(I first published a version of this for Delvvy’s 100 Days of Sex Ed.)

Before we delve in – I want to invite you to reflect on the following question: what was your ‘relationships education’ like? Don’t scroll down, just take a minute or ten and reflect back on what you were taught about relationships at school. This could be the explicit things you were taught, or the implicit things you took away.

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Our own experiences of Relationships Education

When I ask fellow practitioners this question on my training courses I often see shrugs and blank faces. For many people, their experience of relationship education was limited to when and in what circumstances they should have sex. Messaging often included that ‘sex should only happen in committed, loving, married relationships’ or ‘marriage is between men and women’. It also often peddled the fairy-tale narrative that finding the ‘one’ is the key to living happily ever after. 

These messages are continually reinforced by society, communities, government, media, and our own loved ones. They are framed as ‘common sense’ and often result in blame and shame when questioned. This ‘educational’ messaging does not help people navigate their relationships, in fact often it contributes to making them worse.

We’re not taking relationships education seriously enough

Sadly, relationships education has not progressed much. The R in RSE seems to be mostly silent, serving as a linguistic emollient to make “Sex Ed” seem more respectful or accepted. I rarely get to teach about relationships (I’m invited into schools, for a fee) and even when I do, it’s the odd single session here and there. When I do get requests to teach about relationships, it’s attached to other words. As if I can teach ‘healthy relationships, harmful behaviours and porn’ in one lesson.

If you do a literature search for ‘relationships education’ on Google Scholar, you’ll see the dire lack of academic research on the topic. Results are either about ‘relationships and sex education’ or relationships education for couples in therapy, so based on how to make an existing romantic relationship work. Look at this Good Practice Guide to RSE (pdf) from UCL and the School of Sexuality Education and the Sex Education Forum. The one mention of relationships education is in the ‘Consent and healthy relationships section’ and it simply says: “‘Healthy relationships’ encompasses all kinds of relationships”.

Why aren’t we taking relationships education seriously?

I think there are lot of things going on which means that we don’t take relationships education more seriously than we do.

Lack of time for relationships education

The first of these is, simply, time. There’s never enough time to do proper RSE. In the course which I wrote with Alice Hoyle DO… RSE for Schools we have just over 20% of the course time devoted to relationships: which is a lot more than most. If we don’t apportion enough time to relationships education then we will simply not generate enough interest in it. If we can’t see what relationships can do, then we don’t do it. It also won’t be fed into the evaluation feedback loop encouraging us to do more. ‘Relationships education’ has never been allowed to develop. It’s not ‘a thing.’

Relationships aren’t a ‘hot topic’

The second reason we don’t do more is that there is always a focus on the ‘hot topics’. So, just in the space of my career this has been: HIV / AIDS, teenage pregnancy, boys and young men, chlamydia, porn, consent, toxic masculinity (‘bym rebranded’). RSE has the tendency to follow the hot topic, or the spectacle, because this is how the attention economy works. We also tend to follow what is current because we can raise funding off the back of it. Relationships just hasn’t had it’s turn yet.

Relationships education doesn’t count as ‘harm minimisation’ (for some reason)

Related to this, the third reason that we don’t take relationships education seriously, related to the above points, is that it’s not seen as a ‘harm minimisation’ topic*. Why not? Do you know someone in your life, past or present, who has been in a relationship which was harmful: miserable, reduced their capacity to act, abusive, violent? Perhaps this has been you? Relationships can cause very real and very serious harm to the mind and body (which are the same thing). We should be offering people tools to help keep each other safe, as well as to find loving, thriving and nurturing relationships. Relationships education should also have a commitment to address the oppressive structures that are part of the production of unhappy / sad / destructive relationships.

*Though I have never been interested in RSE as harm minimisation myself. I think RSE should be about increasing our capacity to act.

It’s never gone beyond a ‘key message’

As I’ve said above, ‘relationships’ is just a modifier to make ‘sex’ sound more socially safe. To put sex within Gayle Rubin’s ‘charmed circle’ of sexualities that are ‘okay’ (from Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory for the Politics of Sexuality). Where we do see relationships it’s in the entirely discursive form of the term ‘healthy relationships’. It’s a phrase as a ‘discourse’ forming part of a broader ‘common sense’ of relationships.

We pick it up, we might say ‘is this a healthy relationship’ or ‘what are the signs of a healthy relationship’ but we don’t take it much further. It tells ‘others’ with less social capital than ‘us’ that their relationships ‘should’ be healthy (and that of course our relationships always are, nothing to see here). It becomes the ‘key message’. Did you deliver the ‘healthy relationships key message’, was the ‘healthy relationships key message’ received? Tick the box. We saw the same thing happen with consent (as I rant about in my article about the godawful Tea and Consent video).

The job of RSE is not to take one discourse and replace it with another ‘better’ discourse. My job, our job, should be to help us all find our relationship resources, not discourses. This is why instead of spending our time defining it, we should instead make two questions our main focus: what (else) can a relationships education do and how (else) do we do relationships education? I’ll explain the ‘else’ later.

What (else) could relationships education do?

Good RSE is participatory, experiential and conversational. It invites us to understand, critique, explore, and feel. So as I’ve said before it’s not about talks and lectures, but about workshops. For me I use the social pedagogic, or youth work approach I was trained in. This is informal, counter-hegemonic, helping people to build on their own resources.

Good relationships education can help us to understand and critique the ‘should stories’, the ‘common sense’ of relationships. The romantic relationship imperative. Hierarchies. The One and the ‘Happy Ever After’. That story about how your romantic relationship should be like your best friend, your confidant, your cheerleader, your caregiver, your lover all rolled into one. There is nothing necessarily wrong with any of these, just the imperative that this is how we should be organising our intimate lives. The should story.

Relationships education should beyond romantic relationships and includes all of the relationships we encounter throughout our lifetime – be it with ourselves, or with friends, family, colleagues, neighbours, etc. It should also look at relationships as they exist in culture, communities, society and how they are produced and reproduced politically. It should also give us an opportunity to explore more intentional ways of doing relationships, what good might look like for us, how we can do them, and how this will feel: how will we know? 

What can relationships education cover?

I’ve got some ideas for how you might get started doing this kind of critical relationships education below. Moving from a passive, or docile, way of relating to one which is much more active, consensual, and intentional. You can also just have a look at the wealth of advice, guidance, and educational articles I’ve written at BISH about relationships. It’s a huge topic: from how to get a girlfriend / boyfriend / themfriend, dealing with break ups, how to make sex and relationships chats easier, and how to use venn diagrams to work out how much to share with someone. There are nearly 50 articles about many different aspects of relationships. That’s about 50,000 words of guidance and advice. So you could easily spend a lesson a week on relationships education if we were taking it really seriously.

Intentional Relationships

When facilitating workshops with adults and young people about relationships I often use the following exercises. So hopefully they will help you to get started. (For many more of these you may want to buy my Relationships Teaching Pack called Love Innit, or buy it from the BISH Patreon Shop). These activities help people to critique the common sense ideas of relationships and invite them to reflect on how we might make them more intentional. It also gives people an opportunity to assess their own resources. So I will invite you to reflect on the following questions for yourself or with your loved ones. Pens and paper at the ready please!

1. Why might people have romantic relationships?

Think of all the reasons why people might have romantic relationships. For this exercise we are thinking about consensual relationships. Think of as many as you can and write them down. Don’t judge your answers, there are no right or wrong answers, and it’s not what you want from a romantic relationship, but people generally. Give yourself 10 minutes and see how many you come up with. 

