Skip to main content

Two things surprise me

Two things surprise me regularly when I'm teaching SRE.
Firstly, how much some young people know about sex.
Secondly, how little some young people know about sex.

Strangely this seems true across all demographics of age, culture, up bringing and economic background. Some young people just seem to have a much greater awareness of sex at a younger age and some seem to be the complete opposite. This presenst some problems when teaching SRE. I know that if I aim too basic in my session I will be irrelevant to some of the class and more worryingly they may then decide to not ask me that question that they really want to know. On the over side if I aim high I may be concussing to people in the lesson or I may give them ideas that they wouldn't have thought of before.

I believe the best approach is to aim somewhere in the middle, never assuming anything. Ensuring all my language is clear and concise examplianing new terms as I use them. At the same time I aim to never let my language appear to encourage any activities at a young age. The big example of this has been Oral Sex.

In many lessons I have defined oral Sex saying "oral sex is when someone uses their mouth to provide pleasure to someone's genitals" sometimes adding "by licking, sucking or kissing for example."

I have discussed with a number of workers and a few teachers about this particular definition. Does the definition act as a short how to, encouraging young people to engage in an activity they may not have previously thought of. In a basic way it does, it gives the very basic technique but does it encourage young people to have a go? I'm not sure but currently I believe all it does is break down the gossip and misunderstandings that go around the school playground. Sometimes I ask the group to give some examples of the slang terms they use. This can again help young people to cut through misunderstandings.

At my recent lecture at The University of Chester, one of the students made the point that we should be working with the sick not the healthy and used this idea to support the aim of teaching SRE aimed at young people who are thinking and talking about the bigger issues. They need help and support. The young people who hadn't heard the terms or hadn't spent a lot of time thinking about it wouldn't be damaged by hearing some more details. Details that are clear and correct, not gossip or Chinese whispers.

Information isn't damaging (unless it is misinformation)

Comments

  1. Really nice information, This information will always help to everyone for gaining knowledge. So please always share your valuable information. I am very thankful to you for providing good information. Escort agency in Sheffield

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A RSE reading list

Sometimes people ask me what reading I recommend around RSE, so I thought I would put together a bit of a list.  Key (free) articles and reports  Young people’s RSE UK poll  Sex Education Forum (2018) RSE outcome variations due to facilitator differences  Young et al (2018) What do young people think about their school-based sex and relationship education? A qualitative synthesis of young people's views and experiences Pound et al. (2016) Review of sexual abuse in schools and college s Ofsted (2021) National and International RSE Guidance  UNESCO international guidance on RSE  UNESCO (2018) England   Department for Education full guidance on statutory relationships education, relationships and sex education (RSE) and health education  Department for Education (2019) Wales Curriculum for Wales guidance and code for Relationships and Sexuality Education (RSE)  (Consultation stage) Welsh Government (2021)  Scotland  Guidance for teac...

Creating a physical RSE resource - See It Shout It

I love making new relationships and sex education resources. " See It Shout It ", is the latest resource I have made to help young people grow in confidence to verbalise sex related words. I was asked how I choose the 31 icons that made the resource and I thought the creation process might be interesting to talk about.  Normally I create activities that can be shared digitally and then printed out or used with a projector. But sometimes I am involved in creating physical products. The process is similar for both but there are a few extra steps with making a physical product to be sold. The barriers to start making your own high quality resources is lower then ever and new creators can always bring a fresh perspective to a topic.  I have worked in the sex education field for over 15 years and this topic is what I know best but I'm sure that the same basic process can be applied to many different subjects. I am going to share the process I went through creating " See I...

Sources and reading from " 5 cool things AI can do for your youth work (and what's coming next)" workshop

Thank you if you came to my workshop at NYMW 2023 about how youth workers might consider using AI within their work. Obviously there is a lot of areas we could have looked at. We only scratched the surface, especially around the ethics. But with the current attention on generative AI I hope it was useful. Below I have included both a copy of my slides and links to some further reading/research about the topic.  Slides Download a .pdf of the slides here Edited further reading and research list Atlas of AI (2022) Crawford *. A good book about ethical aspects Automating Youth Work: youth workers views on AI (2023) Pawluczuk . EU study into the attitude of youthworkers towards AI Blood in the Machine (2023) Merchant *. Who were the Luddites and why did they hate new technology  Here's What Ethical AI Really Means (2023) Philosophy Tube . Long form video essay about the ethical aspects of AI, especially in regards to the creative arts   How AI chatbots like ChatGPT o...