Transcript of the episode “National Sex Ed Standards: Equity and expanded comfort zones”

[00:00:15] Amy H-L: I’m Amy Halpern-Laff.

[00:00:16] Jon M: And I’m Jon Moscow. Welcome to Ethical Schools. Our guest today is Brittany McBride, Sexuality Education at Advocates for Youth. Welcome Brittany!

We’re very happy to have you. What is Advocates for Youth?

[00:00:30] Brittany M: Advocates for Youth is a national nonprofit. We are based in Washington DC, and we are absolutely committed to making sure that we are meeting the needs of young people. And we do that by partnering with them and the organizations and adult allies who work for them to ensure that they have access to honest and complete sex education as well as a litany of other amazing resources.

[00:00:56] Amy H-L: What are the National Sex Education Standards and why do they matter?

[00:01:00] Brittany M: The National Sex Education Standards are a fantastic tool that was developed in partnership with a ton of national organizations to ensure that there was equity in what was being taught in classroom spaces. We were realizing that across from state to state, students were getting a very different type of sex education, but al so within the same school, kids will get a different education from classroom to classroom. The National Sex Education Standards provides a very nice baseline as to what content should be taught to students at what age. It provides a very clear understanding of what content should be delivered to our young people, what they deserve, and what is included in a complete education.

[00:01:47] Jon M: Who developed the standards? How were they developed?

[00:01:50] Brittany M: They were developed in partnership with a group of organizations, as well as tons of absolutely brilliant folks from the field. And this was done over the process of years of meetings, of determining what exactly these absolute standards needed to be for students. There’s actually two drafts of the National Sex Education Standards. And we were excited to have the most recent version, the most up-to-date draft, released in March of 2020. And we have partners who signed on and supported and helped out as individuals, as well as organizations. And folks can learn more about the National Sex Education Standards and actually check them out at FOSE, the Future of Sex Education website.

[00:02:36] Amy H-L: What are some of the key elements?

[00:02:38] Brittany M: Some of the key elements of the National Sex Education Standards, we like to talk about them in the terms of topics. The Standards definitely highlight for folks what areas should be taught. Let me pull up here. For us, these updated National Sex Education Standards highlight what the key strands are that should be covered in complete sex education. We want to make sure that we are including content on consent and healthy relationships. We definitely want to cover anatomy and physiology, puberty, and adolescent sexual development, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation and identity, sexual health, and interpersonal violence. Those key strands help us then to identify lessons, what topics we can then expand upon within a curriculum. But those are just the key ideals and strands that should be included in a complete sex education curricula.

[00:03:38] Amy H-L: Brittany, typically in subject areas where we have standards, teachers do have some autonomy to teach. How much autonomy do teachers have to go beyond what’s prescribed here?

[00:03:52] Brittany M: We encourage folks to expand upon the Standards. For us, this is absolutely a baseline as to what every young person deserves in their education. But if folks have the capacity and the ability to go even further, we absolutely encourage that.

[00:04:08] Jon M: What is the range of state education standards across the country?

[00:04:14] Brittany M: Oh my goodness. What a great question. It’s unbelievable. You can visit one state and you have visited one state. It’s hard to provide any context or clarity as to the range as to what the standards look like per state. And I think the most interesting fact about that is that a lot of times teachers, educators, administrators, often don’t really understand or take deep looks at as to what their state standards are, and instead are operating from a place of what they think that they include. And usually when we get to partner with schools, it’s a really great stop for us in the very beginning of that relationship, to really assess what the state standards are so that we can ensure that they are in compliance with not only the national standards, but their state standards as well.

And we find that some state standards are less than what the National Sex Education Standards require. And then there are some state standards that push the limit and go past what we require of the National Sex Education Standards. It really does vary.

[00:05:16] Jon M: What are some particularly good state or local standards?

[00:05:20] Brittany M: They’re all really great. It’s tough to call out the states because they think I have favorites. But I think standards that are inclusive and complete, that are respecting and responsive to the needs of students, are great standards. And so we are always looking for those standards that are the most responsive to our young people and making sure that they receive access to an education that they actually deserve and will allow them to receive the education that they need in order to live the lives that they want.