This image below is from the BISH Activity Book

Now, looking at your list, what strikes you? If you replaced the title with ‘what do people need in life’, would your list be any different? Which of these can only be met by being in a romantic relationship?

2. Different kinds of love and relationships

Looking at this list, what are the different kinds of love and relationships that might meet these needs? List as many as you can think of. Side note, the Ancient Greeks had at least 7 different words for different kinds of love. 

This image below is also from the BISH Activity Book

Before we jump on to the next bit, you may wish to reflect on these. Which are given the most status in our / your culture? What if they were all treated more equitably? 

3. Relationship qualities

Looking at your list of different kinds of relationships (eg, romantic, friendships etc), are there any qualities, or values, which are necessary for all of them? What is necessary for any kind of relationship to work? Can you come up with 6 – 12 qualities which would be necessary for all relationships?

4. Relationship graph

Now that you have your qualities I’d like you to put them on a graph. Like this one. Put each word on a spoke of your wheel.

Once you’ve done that I’d like you to think of a famous fictional relationship. It could be any kind of relationship at all in any fiction you can think of (and yet most groups will pick Rachel and Ross, le sigh). Then once you have a fictional relationship, plot it on your graph. What goes well and what could need some work? How do all the qualities relate to each other? (It’s really much more fun to do this with loved ones). 

Relationships as ‘a becoming …’ 

By thinking about different kinds of relationships, the qualities in those relationships, and how we might use a technology like a graph to understand them, it invites us to think about ourselves.

By flattening the hierarchies in our relationships, and understanding that they all need the same (if not pretty similar) qualities to be good for us, then we can take the learning from one and apply it to another. From the moment we are born we are developing relationships skills and intelligence and, crucially, we can feel it in our bodies. How do we know we enjoy being with someone? What are the signs that we are in a trusting relationship? How do we know when we are feeling truly supported?

Abundant ways of doing relationships

It also implicates all of our loved ones in our relationships, we all need ‘more than one’ even if we are monogamous. Have you ever had the ‘if you treated me, like they are treating you, that wouldn’t be good’ conversation with a friend? Or reflected on how some relationships allow us to be both free and gently held, and others less so? 

So, by applying a more intentional and critical way of relating, our relationships might evade the capture of the common sense stories of ‘the one’ and the ‘happily ever after’ and instead we might find a way for our relationships to ‘become’ in ways that feel right for us and our loved ones. This is where our relationships unfold over time with us, as we also unfold and ‘become’. Think of the difference would it make for us being in a relationship that was great for us? What would that do, what else?

I’ve found this approach has really helped my relationships, so I hope that you find this useful too!

More Resources

I’ve got lots of other resources for relationship education. At my website ‘BISH – a guide to sex, love and you for everyone over 14’, I’ve got a whole section on relationships. The website is free and ad free, and paid for by wonderful people like us who just want to see this kind of resource in the world, so please do check out the support BISH page while you’re there. 

If you’re an educator you might want to check out my RSE workshop resources at bishtraining.com/shop, where you can find my relationships education teaching pack called ‘Love, Innit’. There’s also a free curriculum at my website called DO… RSE for Schools which features a lesson plan on relationships (but the whole thing is great). I would also recommend the book Great RSE, which has some really great ideas for teaching about relationships. As I mentioned in the article I also run training courses, all of which can be done online or in person.

The post Taking Relationships Education Seriously appeared first on Bish Training - Sex & Relationships Education.

These are interactive, experiential and might generate some really great ideas from the students. Much better than just reading out an article from a website.

Also notice throughout that I refer to our / we. This is to include us, the facilitators and teachers who could also use our phones better at times.

Before we start

If you want some advice about how to do group agreements / vibe checks at the beginning and how to do RSE generally, check out the DO…RSE for Schools resource that Alice Hoyle and I wrote. It’s free. For all of these prompts I would put students in small groups with large pieces of paper and lots of pens. 

Not everyone will have a bad relationship with their phone, and some young people might not have access to one at all. This is why we are talking about how we could make our relationships better (things can always be better, even if they are pretty good). You can make this broader to talk about tech generally. I’ve also tried to make these prompts inclusive of everyone, whether they have a phone or not.

For each group you could give someone the option to be the facilitator, the person who carefully listens to the conversation, fields what the group is saying and writes down their responses. This could be someone who doesn’t have a smartphone. You may need to refer back to the group agreement to make sure that there isn’t bullying around this.

Why do people use phones?

Ask everyone to list all of the different reasons for what people might use their phones for and why they might want to use them. So this covers not just the many things we use phones for, but also the reason why we pick our phones up in the first place. 

Then you could ask the following prompts for discussion (in their small groups or in the large group if you like). 

• Looking at your lists, what strikes you?
• Do you have any ideas about whether any of these things might increase our capacity to think or act or decrease our capacity to think or act. Which of these might make us feel joyful or sad?
• Which of the things on your list can only be achieved from picking your phone up?
• Where else can we get some of these things from?
• ‘Instead of picking our phones up, what else could we do?’ Ask everyone to list as many as they can.

“We demand a lot from our phones and they can do a lot for us. But just as with any relationship, if we ask one thing to do so much for us, then we might find after a while that it gives us less and less back. (Which means we spend more time with it trying to get more and more out of it.)”

Active and passive phone use

We can often feel compelled to pick up our phones, without us even realising. Anyone picked up a phone and then spent ages being on it without really noticing? Perhaps we might have a better relationship with our phones if we are using them more actively? Picking them up intentionally, putting them down when we don’t need them. A start, middle, and end. 

In your groups, can you come up with some examples lately when you had this kind of relationship with your phone? Have you noticed a time when someone else did this? What difference did that make? What were you pleased to notice? See if each of you can come up with one example, even if it sounds really small and daft? If you don’t have a phone it could be any technology you might use generally.

How can we all help?

We’re not just individuals, we are all entangled up in our relationships with each other, our communities and society and culture generally. So they are all involved in us having a better time with our phones too. 

What difference could the following make in us having a better relationship with our phones?

• Society (law, government, media, products, services)
• Communities (schools, workplaces, youth centres, places of worship, organisations)
• People around us (friends, family, peers, loved ones / haters)
• Ourselves, the kinds of things that we could do. 

As you come up with these answers, notice the flows between each one. For example, if social media apps were run in a different way, how might that make it easier for us to change our behaviour? Or if we notice one small improvement we could make, what difference would that make with the people around us, or at school? 

Scales

Have a think about your relationship with your phone (if you don’t have a phone, technology generally). Where are you on a scale of 0 – 10, with 10 being the best relationship you could ever have with your phone, and 0 being the opposite. Where are you on that scale now? Then on the count of 3, everyone blurt out your answer at the same time. 1, 2, 3. 

Now I want you to imagine that your relationship with your phone (or technology generally) was just one point higher on that scale. This will kick in as soon as you get home today. As soon as you walk through the door: 

• What will you start to notice that told you that your relationship with your phone was just that tiny bit better. 
• What will other people notice? 
• What difference will that make?
• What will you be pleased to notice?
• What else? 
• What else?

If you don’t have a phone, you could do this for a computer, or a TV, or other device you might use. Or you could imagine that a loved one had a better relationship with their phone, what will you notice about them?

More resources

I hope you found that useful. If you would like a leaflet to download and print, you can buy a summarised version of my article here for £3 from my Patreon. Or you could become a member of the Patreon and get it for free. 

