this is this is something that we're not going to bend on um some people might go to the district or they Might go um to the superintendent um and some people might leave people have left the school um and while we certainly don't want anybody to leave our curriculum I re leave our school Community um bending on these issues feel like really a dangerous um thing to do and it's it's more important that we

are really firm and um and values and belief oriented as a school community um than it is to B to um to individual Folks thanks par Gabby in working with young people uh oh I'm actually going to have to excuse me for a moment because no one knows my password oh oh I can keep talking Gabby gab question and telling us and thinking about working with young people in States like Texas has there been parent push back and what does that look like especially When it's not in a school setting so I think one of

the really important things that we need to consider in this conversation is we're talking about administrations we're talking about parent push back let's actually talk about I get the unique like perspective of talking to students who are seeking this out so let's talk about what they want and then I'm actually going to use the state of Nevada as um an example here um because they for the last few Years have been fighting for a sex education Bill students themselves for a sex education bill um changing it from an opt-in policy to an opt out policy

and it it's been really interesting like talking to the students and saying why you see this like in a lot of the stuff that we were showing today well what does opt out and opt-in mean and I think bot did a really great job of describing what it's like when parents don't want their children to get this information But students on the other hand want the sex head by default and there's a lot of reasons for that there's a lot of students who don't have direct access to their Guardians every day so they can't take

that paper home and have their Guardian filled it out whether they live in a group home or they're in a setting where they're not safe at home they're not allowed to get sex head because the standards or the school the state policy is saying oh sorry you need a guardian To do this and their Guardian is not a safe person secondly there's a lot of students myself included who have ADHD and forget that that slip exist I tell you like the day that if that slip came and I did not sign it that could possibly

have been a reason why I didn't get sexed I'm just kidding my school didn't have it but I did not I would forget a paper exists and a lot of folks do I think it's really important just to be able to like for accessibility Reasons and for the reasons that students deserve to know about their bodies you cannot make a decision that's healthy for you if you don't know what you don't know and I think that a lot of this gets lost with um what a parents want what administrations want what's safe but the people

that we're talking about are the ones who need the education so in my job I have something very lucky where I get to listen to them and try to fit what they need and what They've been asking me is how do I get to learn about my body how do I get to see me in my curriculum because every day I'm learning that I have PCOS or I'm learning that maybe what is happening to my body or in my life isn't healthy and I had no idea because there was no groundwork to frame it against

so I think policiy like an optin or an opt out are really those ways where we're finding such a technical term to keep gatekeeping information from people who Really need it thanks Gabby thank you all for submitting your questions as we can see the first question we have is how do we get more men involved in this important work can I answer this one yes Gabby go cool um I do work with a lot of students and well fortun Ely over the last few years we've been seeing more men um and boys learn about sex

head or want to learn and want to care about this situation and I think the biggest way we can get men involved Is by like take the stigma out let's like actually normalize talking about sex ed because really if you think about it think about your life as a middle schooler I was in high school 10 years ago this year that's first time I've said that out loud um that I graduated in 2015 and I do remember talking to folks and like the only sex and sex education that boys were talking about is what they're

learning online and then with girls we're our females people Assign female at Birth we are like really pushed like to care about our Sexual Health from a young age we know that we have to go to the gynecologist we know that we have to learn about our bodies and take care of it because there's no way to ignore it but for with a lot of men we don't give them that same care and that same pipeline of like hey this is how you care for your body so I think like giving people the information they

need generally can get More people involved to care to know more because then you know what you don't know so I think that's really like the start is like have these conversations I know they're uncomfortable but the more you talk about them the less they're uncomfortable and I think Focus the conversations on what makes sense to young men and what makes sense to young people and young women so I'm saying if that includes having inclusive sex Education that inclusive sex education includes people who are questioning young men who are questioning where they are tend to

like not want to engage so let's try to keep pushing it Forward keep making it normal that it's okay to not know it's okay to want questions and it's really not normal what you see in porn and online that's really helpful Gabby thanks for that real life example um I think I would just add one small thing Um which is this notion that talking about bodies um sex education long term has this real opportunity to shift societal beliefs and so this notion where we were talking about consent from such a young age we're talking about

early Elementary School in the context of this panel when we understand that all bodies experience certain shared things and that we have an opportunity to be inclusive of the ways different bodies work oh Lord here we go again With the password I'm going to go sit over there um there's there is an opportunity for young people to take those those values and the lessons that they're learned and they take them with them through adulthood and bring them into all of the different communities and environments that they have does anyone have anything else to add while