[00:05:52] Jon M: Do teachers and schools have to meet state standards, as well as the national standards? How does that work?

We would like them to. That’s our recommendation. We understand that for some states, meeting the state standards is a big lift for them. And it’s a want to have, not a need to have, but we definitely have this tool available to folks who have the capacity to do. . .

You said that the new National Standards should push people out of their comfort zones. What do you mean?

[00:06:22] Brittany M: It’s allowed us, in particular, we have our own curriculum, the three Rs, also known as rights, respect, responsibility. It’s completely free and online at our website. 3Rs.org. And when these new National Sex Education Standards were released in March of 2020, it allowed us to identify some opportunities to even expand upon our own curriculum. As a result of these new standards, we were able to add an additional 35 lessons across our kindergarten through 12th grade curriculum to really expand upon what we were already offering to our young people. We were able to talk about consent earlier, more frequently. We were able to include really great lessons on racial justice. We included more conversations around healthy relationships, gender identity, trans inclusive lessons, and overall expectations around creating affirming spaces for students in the classroom. I’m very excited about the Standards because it allowed us this opportunity to provide even better sex education to our young people.

And for some people that may feel they’re getting pushed out of their comfort zone, for us, it was a welcomed gift or chance to do even better sex education. We’re always open to feedback and wanting to do better and do more. This was just a great time to do that.

[00:07:47] Amy H-L: You’ve written that no curriculum will meet all students’ needs, so you work on creating adaptqtion guides. What are these?

[00:07:56] Brittany M: Well, I said that in reference to students with learning differences. We feel in order to be as responsive to the needs of students with learning differences or disabilities, It is about trusting that the teachers, the educators in the classroom space, have a much better understanding of the needs of their students regardless. We are not in every single state. We don’t live in every single state. And we trust that educators have the capacity and are the experts in the room and are all listening to their young people and being responsive to them to make sure that they’re meeting their needs.

When we’re looking at adaptations for students with learning differences, we don’t want to create a curriculum that won’t be responsive to the needs of the majority of students. And we found that the best way for school districts to approach this because they’re doing that work, not us, is for them to create an adaptation guide that the teachers in the classrooms could then decide which adaptations would then best meet the needs of their individual students.

[00:09:02] Jon M: Many teachers are uncomfortable teaching sex ed. How do you help them to become more comfortable?

[00:09:09] Brittany M: Initially I would say, not all teachers are uncomfortable teaching sex ed. A lot of the time, most teachers aren’t expecting to teach sex ed. It’s usually a surprise or something that they never expected would be on their plate. And for us, for me, in particular, I spend a lot of my time training educators and I find that once they have the content, they are feeling far more confident and capable of providing really great sex education. I have never met a teacher who has disagreed with me, didn’t care about the wellbeing of their kids. All teachers want to make sure that their kids are healthy and are in a good space. And they understand that this is a part of that. It’s really just about building the competence and capacity of these educators to then do that, if this is not something that they were originally trained to do. And it’s possible. We train teachers all of the time. We definitely see them feel, express, and share that building of confidence, and it then does make a big difference in what’s happening in the actual classroom.

[00:10:21] Jon M: When we were talking earlier, you mentioned that you have a virtual reality training program for teachers. How does that work?

[00:10:29] Brittany M: We have a great program called Virtual Professional Development, also known as VPD. And VPD is this really cutting edge, amazing software that allows educators, anyone who works with young people, really, an opportunity to practice the essential skills of a sex educator with student avatars. It provides this really great, safe learning environment for teachers because they know they’re not going to harm the kids [inaudible]. And they get this opportunity to really practice and try things out. And that safe space, what’s really wonderful about it is that it’s a scaffolded experience. I find that my teachers come into the virtual classroom to practice the first time sweating. They are nervous. It is their cardio for the day. By the second and third time they’re doing it, they’re feeling way more confident.