If you would like more of these kinds of lesson ideas, which are participatory, experiential, and more about the how than the what, check out the rest of my RSE resources in my shop here (or at my Patreon shop). 

The post How to use our phones better – RSE / CSE lesson ideas appeared first on Bish Training - Sex & Relationships Education.

My Career in Sex Ed

There are material reasons for what has held RSE back in the last few years. I’ll address this part as autoethnography. That is I’ll tell the story of my career as a relationships and sexuality educator. 

My way into relationships and sexuality education was via youth work. This was in 1998 / 1999. My local council provided ‘in work’ training to complete the JNC national qualification in part time youth work. As part of this I was doing work with young men around ‘tackling macho values’. This is what we called toxic masculinity back then. Working with young men in one to ones and small group work in youth projects, hostels, colleges etc. 

My first job specifically in sexual health work was in 1999 when I took over a project trying to increase condom use among young men. This meant taking an old ice cream tub filled with condoms and rudimentary leaflets around with me and trying to engage young men and convince them of the benefits of ‘taking responsibility’. I had joined the small specialist youth work team. This was was an outreach project of the broader city council youth service. That youth service had 30 or so full and part time youth projects around the city. In addition to a one stop shop information centre for young people had just opened up in the city centre. 

Teenage Pregnancy Strategy

Then the teenage pregnancy strategy of the New Labour government started in 2000. Councils were given hundreds of thousands of pounds to commission sexual health outreach services, RSE, and support to teenage mums. As part of this my work expanded to deliver more outreach work across the youth service. I also set up small satellite services for young men to access a wide range of condoms and information about sex and relationships. I also had funding to deliver more RSE in schools and to promote these services in schools. 

After a couple of years the work grew. I had a colleague, and a few people helcomcompcoming us to run sessions. We even had a team of volunteer men who really wanted to do this work. The specialist youth work team had a number of projects who were supporting young people of all genders, runaways, street sex workers, young people with disabilities.

In addition to the training I received as part of my youth work course I was also receiving lots of in service training. I also attended additional training at the UK’s leading RSE training and resource centre. 

Outreach teams and local authorities

In 2002 I moved down to London to work for a leading sexual health charity. I worked in a couple of boroughs in London for this charity from 2002 to 2014 doing similar work to what I was doing up north. Outreach work, RSE sessions, specialist drop in sessions for young people to access condoms, ask questions, and engage in informal RSE sessions. 

This was part of a team of 15 – 20 other outreach workers. Working in boroughs with specialist teams of around 5 people, also delivering as part of the teenage pregnancy strategy and now the national chlamydia screening programme and the provision of young people’s sexual health services generally. We were able to offer a significant amount of support to secondary schools. Enhancing their own RSE. Helping them with policy. Supplementing it with outreach sessions on, for example, using condoms, contraceptive methods, how to access local services. 

This would have been a great time to fully introduce RSE to the curriculum. To have training for specialists and a set of quality standards in addition to the RSE guidelines. Resources for schools and a higher level of pay for PSHE co-ordinators. PSHE being part of the standard timetable and regular parents PSHE sessions with co-ordinated resources. 

Then this happened

Then after 2010 the cuts to local authorities meant that contracts for sexual health services were also being cut. In order to keep a project going I sacrificed half of my hours. A year or two later I was being asked to take a 19% pay cut. A year after that my charity were undercut for the contract that I was working on. An incredibly successful project. At this point I went fully freelance (I’d been a freelance trainer and consultant since 2003). 

Eventually all the work I mentioned above disappeared. The specialist youth work team where I got my first job in RSE, gone. The youth service in which that team was based, gone. The training course where I trained, gone (and the centre’s work dramatically scaled back). The outreach team I joined, pretty much gone. The clinics which they served, pretty much gone.

Some local authorities have managed to keep some of the work going, but not as comprehensively as before. Other local authority teams outsourced themselves to become social enterprises. They then offered their services to the schools they were working in for free, for a fee. The RSE policy and parliamentary advisory organisation lost its quango status as part of the coalition government’s ‘bonfire of the quangos’. Charities started to lose funding and their status.

So a lot of people who had years and years of expertise left. Those that are left don’t have the resources to be able to offer the free comprehensive service for schools they could offer previously. So there has never been a worse time for RSE to become mandatory in my view. Colleagues who campaigned for it said that funding and resources would follow, but I’m afraid this has not happened.

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Culture war is part of it but it’s not the main bit

Of course RSE is always part of ‘culture war’. I first experienced this in 2003 being on the front page of the Uxbridge Gazette with the headline ‘Sex Tips for 7 Year Olds’. I’ve experienced more of this since then of course, and so have some of my colleagues. There’s more of it at the moment than there has been in previous years. Particularly for those of us who are pro-trans rights.

It’s upsetting, and difficult to deal with, because much of the criticism we face is not really in good faith. Another difficulty is that because of funding cuts it’s hard for us RSE folk to maintain solidarity. It doesn’t directly lead to a loss of funding, but it does contribute to an environment that feels risky for funders. I’ve certainly had these conversations with the company that used to fund a lot of my work.

We still have the Sex Education Forum, who are now a small charity and do great work. I’d encourage you to join. I’m a member of the World Association for Sexual Health, but generally speaking we just have to keep our heads down.

Furthermore, the usual dialectic of culture war doesn’t apply to us. Culture war headlines in a paper is usually met by uproar from liberal, left, and centre, possibly also even corporations. This can lead to fundraising opportunities and a greater profile. But I’m afraid very few people stick up for relationships and sex education or educators. As Cindy Gallop was saying (in her talk at the event), sex remains in the shadows, the private, the not talked about. 

This is a shame, because young people want it, parents want it. Whenever there is a societal issue around things like #MeToo or #EveryonesInvited or conversations which shows like I May Destroy You or Normal People bring up, people say ‘well what we need is comprehensive RSE’.

Why don’t people stick up for RSE?

Well, many of us have experienced relationships and sex education and that experience was usually not good! Awkward teachers, unhelpful lectures, uncomfortable silences, traumatising videos, anxiety and shame. The content was often too basic to be helpful, being reduced down to key messages that turn out not to be true. Such as ‘if you have sex there’s a high risk of pregnancy’, ‘STDs are very infectious and nasty’, ‘your first time will hurt and that’s okay’. In more recent years we’ve had a few more: ‘yes means yes and no means no’, or ‘porn isn’t like real life sex’. More about this in a moment.

Our experience of actually existing RSE means it’s not something that many people want to advocate for. If we haven’t experienced good, then we don’t know what is possible. This also creates a vacuum into which the fantasy of the ogre of RSE can flourish. 

So this is where the discursive and the material meet, and it has produced an anxiety about what RSE is doing, and RSE doesn’t have enough clout or resources at a policy level to fight back, and we have very few (if any) vocal supporters. It also means that because we have lost a lot of expertise, and experience, then it means that RSE that is being delivered is still sometimes not really good enough. 

Bad Sex Ed

This is a resource for young people I made for my website BISH called Bad Sex Ed Bingo. It’s so that they can critically evaluate their RSE but also provides resources and ideas for how teachers might be able to do it better. 

A lot of the kinds of Bad Sex Ed out there is either just the Sex Ed we got which we uncritically pass on, or it relies on some ‘common sense’ or ‘received wisdom’ around these topics which are just unhelpful, or oversimplified, or in some cases counter-productive.

