TOO MANY OF MY KIDS ARE HAVING SEX!!!

This week, I arranged to have Planned Parenthood speakers come to my classes. There's a fairly set curriculum, and everyday a new volunteer came to talk. It was nice in one way because I didn't have to talk as much as usual - the speakers were in charge of teaching the material. However, some of the teachers were not as good as others and i had to constantly interrupt some instructors to rewords things in less confusing ways or to regain the class' attention. I was also a little nervous because I wasn't sure if the topic of abortion was going to be brought up. I was happy, though, when i saw the list of topics:

First day: Sex and sexuality
2nd day: Abstinence and assertiveness
3rd day: Anatomy
4th day: STD's and HIV
5th day: Protection and Birth control

I am VERY pro sex ed. I think the more knowledge my kids have, the better. It's SO important. And i'm so thankful that they get to hear some of this material from a different voice than mine. I am planning to come back to this topic again at the end of the year b/c we're mandated to teach the Red Cross HIV prevention curriculum, but it's been nice to kind of give them a quick preview of everything.

At the end of the period, the kids write down anonymous questions regarding anything about sex. it's really apparent when the kids trust the speaker or not b/c when they do feel safe or think the speaker is "cool", they ask much more involved questions. And there's such a big discrepency between my honors classes and my regular classes. My honors kids ask knowledge questions. Ex: "Are there other ways to get pregnant besides having sex?" and "Do condoms come in different sizes?" On the other hand, a lot of my regular kids ask application questions - they give a personal scenario that has already happened and ask what could happen or why it happened. Ex: "After i had sex, i had a red spot on my leg. Does that mean i have an STD?" and "I know a girl with AIDS and she wants to have sex with me. What should i do?"

Scary!

But gosh, teaching sex can be so much fun but also so tiring. More than any other unit (food and nutrition, circulatory system, muscles, etc), I need and want the ideas to translate into lifestyle change.