Wednesday, July 8, 2009

UU Sex Education: Why Aren't We Doing More?

A couple of months ago, our Director of Religious Education joined one of the members of our congregation in a training program about sexuality education. A great step - the more people and congregations able to lead such courses, the better!

Then I learned that, even with such training, it ain't so easy.

"We're looking into teaming up with other congregations in the area," one mom told me, "so we can get a critical mass with a balance of boys and girls, and a good team of teachers."

Well, you can do that here in Boston. There are, after all, four UU churches in downtown Boston, and even more within a short subway or car ride. But what about those relatively small and isolated groups, without so many resources or willing volunteers?

We seem to have locked our own congregations into a Catch-22. We love to promote the heck out of the Our Whole Lives curriculum - and well we should - but then we set up all of these hurdles to actually teaching it. Maybe the folks at UUA headquarters should try to go through those hurdles themselves, as though they were staff or lay volunteers in the average UU congregation.

Imagine that you're a leader of a small to mid-sized UU congregation in the middle of the country. You have a vibrant Religious Education program for children and teens, and you want to hold Our Whole Lives modules for them. So now, according to the UUA's recommendations, you need to...
... find one or more programs within driving distance of your church or fellowship.
... locate both a man and a woman who are not only willing to teach the course, but who have the time to drive out to each training session and back, and for each and every module.
... have parent orientation programs "that affirm parents as the primary sexuality educators of their children" for each and every module - so now another set of meetings.

Get the idea?

Voltaire warned of making the perfect the enemy of the good. Yet I fear that, with all that a congregation needs to do just to get started, we've fallen into that trap. And with the lack of meaningful sex education in so many parts of the country, our young people can't afford to wait for perfection.

Here's one suggestion with regard to training new instructors. Why don't we use various media technology, such as DVD's and online seminars, to provide greater access to OWL's training programs? People don't have to wait for a workshop to come to their area; they can use their computers and phones to bring the workshop to them. And not only would this make the trainings more accessible, but with less driving they would also be greener!

Last but not least, we need to remember that there is more to education than just a lesson plan or written text. There is also the passion and enthusiasm of the teacher, the encouragement of parents, and the desire of students to learn. When these things are properly nurtured, then it doesn't matter if the curriculum is perfect; the very drive to teach and to learn will fill in the gaps.

7 comments:

  1. Good points here. And like your idea of using web communication. Hope the folks at 25 Beacon read this.

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  2. I'm not entirely sure that just making it online or via DVD will work. There's a really important experiential part of the training.

    If anything, having now taught two groups (one Sr. High, one Jr. High) and overseeing our church's efforts to expand its OWL offerings, I'd want training to be deeper on issues outside the OWL content, to give teachers/facilitators more information, skills and tools to deal especially with middle schoolers.

    But hang in there. What OWL really needs, in every congregation that wants to offer it, is one or more people who are willing to become its champion(s) and advocate for it through the long haul.

    Finally, make sure your teacher/facilitators have lots of support. They'll need it.

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  3. I'm not entirely sure that just making it online or via DVD will work. There's a really important experiential part of the training.


    Actually, I've participated in remote training programs which had strong experiential components. Online audio conferences, and even video conferences, is one way. It's a matter of finding innovative ways to use the existing technology.

    What OWL really needs, in every congregation that wants to offer it, is one or more people who are willing to become its champion(s) and advocate for it through the long haul.

    Sure, one person can be the champion and advocate - but if she or he can't find a second person to undergo training and co-lead the workshop, then what?

    I'd rather have more classes led by single leaders, reaching out to more people, than stymie congregations from doing so by requiring that they all have co-leaders. And, having taught and helped others with similar workshops elsewhere, I'm sure it could work.

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  4. Desmond wrote:
    -snip-
    "We seem to have locked our own congregations into a Catch-22. We love to promote the heck out of the Our Whole Lives curriculum - and well we should - but then we set up all of these hurdles to actually teaching it. Maybe the folks at UUA headquarters should try to go through those hurdles themselves, as though they were staff or lay volunteers in the average UU congregation."

    Desmond,

    Not everyone at the UUA who was involved with the development, field test, and ongoing support of the Our Whole Lives program is from Boston and other areas of the US that are thick with UU youth. And some of them are very familiar with the hurdles that you mention (as a trainer, we discuss many of them at the weekend workshops and we have the group do some problem-solving and brainstorming for these problems).