A good example of this is the ‘if you have sex you will get pregnant’ which is a message which we are still too keen to give to young people. Research has shown that young people will think ‘well, I’ve had sex a few times without protection and haven’t got pregnant, so I must be infertile (maybe I’ve had chlamydia or something) so I’ll just not bother using contraception.’ You can guess what happens next.

For some reason we think it’s okay to tell adults trying to get pregnant ‘if you have regular penis in vagina sex over the course of a year then there’s an 85% chance it will lead to a pregnancy’ but if they are under 18 we have to say ‘if you have sex you will get pregnant’. I’ve written an article on the importance of getting pregnancy risks right in RSE.

We don’t take RSE seriously enough

We just don’t take this subject seriously enough. I would also argue that porn and sexually explicit media is one of these topics which we oversimplify but also where policy is based on shaky evidence. Some of the more, let’s say, scholarly and robust evidence around porn paints a much more nuanced and helpful picture. I’ve written this article which has an overview of the evidence of whether porn harms young people.

Not all young people watch porn

For example, the assumption that young people will watch porn and they are harmed by it has become so common sense that to critique it sounds silly. But first of all, not all young people watch porn. In fact, most young people under 16, even 15/16 year olds, won’t be looking at or watching porn.

Where young people do see sexual images around 50% will be on the internet, which means that 50% of the images they see aren’t (or can’t be, in UK law) hardcore porn, ie people having sex. It seems that young people’s interest in actively looking for sexual imagery online roughly correlates with their interest in sex. And that makes sense when we understand that the average age of sexual debut is still just over 16. 

‘Effects’ are small and not necessarily causative

Studies looking at trying to find an effect of porn are difficult to do because of ethical issues, but also when they do the studies with adults they are in laboratory conditions, rather than at home as part of the rituals and sexual practices that the participants might usually take part in. Even when these studies find effects they aren’t causal, but correlations.

The kinds of effects being researched are ‘more interest in casual sex, or anal sex’ or other forms of ‘non-normative sex’ as if they are problems. They could also be more interested in porn because they are more interested in non normative sex.

Also the effects that they do find are very small, accounting for 1 – 2% on values or behaviour. This means that there’s very little evidence of the ‘it was porn that made someone do something’ argument, which even if it were evidenced would be problematic. 

Media isn’t viewed passively

Crucially, young people, just like non-young people, are critical and literate of what they are watching. Everyone brings themselves, their experiences, values, understandings, knowledges, discourses, to what they are watching. This is where RSE should come in. If someone has had really great RSE on topics such as self esteem, gender, sexuality, relationships, consent, the sex we see, the body, sex (including how to make sex safer, more consensual, and pleasurable), and fantasy, then they will be much better prepared for any sexual imagery they see. It’s not just about teaching young people about porn, and remember most under 16s won’t know what you’re talking about. 

How RSE is taught has put us off talking about it

The way that RSE is taught is also often pretty similar to how we were taught it. The awkward teacher at the front of the room, trying to get through a lesson plan (that they perhaps got given the night before), very little interaction, embarrassment, and awkward vibes. Because of the anxiety of ‘saying the wrong thing’ and a lack of training, time, and good quality resources, a teacher might be tempted just to repeat very narrow discourses (or stories) about what kinds of sex and relationships are okay and which are not.

Just repeating discourses, without giving young people resources, is not going to adequately equip students with the tools to work out how they relate to all of this, how they can explore their values, the kinds of skills they might need to acquire, how to manage their feelings, how to access accurate information. Also the feeling that they will take away with them is one similar to that which many of us took away from our own RSE. Fear, shame, worry, stigma, embarrassment. 

Here’s another article on why I prefer workshops to talks.

It’s not a popular opinion but my opinion is that Bad RSE is worse than no RSE.

So we do need resources and ideally we need a kinder press, and some allies.

Good news

But there is some good news in all this and it can be summed up in one sentence. Good RSE is much easier to deliver than bad RSE. 

But what is good, and what do young people, and adults, get out of good RSE?

When I teach RSE I usually only get one lesson. I just work with over 14s, often sixth formers. Some of the class may have had some sexual experience, others may want to soon, others might not be interested until they are in an intimate loving relationship, others might not be interested at all. There might be trans or queer kids in the same lesson as boys who say they are fans of ‘masculinity influencers’. They all like the lesson and often ask for me to come back. So what am I doing? What’s my secret?

It’s about the vibe

It’s all about the vibe. It’s just as much about the process as it is the content. I move the room around, put groups of tables together, I let people sit in their friend groups as they come in.

I set a group agreement or ‘do a vibe check’ at the beginning. You can read more about this in my article about making talking about sex and relationships easier.

Then once I’ve got them on task I pass around lots of pens, paper, playdough. I go round once to make sure that they know what they’re doing and say ‘just let me know if you have any questions’. 

That’s usually the most I will talk in a lesson. If the students have a specific question that I can answer then I might give a response. But often I might just open it up and say ‘oh I don’t know what do you think?’ or ‘yeah some might agree with you but others won’t’ or ‘is this a useful idea for you? What might be even more useful?’ or ‘how might you begin a conversation with someone about this?’ I just leave them to it as much as possible, because the more I get involved the less the students are talking. When I’ve seen other teachers get involved in group discussions like this I can see the students cringing up and wishing they hadn’t. 

What made your conversations easier?

At the end of these kinds of lessons I’ll bring everyone together at the end. I’ll say ‘okay, you’ve been talking about sex and relationships for 45 minutes, or an hour, that’s a long time! Remember at the beginning we were saying that it can be a bit awkward, but you’ve managed it. Tell me, what were you doing that made it easier?’

Here’s one I did recently with some teachers. 

As a ‘learning outcome’ knowing how, and experiencing, and embodying, what we need to make talking about sex and relationships easier is a pretty extraordinary. Imagine if we learnt that at school!

Make RSE as easy as possible to take part in

In terms of delivering other topics in RSE this is also really useful because it’s what the students and the teacher needs to make it easier. All of this is something you can do. All of it. When teachers are keen to ‘see me in action’ I’m always worried that they might be a bit underwhelmed. It doesn’t look like I’m doing much! But the key is that I’m not a sexpert, but an expert facilitator. And that’s all you have to be.

Ultimately it’s about being a good teacher. Pick a good resource, such as one of mine, or even this free DO… RSE one. Build the vibe with your students, pay attention to it, make them as comfortable as possible, make it as consensual as possible, use a good resource, and reflect on what worked and what else you can do next time. 

The post The state of RSE in the UK appeared first on Bish Training - Sex & Relationships Education.

Introductions

I began by introducing myself, using my first name (though making a joke about my surname) and the idea of the sessions and what we are aiming to achieve. Then I verbally talked through some of the expectations for the session. I might normally call a group agreement but in this case it was about setting the scene and the tone. It went something like: 

“Talking about sex, relationships, sexuality, and gender can be a bit awkward and tricky. We are going to discover how we can make this easier as part of our discussions but at the beginning it might feel a little bit awkward. If you find yourself feeling a bit awkward [at this point I gestured to my diaphragm as if this might be a spot where awkwardness might first be felt for me] it’s okay, just acknowledge it to yourself, or say it out loud. Take a long breath out, blink and refocus, and see what happens to the awkwardness after that. 