I go do my password again why don't I add while you do your password um so I think just to pick ups on something that Gabby Mentioned um if we don't talk about pornography we're not talking about the real sex that young people are getting so to include more men I think we need to particularly talk about the um different expectations that can be set around bodies and behaviors that young people are vastly exposed to in pornography and that's not just young men but it's certainly the majority of young men we also need to talk

about pleasure we need to talk about why sex Should feel good and how you do it in a way with yourself or others that makes it feel good and penis size these are the three things that on one of our websites amaze.org we get tons of questions about because it's what young people want to talk about that they're not getting at school and they're not getting at home so until we make sexed that's responsive to the lived realities of young people we are all missing the vote thank you Nora oh Ryan how do I make

the C oh no no I don't want you to exit out I just want to click forward did the can you just press the right arrow please okay this is a really good idea in theory um if if it doesn't oh you can see it up just kidding um well maybe I will ask folks if you had a question would you be comfortable coming to the mic to verbalize your question oh look Thank you okay here's another question fabulous I appreciate that thank you just kidding it's no longer showing me oh that's for that's to

leave this part but thank you I appreciate the one of question yes wait let's um let's may I bring a mic just so that everyone can hear it oh thank you do you want to introduce yourself or a smallest SCP sure my name is Kim prman I'm actually a Health educator I got my degree in school health education from University of Maryland wooo and um I uh currently have been teaching in Maryland at the secondary level so to 20 years at the middle school level and currently I'm teaching at the high school level so um

we are do opt out we used to do opt in but the last couple of years it's opt out um which is actually really better because we have less push back and a lot of parents won even read the stuff we Put in so it's like it's automatic you get it um so you get the sex education information so that was the question I was going to read but it's already up on the board so how do we resist especially in the state of Texas but also nationally given the political climate that we're currently in

so what I would suggest um is thinking and exploring opportunities that in areas where the Policies aren't aren't applicable so this this notion where yes the political climate the National Climate certainly is what it is I'm sure everyone is Doom scrolling and um there are opportunities to Eng engage with young people so when you say is just to be clear this was your question this particular this was not your question question so I want to just not blur those can you sorry I was getting confused can you just say your question again unless one of

you oh I Think she was reading this question oh you were reading it I didn't no no no you can finish yours oh my question really is um around social media right so my question is what are some ways to help students access valid and accurate sex sex education through social media so I you know we recently did this lesson and I was said to myself said where do you where do you get your message you know where do you get your information from I'm sitting up here telling you but I know you all are

on Tik Tock or IG or other platforms who is telling you I mean my thing is like I love Go Ask Alice but that's online that's a website I don't know if they have a app for that anymore but I would like to provide that information to my students because I know that that's where they go and so I'm just wondering yeah I would love to say students should follow advocates for youth on Instagram um we do share a lot of information and a lot of programs that folks can join and then Nora mentioned earlier

are am maaz videos they are on YouTube they are have various different topics including topics on porn um for and they're age appropriate for different age ranges and I think that that's like some information that's not coming from your parent not coming from your teacher that's just like accurate and out there I would say at Tell Young Folks maybe Google's not their friend here um I think that that's really where it's coming in hard for folks is like where do I look when the information everywhere is wrong so I would say really push them towards

places that are providing this information so advocates for Youth and Parenthood both create curriculums for students um and teachers so I think that that's really a place where when we create bite-size information and again advocates for Youth on our Instagram has some um as well as some of our other like uh partners and it's ways that folks can find that and it's in language that's accessible to you so like our advocates for youth Instagram is actually not for parents it's literally for students it has students on there students take over and do lives and talk

about what they're doing on their campuses because it should be in your voice a really big project that I'm working on this year is A peer education project with the students that I currently work with of like what do you do when you want to give information um I know that I if I was ever talking about sex I would get Icky if it was from an adult I like I don't want to talk to you I think it's weird but when my friends were telling me all of their wrong information about maybe I could

