Tips for Teachers

Whether you’re at a large school district or a small independent school, there is a lot of opportunity to facilitate sexuality education, often in broader ways than pregnancy and disease prevention, and that honor all individuals and aspects of healthy sexuality. Always make sure to review and follow your state’s laws and district’s policies for sexuality education topics that can or can not be included.

Review some of our most general tips below for getting started on incorporating sexuality education into your work, and connect with Talk More if you’d like more information about specific teacher training and technical assistance opportunities.

Determine your policies.

There are many reasons sexuality education isn’t happening in schools. It may be because there isn’t a curriculum selected, teachers aren’t trained to teach, or most likely, people don’t know exactly what their district policy is or how to interpret it. Many states and school board policies may require or allow more sex education than you realize.

If you’re interested in learning more, you will want to check both your state superintendent’s office, for a statewide policy, and your local school board policy. SIECUS offers some great resources that outline the state of sexuality education state by state. The policy may include:

  • content that is required, or not allowed, to be taught

  • requirements for the type of content (i.e., medically-accurate)

  • requirements surrounding family consent (opt

  • an adopted curriculum

Consider ways to integrate concepts related to sexuality across health disciplines.

Sexuality education is more than just birth control and STDS. It includes issues around gender stereotypes, body image, all types of relationships, boundaries, and consent, LGBTQ identities, and even more interrelated concepts.

  • Teach social-emotional skills: At its foundation, healthy sexuality is rooted in our relationships with ourselves and with others; our essential social-emotional skills. And data shows that people with stronger social-emotional skills report higher rates or wellbeing (17). Intentionally building social-emotional skills such as self-esteem, healthy friendship skills, communication skills, and self-regulation during strong emotions will support kid’s sexual wellbeing as they grow older.

  • Use inclusive language: There are many ways our language is not inclusive of all identities, individuals, or families. Consider the ways you talk about families (do you use Mom and Dad?), people of all abilities, say “you guys” when talking to the whole class, or always use examples that portray heterosexual couples? Consistently use of inclusive language as a way to create an inclusive and affirming classroom environment and counter our implicit bias to establish new norms. A great resources for inclusive language can be found here.

  • Discuss relationships: There are a variety of examples, whether that be through the media, current events, or literature that highlight examples of relationships and behaviors between individuals. Use these objective examples to discuss the specific ways people demonstrate respect and other elements of a healthy relationship, as well as unhealthy behaviors. In addition, call out and deconstruct with students the ways our stories (and lived experiences) perpetuate racism, misogyny, ableism, and classism.

Recognize and counter racism, sexism, heteronormativity and ablism in your teaching.

White supremacy has long been a part of sex education as a field. It’s our responsibility as educators, especially those who identify as white, to recognize the way bias, along with racism, sexism, and heterosexism impact our instruction and language around sexuality. This “unlearning” can be a long process, and requires continuous work: becoming aware of bias in ourselves, recognizing when it's happening in our teaching or in our curriculum materials, and actively working to counter the ingrained internal narratives we have grown up hearing. This will help us teach in more inclusive ways.

Below are some resources, rich with detail and information about how many of these harmful ideas show up in sexual health education:

Sex, Race, and Politics in the U.S.: A Call to Action to Address Racial Justice in Sexuality Education: From SIECUS and WOCSHN, this report outlines the historical and current the ways racism in politics have influenced our bias related to race and sexuality.

Centering Racial Justice in Sex Education: Strategies for Engaging Professionals and Young People: published by the Sex Education Collaborative, provides an emerging framework for educators to think about anti-racist work in the classroom.

Ableism101: From Access Living, this article outlines how ableism impacts our behaviors and assumptions related to people with disabilities. This is especially true for sexuality, as our bias is often that people with disabilities aren't sexual.

LGBTQ Inclusive Sex Education: A quick article from GLSEN that lists some harmful ways to include LGBTQ+ people in sex education, and one way to do it effectively.

How Homophobia Hurts Us All: From Case Western University, this article outlines the ways the harmful attitudes that have shaped heterosexism, and the specific ways they can creep into our discussions of relationships.

Get trained.

A 2020 environmental scan, done by the Society of Public Health Educators, didn’t even measure whether sexuality education was included as a requirement in collegiate teacher preparation programs. Many teacher preparation programs don’t consider healthy sexuality, and all of its elements, a critical component of health, even though the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) indicates that professional development in this topic can make teachers more confident, and spend more time on sexuality education topics.

There are many ways to get trained in sexuality education. You can find several training resources below:

Find excellent resources (trust us, you don’t have to make your own).

You have several options when it’s time to find high quality, inclusive, and medically accurate resources to use in schools:

Partner meaningfully with families.

Two thirds of parents agree that sexuality education should be taught in schools, starting in middle school or earlier, and should include both abstinence and condoms and contraception. (18)

In order to make your sexuality education programs more effective, and get buy in and support from your community at large, consider the following ways you can partner with families:

  • Invite families to a night in which you can introduce the curriculum, resources, or content being taught and invite them to ask questions.

  • Use programs that invite conversations between kids and their families (FLASH does this!) and encourage youth to share what they’ve learned with the families.

  • Create a resource center in your school (such as in the health center or counselors office) to connect families with resources to support talking with their kids about sexuality. Consider sending them to Talk More!