Teaching Health Today: Don't Be That Guy
Teaching Health Today: Don't Be That Guy
Why don't we know more about periods? What's the best way to intervene when you see someone catcalling? PLUS: Meet a health teacher who's pushing marathons to include nonbinary runners - and winning
Curriculum and Resources
Don’t Be That Guy
MenCanStopViolence.org is a new website and education toolkit designed to engage men in preventing sexual assault. Watch this 60-second video and use these questions to prompt discussion with students. The website also lets users sign a pledge not to be “That Guy,” and provides resources for those who need support or want to do more.
Posting About Human Rights
Happy 75th anniversary to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights!
One cool way to introduce this document to youth: Watch a short introduction video, read the declaration, then ask students to pick one of the 30 articles that speaks most to them - they’ve all been formatted for easy sharing on social media.
Wellness
“I’m So Tired!”
Melinda Wenner Moyer shares six key (and surprising!) insights and suggestions about tweens, teens and sleep in the latest “In My Kid the Asshole?” newsletter,
Teaching Health AND Changing Marathons
Big congratulations to San Francisco health teacher Cal Calamia, who finished the Boston Marathon this week with a time of 2:51:02, placing second in the new nonbinary category.
“The running world is a microcosm for the world at large,” Calamia told Boston.com. “And if we can just have people begin to acknowledge that people do exist beyond the gender binary of male and female or man and woman, then that opens up a more inclusive space where as many people as possible can enjoy running.”
Opportunities and Connections
EducateUS is Looking For Youth Advisory Board Members
The mighty advocacy organization EducateUS is looking for young people - between the ages of 16 and 22 - to join them in advancing progressive sex education across the country. Youth Advisory Board members will be paid $1,000 for 5 hours of work per month over one year. Application deadline is May 12.
Keep On Learning
Awesome AMAZE Educator Talk
What’s the best way to use AMAZE.org videos in middle school health class? Find out in this free webinar, where you’ll have a chance to share skills, resources, and past teaching experiences. Register today (it’s free!), and check out recordings of past talks on topics like consent, STIs, and sextortion.
Stand Up Against Street Harassment
Ever wonder how to safely intervene when you witness harassment in public spaces? Join author and educator Julie S. Lalonde on April 23 for a free, one-hour virtual training to learn how to intervene when you see harassment happening. You’ll learn how to prioritize your own safety while intervening, and how to respond if you get harassed.
News
We’re missing a major mental health crisis: Teen boys are struggling, too (Washington Post)
Sheila Hedstrom-Pelger, a nurse in Chandler, Ariz., thought she knew the signs of depression. But when her son, Tyler, started verbally lashing out at her when he was a teen, Hedstrom-Pelger didn’t consider depression as a possible cause for Tyler’s out-of-character behavior. “I took it personally,” she said. “I assumed he was upset with me.” READ MORE
Where gender-affirming care for youth is banned, intersex surgery may be allowed (NPR)
Multiple U.S. states have banned gender-affirming care for transgender people under the age of 18. But in some states, "gender-normalizing surgeries" are allowed on intersex infants with "ambiguous sex characteristics."
Those "ambiguous" characteristics apply to an estimated 1.7% of the world's population who are born intersex.
"This is so bizarre, right?" activist Sean Saifa Wall said. "You have these trans young people who are very confident in who they are ... and they're being actively denied affirming health care. Whereas intersex children do not get to consent about the surgeries that they have." READ MORE
What We Still Don’t Know About Periods (New Yorker)
Medical professionals, as Leah Hazard writes in her new book, “Womb,” are not immune to shame around periods — the embarrassment that induces menstruating people to hide tampons up their sleeves when walking to the bathroom, or experience a sense of deep mortification over a bloodstain. What she calls the “yuck factor” associated with periods leads many doctors and scientists to avoid the subject. READ MORE
I've had ovaries, fallopian tubes, and a uterus my entire life. I have a Bachelor's degree in nursing and write about health nearly every day, for pay. I've been menstruating for, let's see, almost 4 decades and have had 4 pregnancies and births and this is the first time I never heard/read/knew this: "For a significant number of women...'traditional expectations about how a menstrual cycle is supposed to work'" don't apply. (And I read that article after writing one of my own about menopause!) The lack of knowledge about the female human body is appalling.