get pregnant in a hot tub that's the people I was listening to so I think that finding that information From people that look like you from people that you relate to is really important and I think that there's information out there on advocates for Youth and some of our partners thank you um I'm going to move us into the question that is on the screen um would you go back one please Ryan thanks so I'm sorry that I blurred them but thank you for clarifying yours about social media and we will have a resources folder

like I mentioned that's going to Be open access so you'll be able to um access that and we'll make sure to put more items in references links to websites and other things um for online um this notion of resisting especially in a state like Texas and nationally I think that the there is an opportunity there are many sex Educators that are trained and can provide sex educated sex education to young people in non-school time after school and weekends and there's an opportunity to Seek those opportunity to seek those groups out seek those Educators out and

convene those young people whether it's to for the young people to be you know do some organizing work or literally just saying we're going to do this on Fridays for the next five weeks we'll serve pizza and find a community space and the sex educator will come um I think there's tons your local Planned Parenthood affiliate Department of Education will absolutely have Educators And um program options and I'm sure that there are also opportunities with other groups like Regional organizing groups um Etc I also think there's a lot of opportunity in K12 schools I'm not

sure about every school district across the country my district in New York City is an explicitly anti-racist District um and recognize that we have very Progressive um politics in our district however one thing that we do as a school is teach students that their voice is Important and that they should care about issues that are important to them and that affect them and we give them opportunity to learn about what those issues are and to share their voice about that about those issues and um just on Friday we had a black lives matter rally um

where students talked about civil rights um they read their poetry they made signs they researched different quotes that resonated with them this is something that we do um Pretty regularly is have these different types of of um of events I imagine that that event can't happen everywhere in the country but what can happen in your country where you're sending children those message those messages whether it's explicitly around sex ed or whether it's around Community um or other words that might feel safer in your District so it's learning about your policy and then how you can

use that policy to support student voice advocacy Um and teaching students that that it's important for them and they need to learn this and that that's their future I'd also like to add um like let's look at the word resist really quick again in the state of Texas so I'm somebody who focuses on organizing and Community organizing so resisting is something that is integral to what I do and what our young folks organize around so I would say what is resistance and what does that look like to you I can Tell you that earlier today

when I was talking about about what Young Folks are doing that is a form of resistance when they are writing their toolkit to give out to their young folks to give out to their Community that's their way of resisting of the people deciding that hey they shouldn't get sex and they're saying we're going to do it anyway so and y'all's position as helpful adults how can you help them resist you show them these examples let them know this You don't have to do all the heavy lifting yourself especially as an educator you have enough to

lift but you can Outsource that to people who are doing the lifting so you can push them to our programs that's not on you that won't get you in trouble you can push them to this information is out there I've vetted it that it's safe you can have it that's not on you to have to do it all and so I would say that's a form of resistance passing on that Information and making sure your students know that that information is safe next question how do you protect the Safety and Security of providers or nonprofit

organizations involved in this work especially in red states that have been openly hostile or threatening either legally or physically so one of the things that I know from Educators that are Planned Parenthood Educators in states that are either are Red States or have experienced hostility is that education and and relationships with community-based organizations don't just like go from zero to one right like there's a lot of introductions and Trust building um and those relationships where we are building trust between an educ a sex educator and a community- based organization there's a space there to have

dialogue what's possible here this Notion of um meeting people where they are is actually a real important tenant that should be Central to this work and that may mean that for a Planned Parenthood educator who is attempting to establish a relationship with a new community- based organization and the organization explains what their boundaries or parameters are that educator may say I understand what your boundaries are I want to meet you there and respect your boundaries and with Time building relationships building trust maybe there's an opportunity to expand the ways that we are the topics that

we're talking about and move us in the direction of the dream definition that we talked about earlier there's also an element I think around Safety and Security for providers and nonprofit ORS where maybe the organization itself has some um elements in place and so I think that there's an opportunity to have discussion with what makes sense For that Community what are the concerns are there ways that other groups have mitigated those concerns and what are the things that are safer to do and what are those practices and it really is going to be bespoke to