That also is attributable to the fact of there’s a health education coach who signs in with them. We are there observing, taking notes and providing them with realistic and achievable feedback that they can then integrate in each subsequent turn with the avatar. They will practice a skill that they’ve selected at least three or four times, each time making minor adjustments with the support of their coach to then get better and better. And then by the time that they’re done with us, they’re then able to then translate that into the classroom. And we’re finding it to be incredibly successful for teachers because that practice is far more useful as opposed to, sitting in a Zoom webinar and just getting information. This allows them to actually integrate the information, actually try it out, see how it feels. And we are excited to offer it to folks. We have tons of skills available for them to practice. We have all three grade bands, elementary, middle, and high school. We even have scenarios to practice talking with parents and caregivers or for health care providers to practice talking with young patients. It’s really exciting, and the timing is perfect with the pandemic. Virtual Professional Development is definitely here to stay. And this is just a great opportunity for folks to really expand upon their existing skills.

[00:12:46] Jon M: That sounds really exciting. How can people access it? Can individual teachers contact you or does it have to be done by the school as a whole or what actually happens if some of our listeners are interested?

[00:12:57] Brittany M: Sure. Typically we have school districts who reach out and we’ll secure a number of hours on behalf of their teachers. We have had smaller groups reach out, maybe a few teachers, and we are happy to accommodate the needs for what whichever group. And folks who are interested in learning more about that can find out more at advocatesforyouth.org/virtualpd, and we are happy to answer any questions folks have about that. We have a really fun commercial. You can learn a lot about our offerings there, and we hope to meet you in that virtual classroom and get you feeling a whole lot more comfortable.

[00:13:37] Amy H-L: Just to clarify, how much capacity do you have? Are you the main non-profit in this space?

[00:13:44] Brittany M: We are not the only non-profit in this space. There are tons of people doing really fantastic work around sex education and the people who are doing the work on the local level. There are community-based organizations doing work in every single town and we are grateful for them. Sex education is not just our thing, but we are here to partner with schools. We’re here to partner with other organizations, with parents, with caregivers, with the young people themselves, because we believe that this coordinated approach is what’s going to provide the best education to our young people. Everything that we do truly centers the needs of our kids. It would not be the best practice for us to think that we are the end all be all. And we love partnering and working with others to make sure that we’re being the best supporter for our young people.

[00:14:31] Amy H-L: Do many pre-service teacher ed programs prepare teachers to teach sex education?

[00:14:38] Brittany M: Yes. If health and PE teachers are in school to become health educators or PE coaches, there is an ability to be trained. I will say that a lot of the folks who end up doing the teaching of sex education are not trained health educators. And instead it’s usually a district that’s trying to meet the needs of their kids, but don’t have the access to these trained health educators. So, we are able to build the capacity of anyone to do this work really well, but we love when we have trained health educators. They have received these really great education and foundation setting, whether that be in their undergraduate or graduate education. And I think it’s just a wonderful experience. It helps to amplify the education and the curriculum that are available when you have a really great certified health educator. That doesn’t take away from these incredibly passionate teachers who maybe never thought that they were going to teach sex ed, but found that they are really great at it. And we’re grateful for them as well. We all have not only the National Sex Education Standards, there’s the National Teacher Prep Standards that are available online as well that highlight what standards should be taught in the undergrad and graduate spaces to those who do designate that they would like to become a certified health educator.

[00:15:59] Jon M: I’m curious, because you’ve mentioned a couple of times that sometimes it’s a surprise to a teacher to discover that they’ve suddenly been picked to become a sex educator. Do you think that this reflects, and also the fact that you said in pre-service programs, health educators get training, but people who aren’t explicitly going to be health educators by and large don’t. Does this reflect a systemic lag in recognizing importance of sex ed and the importance of people having a solid background in it, that the district, for example, may not have allocated sufficient monies and planning and so forth to recognize the need? And that that’s why a school may suddenly find itself having to just ask a teacher, to do it on the fly.