I’m not going to make anyone get involved, and you’ll see that the way the game is structured is to give people as much choice as possible about whether they get involved or not. It’s also okay, if you’re finding this a bit much, just to sit out of discussions and look at your phone for a bit. I’m not going to think any less of you or think that you are not taking part at all. All I will think is ‘this is someone who has accepted my offer of just sitting out for a bit and that’s totally fine.’ Please also don’t make each other get involved. 

I’ll be roaming around when you’re working in small groups. I’m not deliberately listening to your conversations and, as I’m deaf in one ear, I probably can’t hear you anyway. If you have any questions, or anything you want to chat with me about in small groups let me know. 

I can’t offer 100% confidentiality. If I think you’re at serious risk of harm I’ll need to speak to the head of year or the safeguarding lead for the school. I can also help you to speak to someone about this if that’s something you want. Also please be mindful of how much you want to share about your own life when you’re chatting in small or large groups. If you overshare something we can all agree to keep that in the group. 

We also need to talk about prejudice and discrimination, because there is a lot of potential for this when we talk about sex and relationships. For example, in your heads, bring to mind the kinds of words or phrases used to describe ‘men who enjoy sex’ [pause] now think of the phrases used to describe ‘women who enjoy sex’ [pause]. As you can probably see, one group receives status and another group receives stigma, and this is just one example of sexism.

Similar things also happen around race, for example there’s a lot of racism in porn. There’s also the possibility for homophobia, biphobia, transphobia and also classism, xenophobia, and disablism. Try and bring to mind words or phrases used to describe people with disabilities and sex [pause], you’ll probably find that there aren’t very many and those that exist are pretty negative. So as you can see, prejudice and discrimination can pop up when we talk about sex but also sex and relationships are also weaponised in doing prejudice and discrimination. We should try where possible not to add to that. 

However, I also want this to be a space where we can all learn about this stuff because it’s important. So if we can all agree that we don’t say anything deliberately harmful or offensive. And in turn we look on each other with kind eyes and assume that everyone’s contributions are in good faith. It’s my job to help facilitate this, so get me involved if there are any problems and I can help.

Does anyone have any questions about this? Or anything that they would need in order to feel like they could take part more?”

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Introducing the game

All of this was received extremely quietly. I made note of this and said that this would probably be the most I would speak in the whole session. 

Then I asked everyone to get into small groups of between 4 and 6, saying that these group numbers seem to work best but if they are a bit below or above that’s fine. There were clusters of bunched up tables with chairs sitting around, spread out over a double classroom with the dividing doors closed. So lots of space in between different groups. 

I explained the Talking Sex Ed game as per the instructions in the resource and gave them some tips and options on how they might play it. Particularly the part about choosing their own cards and the importance of bringing more consent (choice and freedom) into how they might do that. I then distributed the 100 cards around the 5 or 6 groups which emerged, along with a tub of play-dough each and access to paper and pens. 

I said “now, you’re going to be playing this for about an hour or so (if you want to). I’m just going to float around and you can ask me questions if you like. It’s going to look like I’m not working, but I promise you I am!” This made people smile. 

The cards are designed as a jumping off point for conversations and for relationships and sexuality education generally. It’s a resource I designed specifically for this purpose as a way for me to get participants to participate in their RSE. They collect a range of discourses, dilemmas, and technologies of the self which are intended to deterritorialise RSE with a new line of flight towards a becoming RSE. What (else) can RSE do? 

‘Becoming’ RSE

As we will see, the game itself, how it’s played and how players are invited to work with the resource, also opens up the possibilities for learning how to facilitate and co-create. This deterritorialised way of working allows for a greater deal of indeterminacy. The cards might remain the same, but the language games are different each time because they come into contact with the mico-politics of the small groups that are working with them at that time. Any learning outcomes are not an over-determined, inter-active, process of sexuality educator – students, but are a becoming which stems from the intra-active and indeterminate flow of the assemblages of the session (and beyond). 

Quite quickly there was a hubbub of conversation around the rooms. Each of the participants were bringing their own understandings, perspectives, experiences, and discourses. They were facilitating the discussions themselves, sitting facing each other. These conversations consisted of an assemblage of (among many other things)

mobile phones — Andrew Tate — hormones — fragments of sexual knowledge — trans/queerness — football shirts — nail varnish — chairs — my absence-presence — commitments to marriage — spacious classroom — covid — presence-absence of teaching staff — school rules signs — play-dough — previous sexual experiences — unique cultures — concerns about pregnancy — music — the cards

My role was to provide an ‘absentpresentness’, where I was simultaneously giving and holding space in order that conversation could happen without me. Yet I was always making myself available by walking around the room, checking in non-verbally, looking for signs of discomfort, or stress, or boredom. I would switch the cards around and use that opportunity to ask verbal check-ins ‘how’s it going? / yeah it’s great’ or ‘what does this card mean?’ 

I could see that people were immediately making use of the play-dough, to make penises and vulvas (even without being invited to by the cards). There were other sculptures being made too, perhaps at the invitation of the cards ‘model what a healthy relationship / orgasm /safety  / trust might look or feel like’. I didn’t intervene but saw a lot of creativity on display.

Occasionally groups would call me over and ask for my advice. Sometimes I knew and gave long detailed answers. Other times I signposted to other resources or organisations. On other occasions I said I’d get back to them. Some groups wanted to chat with me about topics generally. ‘How many genders are there?’ was a question I was asked a few times from (people I read to be) young men. Sometimes these micro-political conversations with me allowed for a becoming other of masculinities for them, (and me).

Any interventions I was asked to give lasted no longer than 2 – 3 minutes. A lot of questions were met with more questions from me ‘what do you think?’ ‘maybe ‘what does _________ do?’ might be a more interesting question’. Asking good questions and walking away to allow them to make their own senses of questions of discourse. 

Making sense of the session

After 50 minutes to an hour of this I brought everyone together to face the whiteboard. “Okay I’m going to do some teaching now so it makes it look like I’m working. Remember I said that talking about sex and relationships can be awkward, well, you’ve been talking about it with each other about an hour or so. What I want to know is, what were you doing to make it easier to talk about sex and relationships?”

Here’s what they came up with

I summed this up for each group by saying: 

“what you’ve found in playing this game, and what I’ve just asked you to pay attention to, is all of the vital things we need in order to make conversations about sex and relationships easier. The most basic bit of advice that most sex educators tell you is that ‘everybody is different, so the key to successful sex and relationships is to communicate’. But they just stop there. What you’ve actually practised, and learnt today, is how to communicate. You’ve learnt this from other aspects of your life, your own experiences, your own understandings of what trust / openness / honesty feel like, and applied them here. Vibe isn’t just something that happens, it’s something that you create and, like you’ve done today, co-create. You make it with someone. So, if you are having a conversation about sex and relationships think about what kinds of things you can both do to create the vibe where the possibilities for the conversation are maximised. Think about the things you’ve come up with today: giving each other time, turn taking, music, rituals, privacy, choices, choosing own topics, the ability to be affirmative, listening and how we know we are being listened to, how we pay attention, making it interesting or lighthearted, learning knowledges together, having props and prompts, using a resource, how we increase comfort in our bodies, what we do without words etc”

What (else) does a becoming RSE do?