that that smaller Community what has worked what's possible and what maybe needs to be sort of like kept you know back in back of mind until the page turns and then maybe another opport you know another circumstance opens up did that sound too Vague but that's the that's an opportunity yeah yeah I was just going to add that um we've heard from a lot lot of school districts that we work with around fear uh paralysis uh as a result of the executive orders uh we also know because of book Banning and some of the targets

on the Dei and Equity initiatives that schools are really in the the middle of all of these culture wars so my portfolio has expanded to do a lot of controversy Prevention and management uh we have quite a lot of tools available and I just want you to hear you do not have to go it alone you're not the only one that is under attack and we are here to help you um so we have a triage form we've got prices Communications Consultants that help with the media piece we've got tools we I've been on Signal

with all kinds of groups at 8:00 at night on a Sunday just trying to figure out what's going on so please don't ever feel like You have to be the only one in your school um who's dealing with this because there are lots of people who want to help you and support you um to do the best work that you can I think one thing to add to um as somebody who's in works at a nonprofit oreg and is here in this hostile State born and raised I think that it's really important to actually name

what the threats are out loud and constantly because I think that folks tend to not realize what you're Going through or what it is when I say I work in sex education they think I have the banana and the condom and that's it and I'm like no actually every day we're fighting of like I want to make sure that everybody I'm teaching feels represented in the information that I'm teaching so I think that it makes a lot of sense to be able to name that and say like I'm teaching you this and they're trying to

take this away from you because again You don't know what you don't know I can't fight for something that I don't know is being taken away and I don't know what used to be in action and I'll give an example of this really quickly when I worked in Louisiana we did a survey of folks in New Orleans about sex head and we surveyed folks that went to school in the 1970s and folks who are going to school in the mid 201 15ish era and it was so interesting is when I was reading the info from

the folks that Went to school in 1978 and 1979 they were saying they don't think that sex ed should be so elaborate it shouldn't have ABC and D it shouldn't say anything about lgbtq health but what was so interesting is that they actually had sex ed that described what it's like to how you can get an STI They had actual sex head that taught contraceptives but they were talking about they didn't think Young Folks would have that not knowing that young folks didn't even Have what they had so in their mind they're saying they're getting

so elaborate teaching them XYZ maybe they're teaching them positions maybe they're teaching them this when they had no idea that we weren't even getting the basic information that you guys got when you went through so I think that that's really important is that that threat was never named for so many years so now there's folks out there that didn't get sexed and folks were fighting against Them getting it not knowing that it was already taken away from them I want to pause I'm I think this is a really rich conversation I'm not asking you to

leave to my knowledge are we asking people to leave Ryan's like just JK you don't got to go home um could we do one last question Ryan okay so let's do this last question and then um I'll speak for myself I'll remain available and before you go we have T-shirts so come back um this is Julia Julia has t-shirts and keychains that we'd love to offer you um and the to up we're also going to share the resource page but maybe as we move to the resource page um the question is if we have any

advice from a parent point of view for talking with your young person about sex and sexuality will you toggle back to the slides please um because leaving the books around for private reading has not been well received and so I'm G to ask P because par was just Earlier telling us about some stuff with her seventh grader so I actually um am the principal and also I have two children who are in fifth and seventh grade in my school um and my seventh grader it doesn't matter what it is I'm doing uh if I am

doing it she is very much does not want to be any part of it um it is the worst thing in the entire world luckily I have an inside scoop so other people get to um tell me all the wonderful things she's doing in school And how she's engaging um I guess my number one piece of advice would be to find somebody else to do it then um and I know that I could tell her all kinds of things and she would be resistant um and uh she has a completely different relationship with so many

other wonderful adults who she gets to go to school with every day um or in her outside activities and so I would say don't push it um you got to give them space they need space they need to feel Good and comfortable the more you push it the more reluctant they're going to be um and figure out who some other people in your community might be who she would be or they would be um open to hearing from great please thanks guys thank you thank you thank you all thank you for coming and for staying

um the resource folder will continue to add to it our contact information including advocates for youth Instagram page we'll Also make sure to have links to amaz thank you all so much for being here