[00:16:54] Brittany M: No, I don’t think so. I think that schools are doing the best with what they possibly can. I think, especially in the two years later — how long has this pandemic been going on, two years? Schools are absolutely trying. We’re in survival mode. The teachers are exhausted. Administrators are exhausted. We recognize that they’re all facing much questioning and issues unrelated to sex education. I absolutely don’t want to put this on school districts not being responsible or thinking that sex education is not important. I think they do recognize the importance. They see it just as much as we do because they’re in the classrooms. They’re in these spaces with young people. They recognize how important it is, but it’s incredibly difficult. There’s only so much money. There’s only much funding. There’s only many classrooms. There’s never enough. I’ve never had a district call me to say, we have too much money and we have too many classes available and way too many teachers. Can you help us find a way to do something with that? And I really do commend a lot of these districts who are going above and beyond to ensure that the young people get access to this and making really amazing experiences and providing access to great education to their young people with very little available to them. I think they’re doing a really great job in a lot of places.

[00:18:22] Jon M: Has there been increased resistance to sex ed around the country the last couple of years?

[00:18:29] Brittany M: I don’t know if it’s just sex ed. I think there’s been an uptick in resistance in general. When it comes to anything related to education, there has been a movement of expectations around what the rights are of parents or caregivers as to what’s happening within classroom or school spaces. I’ve seen an uptick in that quite a bit in the last two years, whether that be who’s allowed to wear a mask, what the school is allowed to mandate, who can be on the classroom grounds. That has been a conversation that I’ve been hearing more than I’ve ever heard before. I think sex education has been grouped into these conversations and it neatly fits into a narrative of pushing back around things that make folks feel uncomfortable or changes that make folks feel uneasy.

Sex education is incredibly important. We often find that folks really don’t even understand what sex education is. There is a real disparity in comprehension of what we mean when we say complete sex education and understanding that we are talking about partnering with parents and caregivers to ensure that young people have access to information so that they can make informed decisions around their bodies.

A lot of the content that we cover has absolutely nothing to do with sex, especially in our younger grades. We are truly providing life skills, how to communicate effectively, how to navigate relationships. What’s healthy versus unhealthy. Let’s talk about what –the parts of your bodies, that you’re able to communicate with a healthcare provider effectively, these kinds of essential skills are a requirement. It’s completely unfair for us to not provide access to that information, and yet expect these young people to then traverse their adult lives with an incomplete education or toolbox to be able to even navigate it. We will always have some folks who are anti-education, who are anti allowing young people the ability to understand and/or access the services that they require to live their lives.

There will always be a small group of people, but overwhelmingly there is a ton of support for complete sex education, honest and complete sex education. And I think it’s important that we are a little bit more vocal and organized because often there’s the standby effect where everyone’s, oh, I don’t need to go and speak on behalf of this because everyone is in support of it. And then that’s where we come up with some issues. The majority of parents and caregivers are super grateful that we are willing to come in and take on the education, the information part of it. And then we connect them back home to go talk about values and to talk about their community norms, their cultural norms. We are doing this work in partnership with parents 99% of the time. They’re incredibly grateful for it.

[00:21:46] Jon M: Given that there are this level of attacks around all sorts of issues right now, such as mask wearing, for example, and CRT, or what’s claimed to be CRT, and book banning, this whole wave of attacks that we’ve been reading about. How can parents, if there are situations where sex ed classes are being attacked, how can parents and students both defend against these and demand complete sex education? You were just saying that sometimes people just sort of stand by and assume that it’ll be self-evident that there’s support.

[00:22:21] Brittany M: Sure. We encourage people to get involved, to go find out what the policy is for your local school district. Does your district require sex education? If so, what does it require to be taught? Just take a moment, just research and find out what’s even being taught in your kids’ schools. Find a space to be supportive of that. Maybe it’s sending a quick email to the administrator saying, thank you for prioritizing this, letting them know that you appreciate the work, that it’s not easy, but that you’re grateful for that. I think that goes a really long way for those of us who are doing this work right now, just to know that there is parental support. For those who want to take on more leadership roles, there are often committees within each district around health education that love to have parental involvement, or you could take on more of a responsibility around looking at the curriculum, making adjustments, looking at data, making data informed approaches and stuff. You can get involved that way. You can go to the local school board meetings and express your support for this education. And yeah, it can be anything as simple as just a thank you card or a thank you email, or you could get involved and run for your school board. We would love that. For those who are involved and who are supportive of this, any involvement that you can provide is absolutely huge.

