So since working on DO… RSE for Schools I’ve become even more aware that, despite relationships and sex education being such a huge topic, there is often not a lot of support out there for teachers actually delivering it.
With DO… we’ve tried to make delivering better RSE easier, but even then the burden of teaching RSE and training colleagues often rests on the shoulders of one teacher. That teacher may well not have had any training in RSE and may not know where to look for high quality resources — with teachers telling us that they often just create their own stuff.
So me and that Alice Hoyle have got together to create a facebook group called RSE in Schools. It’s for anyone teaching RSE in secondary schools in the UK though it’s also open to healthy school leads, local authority trainers and outside agencies working with schools (we may make side groups if there’s enough interest).
Alice and I are going to be the moderators and administrators of the group (to begin with) and we hope that by creating a community of educators we can offer:
- Somewhere to chat to other RSE educators
- A place to sense check ideas and thoughts
- Links to high quality resources
- Best practice advice about delivering RSE
- Pro-tips, hot takes and ideas from myself and Alice
Alice and I were the lead writers for the materials in the DO… resources (check them out, we think they are awesome as well as being free and available at the click of a button). So we’ll be flagging up some of the content in there and making suggestions for how they can be adapted. We’ll also be linking to other awesome resources (such as my stuff, ahem) from other folk and organisations doing really great RSE that are part of the DO… collaboration as well as the best resources from outside the collaboration too.
We’ll be on there most days, for a bit, to answer people’s ‘how tos’ and ‘where can I finds’ (though we can’t answer every question ourselves). We’ll also talk about what’s happening in the news related to relationships and sex and offer some thoughts about appropriate ways to create teachable moments in tutor or PSHE time. You’ll also hear from us around the various big RSE events of the year, for example Valentine’s Day and how to teach about love and relationships.
We’re going to start, like any with any good RSE lesson, with a group agreement to help us get the conversation going.
It’s a closed group so click here and we’ll add you. There are a couple of questions to make sure that you are doing RSE in the UK (though we are a bit flexible if you are from outside the UK). If you’re not a facebook person, don’t worry, I’ll be writing more blogs here and also tweeting about stuff via @bishtraining.
[We’re grateful to be sponsored by RB (parent company of Durex) to run this Facebook group — however we have full editorial control over our content. We’ll be talking about DO… a bit (which is also sponsored by Durex) but only because we worked on it and think it’s really really great.]
© Justin Hancock, 2018
