Blindfish RSE

Today I am sharing a free resource I have made to help teenagers think about the type of images they are sharing online and by direct messages. I class this resource as in BETA, it is just my first attempt at making these images and I want to reshoot the photos. Get rid of the cluttered backgrounds and I need to find a male mannequin to use as well. You can find all the images I use at  Sexting Images Resources I have tested these images in a number of lessons for 14-15 year olds. The way I use them is getting the young people into small groups and asking them to put them in order from most risky images to share to least risky. They create a continuum of risk. Then we talk through a number of follow up questions.  Which images would it be ok to share on social network? Which images might be ok to share by direct message, such as snapchat or MMS? Which images should we never share? Which images do you think could get people into trouble with the police? Which ...

After getting a brush off answer to start with I'm starting to get better response from my MP about why he does not vote for teaching young people about Consent.  This is just a short update on my previous post on my MP ( Stephen Mosley )  voting against Clause 20 which would have made SRE compulsory and explicitly made it clear we need to educate young people about Consent.  This sentence is at least a genuine answer, he is claiming their was not sufficient evidence and reasons. Now immediately after reading his reply I wanted to push all the evidence I could find at him so he could realise how wrong he was and how right it would have been to vote Yes and if wants more evidence I can direct him to loads. When tweeting about this the Sex education Forum replied offering help. @blindfishideas sounds like you are preparing your reply... There is so much evidence that SRE works.... http://t.co/5mJyXiyKYN — Sex Education Forum (@...

On the 11th of June the commons voted against making Sex and Relationship Education a compulsory part  of the national curriculum and specifically this amendment including the following "(1) For the purposes of this Part, personal, social and health education (“PSHE”) shall include sex and relationship education, including information about same-sex relationships, sexual violence, domestic violence and sexual consent. " My MP for Chester, Stephen Mosley was one of the MP who voted against this clause. You can read a good briefing on why this clause was so important here   by the sex education forum. This was a key opportunity to get SRE into the heart of what schools need to be providing. But MPs voted not to help young people on this issue and my MP was one of those who voted against. If you want to read more about the no vote, what it means and why it matters you can read Brook here  or read this blog post exploring how the clause may still have life in it ...

Please make use of all these notes/links from my session today at the #SASHevent2013  Conference looking at the topic "Let’s talk about porn" Firstly my presentation Documents Sheffield Centre for HIV and Sexual Healthwith Brook, FPA, The National Youth Agency People and Pornography - A Briefing for Workers NSPCC sexting study Summary report of the qualitative study Full report of the qualitative study   McAfee The Digital Divide: How the Online Behavior of Teens is Getting Past Parents  Digital Divide BBC Newsbeat Survey  Men worried about Porn Sex Education Vs Pornography statistics taken from show episodes, they are currently unavailable but you can find useful stuff at their   sexperince website   Youtube clip   from Friends episode about the need to turn off the porn Books I may not agree with everything in these books but they have some interesting bits. Wired for Intimacy: How Pornography Hijacks the Male Brain   William M...

Today I shared another resource listing the agree disagree statement I often use in Relationship lessons. I find agree disagree activities as a bit of a two edge sword. Sometimes they are great and sometimes they just seem flat.  I think agree/disagree activities work well if young people in the group do not all think the same. The true value in agree/disagree activities is the discussion it can stir up. The discussion is the point where young people learn things and develop their attitudes. The statements need to be crafted to try and divide opinion and stir up this discussion. When the statements do not divide group opinion then rarely will I get a good follow up discussion. The problem is that the statements that work well for one group do not work for another group.  The temptation is to try and pick truly controversial issues but I have had as much success with the historically controversial issues (abortion, porn etc) as the more s...

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Fighting for love? I love dystopian future stories. I don't know maybe there it is the part of me that loves to watch how things might fall apart. From the bleak Joss Whedon Firefly and Dollhouse  TV shows or the amazing Metatropolis  anthology to this new trilogy of books and 1st film the Hunger Games. By Suzanne Collins this triology explores a bleak near future where America has collapsed and ruled with an Iron Fist the capital city holds 12 districts under its thumb treating them as slave labour. Barely able to survive, working back breaking jobs the vast majority of the population serve the few rich capital city dwellers. As part of the capitals drive to keep the districts under heal and broken they city forces each district to select 2 young people to fight to the death in a televised event called the Hunger Games. The games themselves unfold in a very similar way to the 2000 Japanese film Battle Royale  but the world they are set in is ...

This week I have read 3 separate stories (just on BBC) all talking about how the internet is negatively impacting the sexual health of the nation. Young get sex health warning http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-14837229 MPs told young children accessing explicit porn http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-14845299 .XXX web domain registration begins http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-14821192 Now the third one might be a bit unconnected but the discussion around it all fits. What is the modern impact of all the sexual content on the internet. For one year I have been teaching on the issue of "sexting" in secondary schools. Working hard to try and help young people understand the emotional consequences of taking the risk of sharing naked or provocative pictures. This work has opened up my perspective to the much larger area of the impact of digital sexual content. Trying to do research on this topic is a lot harder then looking at STIs. Emotional and social consequences can not b...

Today I had the privilege of meeting my works key financial supporter. I could not do my job with out his kind donatitions. Well I work up early to go meet him and I've got to be honest I was nervous. Whilst I was pretty sure that he would not object to my work, I was keenly aware that the long term existance of the project could depend on this meeting. The project has garenteed funding for the next 1 and a half years. Beyond that we do not have any guarentees. In fact he has publicaly said that he will not fund the work after summer 2011. After meeting him and his wife I wish this wasn't the case. He is a fantastic guy who has a clear passion for work which makes a differance and for work which builds in sustanability. Before this meeting (and my pre-meeting prep) I had not put a lot of thought into sustanability but Chester is in a good state for sustainability. Mainly because the model we are using is to get local youth workers from local churches to be passionate about the ...

Ok I wanted to post a quick resource that I have created and used with 6th Formers. It is a True/False PowerPoint, unlike the PowerPoints I use with younger age groups it uses some more explicit language and terms. All the images are royalty free and come from SXC.hu (an excellent website for anyone doing an kind of image work). You can use them for any not for profit educational work. I am happy for you to use this PowerPoint for any sessions you are doing. Please credit me If you are using it. I have reduced the file size and preserved my pretty fonts by making the slide show into simple images. True False 6th Form (jpg)

Hello, my name is Gareth and I work as a sex and relationship education worker in the UK. The main part of my job is in local schools but also sometimes work in youth clubs. This blog is about Sex and Relationship Education stuff. It is about a variety of things, my work, my thoughts, resources, policies and experiences. It is one place for me to put stuff into the public domain, maybe the people who read this will be strangers or maybe they will be people I know. I don't mind, I am using this to try and publically reflect on my work.