    Finding a critical mass of UU youth is a problem -- in some ways, a bigger problem than finding adults to facilitate OWL. One solution may be to use OWL as an outreach tool where we invite non-UU youth to participate with UU youth.

    Then Desmond wrote:
    -snip-
    " ... have parent orientation programs 'that affirm parents as the primary sexuality educators of their children' for each and every module - so now another set of meetings."

    Running a parallel parent session isn't a mandatory requirement. It's an optional program that some DREs and MREs have in their congregations.

    Personally, I like the idea of a parallel parent session where the parents get to do some of the curriculum activities each week in a session separate from their youth.

    Desmond wrote:
    -snip-
    "Here's one suggestion with regard to training new instructors. Why don't we use various media technology, such as DVD's and online seminars, to provide greater access to OWL's training programs? People don't have to wait for a workshop to come to their area; they can use their computers and phones to bring the workshop to them. And not only would this make the trainings more accessible, but with less driving they would also be greener!"

    I would love to find a way to streamline the OWL training weekends -- 20+ hours of material being presented from Friday night to Sunday afternoon is very challenging.

    And the driving or flying to get to a workshop isn't that green either.

    These are serious concerns.

    But a big part of the weekend experience is "evaluative" and that's something I don't like to say that bluntly but it's true.

    It's rare but some folks who show up for the training weekend will discover that the OWL program isn't a good fit for them.

    Comfort with sexuality and being sexuality-positive is essential. I'm guessing that this wasn't a problem for you but there's a wide range of attitudes coming into the weekend workshop. And some folks will discover that they have problems with the OWL program and its philosophy. That's why the training worshops spend so much time on reflection and "unpacking" of one's attitudes and life experiences.

    I would love to see other scheduling options that are less intense but we have to find a workable compromise between the topics the UUA/UCC want us to discuss and real-world time constraints on church volunteers.

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  5. Steve: Great feedback from experience, which is always appreciated - thanks!

    Another factor to consider in terms of a "good fit" is how good someone is as a teacher. Being a good communicator and motivator is just as important as being sex-positive.

    As for being sex-positive, I think that speaks to the larger issue of how we address sexuality in our communities (see my earlier post from June). In a way, it becomes a vicious circle; one of the purposes of OWL is to help us overcome our own ignorance and baggage, yet that very same baggage can be one of the barrier to getting OWL off the ground in a congregation.

    Wish someone from the UUA offices were in on this conversation -- I'd love to hear their thoughts on this...

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  6. Desmond wrote:
    -snip-
    "Sure, one person can be the champion and advocate - but if she or he can't find a second person to undergo training and co-lead the workshop, then what?

    I'd rather have more classes led by single leaders, reaching out to more people, than stymie congregations from doing so by requiring that they all have co-leaders. And, having taught and helped others with similar workshops elsewhere, I'm sure it could work."

    Desmond,

    I'm not a huge fan of hard-and-fast inflexible rules. However, I would be very surprised to see a UU congregation presenting sexuality education to children or youth using one adult without another adult in the room.

    In part, this is a safety rule that many UU congregations have to protect children and youth from adults.

    In part, it's also protects the adults working with youth in case the youth or their parents have a misunderstanding about what happened in class. Having a second adult there to say "No, Desmond didn't initiate the BDSM discussion ... the topic was introduced by a youth" could be beneficial for you.

    Within the UUA and our radical congregational polity, the "requirement" to have trained mixed gender co-facilitation teams in the OWL classroom is a strongly worded recommendation (one that is so strong that I would think long and hard about before rejecting that recommendation).

    However, an OWL facilitator should not decide on his own to do something like teach OWL solo without talking to the DRE or MRE first. Even though the "rules" are strong recommendations within our polity, I would recommend talking to your DRE or MRE about this. If something were to go badly, the DRE/MRE would be the one answering the irate parent phone calls, meeting with the minister, board, etc.

    And your DRE/MRE may inform you that teaching solo is a violate of church safety policies as well.

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  7. Safety for kids and teens makes sense ... but what about adults? Seems to me the adult section of OWL is the most "under-taught" module of the series. I'm not saying that the "strong recommendation" for co-leaders is the principles reason, but it certainly doesn't help.

    One possible middle-ground solution to assure safety is to have a staffperson or Safe Congregations team member sit in as an observer whenever there is a solo facilitator.

    ReplyDelete