[00:23:49] Jon M: We’ve found that sometimes when principals have told us that when they’ve been wanting to talk to parents about offering sex ed, say, in the upper grades of elementary school, that they’ve sometimes found that the parents tell them, as you were saying, that they themselves haven’t had sex ed, but that some of the questions that they are asked are very, very basic questions. Is this something that you’ve encountered and if so, how do you respond?

[00:24:19] Brittany M: Absolutely. It is not uncommon for us to hear from parents and caregivers that they themselves never even received sex education or what they received was very much incomplete. For parents who are already carrying much of a burden right now of managing parenting relationships, work, homework, all of that other great stuff, to then have to navigate this job of becoming a sex educator and everything there is to know around answering questions that their young people might have. it can be overwhelming for them. We are grateful for this opportunity to take the information, the knowledge, off of their plate. I can come in and provide the facts for our young people. And then it allows the parents to take a little bit of a breath and then be able to just navigate the conversations around their values and their beliefs.

Now we do have really great parents who want to become askable adults. And for them, we have tons of resources available to them that they can learn a little bit more of the content area themselves so that they’re able to answer more questions and just be that better trusted adult for their young people and the young people who are around them.

So amaze.org, a m a z e dot org is an absolutely fantastic resource for middle school students and a really great resource for parents who maybe want to learn a little bit more about each of these topics. There are great little short videos, about a minute and a half, two minutes long that cover a multitude of topics, that allow folks the ability to get some of that information, to then be able to feel more comfortable to navigate conversations with their young people.

[00:26:03] Amy H-L: Going back to what you said about returning home. What does it mean that you teach what you need to teach facts and then send the students home to learn values?

[00:26:14] Brittany M: Yes. Our job and what I train teachers to completely understand, is that my values, the values of those who are teaching in these classrooms, have absolutely no place in a classroom whatsoever. And I like to think of us as just the walking Googles, there to provide the factual information to our young people, using whichever curricular you have chosen. I am there just to provide facts, to answer questions and focus on the information. Inevitably young people are going to ask values-based questions. Conversations are going to come up as you matriculate through a curricula where folks are going to talk about what the expectations are of their family, of their culture, of their community. And that is just the perfect opportunity to then bridge that connection back to home for them to continue those conversations and talk about how values then influence the information that you receive in sex education, how that can then help you make the decision.

And in our own curriculum, the three R’s, we include tons of homework that includes partnering with parents and caregivers at home. We are abiut absolute transparency. Our entire curriculum is online for folks to be able to check out. And for us, it’s about making sure that parents feel supported and invited to be incredibly involved from start to finish, because that just provides more protective factors for our young people. And since we’re centering them, we want to do what’s in their best interest. And having more trusted adults, having more folks available to them to answer questions, to clarify misconceptions, to be just a safe space to talk, it’s just going to provide more opportunities for our young people to flourish and grow. For us, any opportunity for us to bring in the parents, whether that be providing them with their own training and support, because we’ve had parents come in and say that they never got sex ed and they want to learn how to become better askable adults. We’ll help them do that. If it’s about just providing some really great homework that might spark a wonderful conversation at home, let’s do that too. Whatever folks feel comfortable with, we want to make sure that our young people can just have all of these fantastic, trusted adults in their lives to support them.

[00:28:42] Amy H-L: As a Deweyan-grounded organization, we tend to encourage students and educators to look at the impacts of their actions, all of their actions, what they say, what they do, what are the impacts of those actions on humans, animals-other-than humans on the planet, just to look at the broader implications of their actions. Is that something that aligns with your teaching?

[00:29:10] Brittany M: Absolutely. We have conversations around consent, or we’re talking about how to communicate effectively. There’s a lot of opportunities for our young people to be able to introspectively, and then also maybe in small groups and a larger group, have these conversations about how that then impacts their relationships with other people. We also take those opportunities to talk about how our outside community then influences our abilities to make decisions. Conversations I had with my grandmother, how does that impact my decision around maybe what I’m going to, how I communicate with others. I think there’s a ton of alignment there with the way that we teach honest, complete sex education, and just overall respect for people,

[00:30:00] Jon M: Thank you, Brittany McBride of Advocates for Youth..

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