So in taking part in a becoming relationships and sexuality education the participants also learnt the kinds of things that need to be in place to allow for relationships and sexuality to become. This had an accumulative effect for the remainder of our time together, where participants, in the acknowledged space where things feel a bit easier to talk about. This resulted in greater enthusiasm for the subject and a greater confidence in taking ownership of the kinds of topics they would like to learn more about. I gave each group choices about what else they would like to explore in that space, which resulted in us learning about: 

• safer sex practices (how to use condoms, how to make and use dams)
• Fertility and pregnancy risks
• What we can learn about consent from our greetings (in a pre and post covid world)
• What thinking critically about relationship discourses might do to help us have better relationships
• The harmful discourses about ‘first time sex’ and the lines of flight we can draw to have better first time experiences (whatever they may be)

Feedback

The students are very keen for me to come again (as are the school).

He created a very open and nonjudgmental environment which was good. Recommend for next year.

please use Justin again. His teaching style was engaging and the information was presented in a comfortable way.

the instructor used creative ways to help us learn about sex and relationships, let us have our own space and overall created a good environment to discuss these issues

I enjoyed Justins method of teaching us about sex and relationships. Though this technically wasnt a direct teaching session, the activites he put together made sure everyone contributed and was involved. He discussed the topic in a very comfortable and relaxed manner which is very important too.

I think Justin was a good choice! It was not an awkward session and he was very clear about boundaries between student’s and teachers. It was useful to learn about the “societal script” for sex and how it results in violence and discomfort. It was also good to learn about how to ensure healthy/open communication and how important it is in all types of relationships.

He really helped me. I have been struggling with a certain relationship dilema and i talked to him about it. He helped me get a more clear answer and was there for me as a guide. He made sure all the activities we did were enjoyable and consentual

I believe that it was incredibly helpful, interactive, and generally fun.

The Talking Sex Ed Game is available to buy here. It’s ridiculously cheap. You have to print and cut them yourself (it took me about an hour). There is also the option to use the resource on a tablet or laptop too (just zooming in and around one big image with all the cards).

If you want to book me to come and teach some sessions for your organisation (school, college, uni, youth club), find out more here. It’s quite costly for a lot of schools sadly (my rates have not increased in years, but budgets have decreased).

The post How to make talking about sex and relationships easier – a workshop appeared first on Bish Training - Sex & Relationships Education.

When RSE talks are useful

Sometimes a talk might be the appropriate thing to deliver. There are times when young people need the information about the topic, before they can talk to each other about it. For example: an interesting and engaging talk about sex and the law (good luck with that). Or a talk about local sexual health services, what confidentiality is, and how people are supported around their reproductive choices. Or what the school are doing to stop bullying and (sexual) violence. What processes, resources, and support services you have in place.

When RSE workshops are better

However if we rely on talks for RSE then we run the risk of making lessons more about what we think. Any RSE we deliver should be giving students resources to help their own critical thinking. Talks also runs the risk of creating more ‘should stories’ or discourse.

When someone is able to stand in front of a group of people and tell them something then that person has a lot of power. Even if they are saying ‘the right thing’ just creating discourse is not the best way of teaching RSE. Good RSE is about understanding discourse and developing tools in order to understand what might be useful for us. Foucault called these ‘technologies of the self’.

Even if you were organising a talk which was based around what we might think of as ‘good discourse’, they might still go very wrong. Getting these kinds of talks right is very difficult. The speaker needs to really know their stuff and be confident and authoritative. But it also needs to be engaging. They need to be a good performer, take the topic seriously, and have a degree of levity. Finding good talkers is hard and good talkers (should) command a high fee for what they do.

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Being talked at is not great RSE

Crucially, young people are turned off from how RSE is delivered. They are bored of powerpoints, demonstrations and being talked at. It’s boring and unhelpful being told what the problem is without being given the chance to learn solutions. They are tired of being told what to think and are tired of the simplistic messages of ‘just say no’ or ‘always protect yourself’ or ‘it’s fine to be gay.’

Think back to your own RSE. Did you get talked at? Even if you had a good talk, did you also get any opportunity to discuss it? Or learn to practice any skills as a result? Did you get to talk about your values with others? How did it affect you?

My Talking Sex Ed resource is the ideal way to get started delivering your RSE.

As RSE is about skills, values, emotions and information, it is best taught using participatory and interactive learning methods. It’s not about the chalk and talk but asking great questions and facilitating fascinating discussions. This also means that we can make it about them and not us. You can only really get that from an RSE workshop.

My approach to RSE Workshops

So at best, a blend of talks and interactive workshops is the key here. Teachers are often best placed to deliver the latter, and can rely on people like me, and local outreach workers, to deliver the former. But even then I always veer towards delivering interactive workshops.

This might reassure people who think that I go into schools and give talks to kids about what is on my website. I don’t actually do that because BISH isn’t a teaching resource and (as I’ve said above) it’s boring to show people a website. The only time I use BISH is just to signpost in case there are any questions that I can’t answer in class (or would be inappropriate to answer in class) or if I’m finding an illustration to help answer a question. Other than that I am delivering workshops, where young people work together in small groups and co-create the learning. They are learning crucial skills about communication, co-operation and consent, whilst also being given opportunities to reflect on their values with others compassionately.

The post Talks vs Workshops in RSE appeared first on Bish Training - Sex & Relationships Education.

The resource was written by me, Justin Hancock, and Alice Hoyle. We are two of the leading RSE folk in the UK with over three decades of experience between us. In late 2021 Durex removed their support for the project and they took the website down entirely.

We thought that was a shame and so we decided to salvage the best of the resources available and put them altogether in this one document. At some point we might update this and make a website but we can’t promise anything as we also need to get paid for our work as we are both freelance. 

Download the DO… RSE for Schools resources

I’m also running a training course using DO… Check out my eventbrite page for more details.

If you’re already an RSE practitioner, you might want to come on my new Advanced RSE Training course.

About Alice and Justin

We both offer training, resources, project work and have both written books that you could also buy. Visit our websites to find out more. You are at my website of course, you can see all the resources I have here.

Alice also has some excellent resources, particularly her book Great Relationships and Sex Education. See her work at alicehoyle.co.uk

As part of the project I had to write a lot of copy for the agency promoting it. So here is a nice little intro about DO…

About DO… RSE for Schools

A lot of people imagine that sex education is about standing in front of a class and saying words “Penetration. Orgasm. Pornography.” Just imagine how difficult that would be, especially to a classroom full of young people convinced they knew more about this than you. 

Thankfully, doing really great sex and relationships education is not about that. We don’t believe that it should be about standing up and braving it out like that and it we won’t help you if we keep saying how tough it is to do. 

Teachers doing this deserve to have the training and support to be able to feel confident enough to deliver it. However in the meantime, by stripping SRE down to the core fundamental principles we want to help you see what you can deliver with the skills and experience you already have.

The problem with SRE teaching

Sex is a very big topic to teach. It is very personal, it’s about values, emotions, personal experience. Our own experience of sex and relationships education (and sex and relationships) means some people can talk about sex with a matter of fact confidence like any other topic whilst others feel inhibited and scared of saying the wrong thing.

Added to this, there isn’t enough SRE in the timetable for teachers to expand their knowledge and hone their skills. So not enough teachers who feel they can teach SRE get the opportunity to get better at it.

I’ve been working in SRE, teaching students and training educators, for over 15 years. I know how challenging but also how rewarding this area is. I feel like I’m learning how to be a better sex and relationships educator with every class and training course I deliver.

It’s great to have sexual health expertise in the classroom but it’s not always necessary. Delivering great SRE is not about being an expert, or even a sexpert. It’s about using really effective teaching skills, to listen not tell. 

