Blindfish RSE

Over the last 2 weeks, for the first time I have taught a full Sex and Relationship Education trainer course. In the past I have helped out on someone elses course and have lead workshops on specific topics at events/conferences. This was the first time I took  responsibility for an entire course. The course I taught is the 4 day  Esteem Resource Network  course. This was the course I was originally trained in and 5 years and 500+ hours of classroom experience later I was now teaching the course. The course had 10 people and I loved opening up the wide field of Relationship and Sex Education to them.  On the course I had 1 co worker, 1 local church based child and family worker, 2 third year youth work students (one who has been on placement with me) and a herd of 6 second year youth work students. So basically everyone was a youth worker or similar  This helped me as it's the group of people I work with the most. I know ...

Yesterday I was invited to speak on the Chester university Christian youth work course all about the importance of sex and relationship education, especially for youth worker. We got to cover lots of great stuff. I promised to post on here links to a couple of things I mentioned. If you are interested in attending the training I mentioned email me at Gareth@cscw.org.uk  The Sex Education Forum's guide to SRE within the youth service   The Department of Health recently published  Sexual health improvement framework

I have started teaching a lesson on the media's portrayal of Sex and Relationship. The lesson focuses on movies, TV shows and visual pornography. But with all the media hype around 50 Shades of Grey I wanted to do a small scale survey of young people I work with to see if the hype had any grounding in reality. Are young people reading it and is it impacting young people?  At the end of a session looking at the Distortion of Media I handed out some small surveys. Just half a dozen questions and a space for general feedback. I did this with two year groups both mixed gender. A group of year 10 students (aged 14-15) and a group of year 12 students (aged 16-17). With the older group I also asked if the book had encouraged them to experiment with "BDSM/fetish/kinky stuff" but talking with school staff it was decided not to ask that direct question to the year 10 groups. Below are some of the figures from my study, please note it is very small scale and may not ref...

Please make use of all these notes/links from my session today at the Esteem Resource Network Conference looking at the topic "Let’s talk about porn" Firstly my presentation Why talk about Porn? on Prezi 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 ...

Yesterday we finished our training course for local youth workers in the Oasis Esteem course. It was great fun, especially the final day with each youth worker delivering a mock session to the rest of the group (who all pretended to be young people). It raised lots of very interesting points about the topics and about classroom management. The group acted the role of young people with passion and commitment. Infact I think some (including myself) found it a great opportunity to misbehave. All in all I'm very happy with everyone who completed the training, I can't wait to get them involved with some real lessons with real young people.

Some people have asked for the training form to be put only so they can download it. So here it is. Esteem Course Booking Form or type the following into your address bar    http://www.dbiz.org.uk/uploads/text/49.doc

In Chester we are hosting a 4 day Oasis Esteem Sex and Relationship Education course. Please download the attached JPG flyer. [caption id="attachment_34" align="aligncenter" width="426" caption="Sex and Relationship Education Course in Chester"] [/caption]