What is great SRE

So what is great SRE? 

Well it’s open and honest. Sex, sexuality, relationships, gender and you (us) are complicated and we are all learning all the time. Even me.

It includes absolutely everyone, whoever they may want to have sex and relationships with (or not). 

It focusses on values and skills as well as information. 

We make it about them, not us. So we deliver what young people want.

It’s inspired by great teachers who know how to listen and encourage. 

But ultimately, great SRE does right by young people. 

DO teachers resource

We share a common goal of putting young people first. So to help us achieve it, DO have developed a range of resources designed specifically for you, the SRE teachers and champions. 

These resources will help young people to think about how they can look after themselves and each other. To challenge expectations placed on them by society around their identity and relationships. Give them the opportunity to think about what sex and relationships they might want rather than what they feel they should have. And how to make sure their sexual encounters are safer as well as nurturing and enjoyable. 

There are interactive and challenging lesson plans that will help your lessons really click. They are not about talks and powerpoint, but about real engagement designed to promote critical thinking and real change.

Anyway, if that sounds good, do download the resources below

Download the DO… RSE for Schools resources

The post DO… RSE for Schools appeared first on Bish Training - Sex & Relationships Education.

To get this free resource (for over 14s) simply sign up to my newsletter and you’ll receive a download link.

By subscribing you’re also consenting to receive very occasional emails from me about my services, BISH, and other RSE related projects you might be interested in. I’ll also let you know if I do an issue 2. You can unsubscribe any time.

I’m trying to do a number of things with this. First of all, it’s a free resource for you. I know that a lot of teachers, youth workers, and clinic staff really value free relationships and sex education (RSE) resources at the moment. I envisage that this might be a resource that you could use as a handout for delivering, or introducing, RSE in tutor time.

You could also use it in youth settings or just leave them on coffee tables. For young people’s clinics you could put them in leaflets racks or next to your stack of magazines for clients to read while they wait. 

Secondly I’m wanting to promote BISH to more young people in the UK. The website attracts thousands of visitors a week from the UK, which is great, but it would be great to be able to promote it directly. Hopefully you will see that it’s a great place to signpost young people over 14 to. I am also encouraging young people to get involved and send in their opinions about Love Island, and Sex Education (the TV show that I can’t bear to watch).

Also I hope that I will be able to gently remind you of some of the RSE resources that I offer here. In this edition of The Bulletin I have an activity from my BISH Activity Book, which features loads of RSE worksheets in one download. It’s available for an instant download. I also offer teaching time, consultancy, training courses, and one to one coaching. Please get in touch if you have any queries.

I guess this a bit of a new thing for me so I have no idea whether it’s going to be useful or not! So please be gentle and just let me know if you like it.

The post The Bulletin appeared first on Bish Training - Sex & Relationships Education.

RSE videos tend to be passive

Watching an RSE video is a very passive activity which is not great. It’s easy to stop paying attention to a video, particularly if it is a whole lesson, because we can go into relaxation mode and switch off. We want students to be switched on and thinking critically about the messages we receive about relationships, sex, sexuality, and gender.

Makes it about us not them

The action of putting an RSE video on can send out a lot of indirect messages to students if we’re not careful. ‘What I have to say is the most important thing here.’ ‘Listen to the message of this video and learn it.’ ‘I’m more interested in what this video has to say than what you have to say.’ Whatever our motivations for showing a video, the message it can send out is that it’s more about what we think is important to say in RSE rather than what students have to say and think.

If you’re already an RSE practitioner, you might want to come on my new Advanced RSE Training course.

Consent issues

It’s very hard to opt out of watching a video, so we need to be super careful about making everyone watch a video. Just as watching a film in a cinema can be a tricky experience for many, watching a video can be very tricky for your students. If a film features trauma, violence, threats, abuse, shocking scenes, or sex then this can be upsetting. Also you don’t know what your students will find difficult.

So this means that with any video you show, you need to give advance warning so that students can opt out of seeing it. It’s also best practice to tell parents too. Then if students are opting out (or want to opt out) you might want to think about whether there is a better RSE resource that can include everyone.

It’s important to think about the process of RSE as much as the content. If we show a video that is all about consent, but then don’t give students the option to not watch the RSE video, or even further, traumatise students as a result, then what are they really learning about consent?

Top tips for teaching about consent

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Diversity

The difficulty with videos with people in them is that you can only be as diverse as those people who are in them.

So I know everyone loves Screwball (meh) and yes it has a black character and a white character, and yes it’s not entirely about penis in vagina sex (which can exclude a lot of people), but it doesn’t say a lot about the different oppressions that people of colour face, or anything on disability, or LGBTQ folk, or asexual folk, or intersex folk…. I’m not having a go at Screwball here (I think it’s funny and has a nice tone and the actors were great) I’m just pointing out the limitations of showing one story line in one film. If we spend most of our lessons showing videos like this, then it’s on us if we’re just teaching about the heterosexual experience.

Tips for inclusive RSE teaching

The region of the characters can make a difference too. One of my favourite videos, back in the day, was the Weird and Wonderful World of Billy Ballgreedy by FPA. Everyone had quite thick Northern Irish accents, which is probably great for its intended audience, but did nothing for the lads I was working with in Derby. Which is a shame because I thought it was great.

For this reason, when I make video for BISH (which are not for showing in classrooms, they’re for young people to watch in their own time) I use images and animations so that I can try to make them as diverse and inclusive as possible. It’s hard to do, so they are not very long, and they are also not very good!

Creates more work

Putting a video on shouldn’t be the RSE equivalent of putting Peppa Pig on when we are trying to have a five minutes sit down babysitting our niece (ahem). We need to watch the video to make sure that we don’t run into the consent issues above. Also we should check that it’s making the point we’re wanting it to make. I’m not a huge fan of instilling ‘key messages’ into young people, but what are the key messages of the video you’re showing? Do they need unpacking? How are you going to do that? Also it’s good to critique who is making the video, why it’s being made, and what might be some of the underlying assumptions of the video. Videos are rarely values neutral . They rarely give students the opportunity to consider their own values and to build on them.

It’s a faff

For a start it can be hard to find the video you want. Maybe it’s gone off iplayer, or YouTube has taken it down, or it now has a load of adverts on it, or it’s really expensive, or you don’t have a licence to show it in school, or it takes ages to buffer, or it’s really low resolution. That time might better be spent finding some more interactive and inclusive RSE resources.

Also, it’s a faff making the videos work in the classroom. Turning the lights off, closing the curtains, making sure everyone can see. Also we need to make sure it’s loud enough and has audio descriptions, or subtitles for those that need them.

5/10 minute clip

This might sound like we’re fun sponges! We occasionally use video clips ourselves. Using shorter clips can help avoid some of the above problems – also it’s less work to watch the video. Use the clips as an injection of humour, or something to help you shift from one topic to another, or to introduce something really powerful like a Hollie McNish poem. https://www.youtube.com/user/holliemcnish/videos

Make it interactive

Instead of watching an RSE video passively you could make it more interactive by stopping the video at key points. Ask them about a character in the film, what might they feeling, what might they be thinking, what previous life experiences have got them to this point, what’s their biography, how is this likely to play out, what should they do, what can their friends do.

You could put students in small teams and have them follow a character, making it more creative by asking them to draw outlines of their character and write words or draw images around them.

Maybe you could put all this in a worksheet and ask students to be filling this in as they go. You could also do a simple observation quiz to keep them engaged.

I did a video about consent and negotiation which has various stopping points so that students can do some small group work to generate ideas.

Developing videos with students

This can be a lot of fun and really useful too, particularly if the video is about local services. You could arrange a visit to a local sexual health service to show everyone how to get there and what to expect. I’ve done that myself (though I had to do the editing) and in your schools you will have technology and students to be able to turn it into a cross-curricula project. They could also film themselves doing talking heads, interviews, point of view shots. They could edit a bunch of vox pops of different young people’s views on a topic. Perhaps you could get students to do my talk for a minute activity which I have in my Consent Teaching pack, for example.

Students could bring in their own video clips

One way of showing RSE videos, but still making it about the students not us, is to ask students to bring in videos or clips to show everyone. Obviously you would have to either trust your students a lot to not bring in anything inappropriate (the group agreement is your friend here), or you would have to vet everything. Some students asked me to play them a video from the inbetweeners once when I was teaching them about sexual scripts, which was absolutely perfect. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0HDzfuYHz6U

The post Showing RSE Videos appeared first on Bish Training - Sex & Relationships Education.

Best practice RSE embeds gender and sexual diversity all the way through. It includes everyone from the get go. We also need to make sure RSE doesn’t reinforce the rules that prioritise straight and cis folks.

Queering the rules

From an early age we learn the very strict rules about what is ‘normal’ around gender and sexuality. For instance:

• There are only men and women
• Men and women are opposites and there are specifically ‘masculine’ and ‘female’ traits that men and women have to follow
• Men and women are only attracted to each other (the ‘opposite’ sex)
• Our bodies have to fit in with the gender we are given

If you’re already an RSE practitioner, you might want to come on my new Advanced RSE Training course.

The problem with these rules is that:

• If we break them we can face major repercussions (bullying, harassment, violence)
• They are unequal (for instance men get status for having sex, women get stigma)
• They exclude some people and make them invisible (e.g. trans/non-binary, or lesbian, gay, and bi people)
• Other aspects of our identities means that it can be very difficult to follow the rules of gender and sexuality. Eg race, disability, class, age, background, personality, neurodiversity)

See what I wrote about Queer Sex over at BISH a guide to sex, love and you for everyone over 14.

How these rules appear in culture

Think about how sex and relationships are portrayed in Hollywood films. Who is portrayed, how do they look, who are they attracted to? Which of us really fits in with this ideal version of gender and sexuality?

If we consider the Hollywood depictions of gender and sexuality we can see that it often leave out, or sidelines, people who are LGBT. However the powerful rules and expectations placed on us means that many of us don’t feel okay about our own gender or sexuality – even if we are cisgender or straight. This is because the expectations are both impossible to live up to and also deeply unfair. Here’s an example of how queering sex education benefits everyone.

However, also think about your own RSE? Was it mostly about straight, cis, white, non-disabled people? Think about the RSE that you might be offering, who is included, who isn’t? What kinds of sex and relationships are included and what messages do we send out? 

One size fits all RSE is bad for everyone

By offering RSE that is inclusive from the get go we can not just make it better for non-straight and cis students but also better for everyone. One size fits all RSE benefits no-one and I think can do more harm than good. This is we need to ‘queer’ sex and relationships education so that it is valuable to absolutely everyone (even those that don’t want to have sex).

To do this we need to shift the focus away about what kinds of sex and relationships people ‘should’ be having. Queering sex education means providing tools for people to work out for themselves about different sexual or non sexual practices they may actually enjoy. Or different romantic or non romantic relationships that people might find valuable.

Article continues after this ad for my resources (why not buy some?!) They’re also available at the BISH Patreon Shop.

In addition to this, it’s better to avoid gendered terms such as ‘girlfriend’ or ‘husband’ but instead use terms like ‘partner’. Also be careful of gendering parts of the body − for example saying ‘a man’s penis’ could just be ‘a penis’ or ‘someone’s penis’.

Uniqueness around sexuality

However, rather than uncritically presenting gender and sexuality as a level playing field we then also need to make sure that students are able to explore how people’s experiences of discrimination can have an effect on how they navigate relationships and sex. This can be done by asking students to reflect on the different barriers and opportunities that are present for different kinds of people in our RSE.

Scenarios could cover things like: what issues might come up around sex where one person is just figuring out their sexuality and the other person is confidently out and proud? Does homophobia or biphobia make being in a relationship with someone of the same gender more difficult? How might someone who is disabled, and seen in society as non-sexual, express their desires without feeling stigma? How can a black bisexual person feel included when their local LGBT groups are so white?

A labels lesson

So although you could have a ‘these are what all the labels mean’ lesson, it’s important to make sure that it doesn’t just present a neutral message of just ‘it’s fine to be LGBTQ’ without recognising when and in what circumstances it isn’t, in real life. All students should be able to explore the implications of prejudice and discrimination. In addition to questioning all of the norms about sex and relationships, in order to help change the culture but also to be able to figure out what works for them in terms of their own identity and what they do. A way of talking about labels is to see them as resource that might help. What [else] does a label do?

If you would like a ‘this is what the labels mean’ lesson you could check out this lesson plan I’ve put up at TES and also this one about the beauty standard and who is allowed to have sex (looking at you Love Island). There are also some cracking resources at Proud.

My Bish Activity Book has some worksheets which help young people to think about genders and sexualities (among many other things). It’s a bargain for £20. You can download and print as many copies of the worksheets as you like and there are tons of ideas in there.

The post Queering Sex Education appeared first on Bish Training - Sex & Relationships Education.

DO…

DO is DONE, sadly. But the resources are available to download at this page.

Training

I offer a DO… training course which I developed for teachers who are new to RSE. Sex and relationships can feel like a very big topic to teach. It’s very personal: it’s about values, emotions, personal experience. Our own experience of sex and relationships education means some people can talk about sex frankly, whilst others might feel inhibited and a bit uncomfortable.

In the classroom you need to be able to call on your experience and teaching skills, but this can be difficult when teaching SRE if we haven’t had the chance to reflect on these topics for ourselves.

This is the equivalent of a one day course which could be delivered over 2 half days or 3 or 4 twilight sessions (location dependent). For more details head here

Coaching

I can offer one-to-one coaching via video link for individuals who wish to get some more tailored advice for their practice. Whilst it’s not really possible to offer training outside of a group setting, practitioners tell me that they really value a two hour conversation. They leave with ideas, resources, and links to key research and best practice guides.

Teaching

I’m a specialist relationships and sex educator with young people over 14 and have been since 1999. I have worked with thousands of young people over this time and they rate my lessons highly. They tell me that my sessions are fun, informative and thought provoking. They like my matter of fact manner when talking about sex but they most value that I use interactive activities that promote discussion.

I can offer specialist teaching sessions on any RSE topic. I can also run Q&A sessions about and I can also offer one-to-one drop ins. You can see my approach to answering young people’s questions at bishuk.com which is one of the leading sex and relationships advice websites for young people.

Resources

In addition to the above I also have a range of specialist RSE resources covering porn, safer sex, relationships, consent, bodies, alcohol. There’s also the brand new Bish Activity Book which has over 50 pages of fun and thought provoking worksheets for students. These resources are all available for immediate download and are available in a bundle pack called ‘Big Bish Download’ which offers even better value for money.

I also have a blog for practitioners where I promote best practice and evidence based approaches to RSE.

The post How I Can Help With Your RSE appeared first on Bish Training - Sex & Relationships Education.