sexual health

My Sex Ed Experience in School

by Isabel M.

Isabel is a teen writer who is part of the Females Against Violence Education Group based in San Francisco. We asked this group to write about their thoughts on topics related to pregnancy, contraception, teen health, and teen rights. The thoughts below do not necessarily represent those of the National Center for Youth Law.

My sexual health education has been very interesting but limited. I had sex ed classes in 6th grade and 8th grade at my school. I also got to learn more about sex at Females Against Violence with activities like relationship wheels and charts. My school doesn’t have a sex-ed program, but they offer one class for five days once every other year.

I learned about sex and relationships in my recent sex ed classes at school. I also learned more about relationships in a class I took on social emotional learning. I learned about healthy and unhealthy relationships and how to deal with them if I ever encounter them.

A knowledgeable and sensitive teacher is really important for good sex ed. Current information, education on birth control methods and access, and enough time for questions at the end were really valuable for me. I would like if one of the topics in sex-ed was Health consequences of HIV, other STDs, and pregnancy.

I would also like to learn about body image because many people aren’t comfortable with their body image so that keeps them from having a healthy sexual relationship. The health consequences of STDs and pregnancy would help me be better educated about choices I make in the future.

Have questions about STDs, HIV, and pregnancy? Make sure to take a look at our Youth Legal Guide to answer your questions.

Sex Health Education Cannot Be An Afterthought

By Sierra Freeman

I grew up not feeling super comfortable talking about very normal healthy parts of life such as periods, sex, dating, my body, etc. The first exposure that I had to health education was in 5th grade, watching a puberty video. We were split into two groups, boys in one room and girls in the other.

Everything about it felt so sporadic. We had never discussed this topic and it had never been incorporated into our curriculum. Iit was just one day where all at once we learned about body changes and puberty. After that we moved on and didn’t discuss it again. It was just one day, when in reality I know that most of us had so many questions that we were all too embarrassed to ask.

How are we supposed to feel comfortable, when that space was never created?

I remember getting a brown bag after that which included things like deodorant and pads. I was so ashamed and embarrassed and didn’t know how to talk about it, so I hid it in my closet. No one should feel that way about getting their period. I felt ashamed to even have a pad.

Moving forward, I didn’t have any set health courses until high school. I didn’t even take health education until my senior year of high school, because it wasn’t required my freshman year. I don’t remember benefiting much from that course. I thought in those moments that I must know everything about health, if I wasn’t gaining much from that class. Although the information was valid, I just remember it feeling very impersonal. I got more information online from Google searches and my own personal situations or questions. As time went on I realized that the information covered was a very broad overview and didn’t dive into topics or cover societal issues and how we are affected by them such as sexism, racism, or discrimination.

Now that I’m in college and feel that I am still expanding my health knowledge, I can see my experience with health education was lacking so much growing up. As a young adult, you know your personal experiences and what would benefit you, but you aren’t seeing that reflected in your educational experiences; you don’t understand why you experience them. If I am just one person, who identifies as a white, female heterosexual, I know there must be so many other people who feel they weren’t having their personal experiences reflected as well.  I only represent one tiny piece of the whole picture and there are so many others that aren’t included or their voices aren’t heard and represented. If health education isn’t relevant and reflecting our experiences, issues, and questions then what purpose is it actually serving?

On Love, Relationships, Sex, and Protection

This piece was written by Juli K. a youth member of the University of Michigan’s Adolescent Health Initiative’s Teen Advisory Council.  Juli attends Eastern Michigan University and is pursuing a career in social work. Since she was 17, she’s worked for adolescent sexual health under organizations such as Michigan Youth (MY) Voice and Teen Adolescent Championship Teen Advisory Council (TAC TAC). She plans to continue working with adolescent sexual health as part of her social work career. 

Do you ever think about your first love? I often think about mine from high school. Despite how things ended between us, if I had not gone through some of those experiences then I don’t think I would be the person I am today.

When I was 14, being in love was never something I would have imagined happening to me. I would watch The Notebook and The Titanic, silently protesting because I just knew that someone loving me as much as Noah loved Allie or Jack loved Rose wasn’t possible. But if you have seen these classic romance movies, you would know that despite all of the love being given and received, relationships have their consequences. I learned this firsthand with my first loving relationship.

My boyfriend at the time was a few years older than me and had already engaged in sexual activity with previous partners. Although I was always very conscious about taking care of myself, I let my guard down when it came to him. We eventually started engaging in sexual activity ourselves.

When I was 15, we had a condom break. My periods were never regular, so when my period was a few days late I didn’t really worry about it. But after that incident all I could think about was how I wanted my period to come to ease my mind. After a few weeks had passed and I still did not have a period, I sat down and questioned the possibility that I could actually be pregnant. My mom was a teen mom, and I saw how that affected me and my sisters’ lives growing up.

All of a sudden I had to think about things I never dreamed of imagining myself thinking of at 15. How would I tell my mom if I was pregnant? Would I be able to terminate the pregnancy? What if my mom and boyfriend pressured me to keep the child? What would people at school think? All the over-thinking made me nauseous.

A friend of mine picked me up one afternoon and took me to Walmart where I did my pregnancy test in the bathroom. I would not have dared to take it at home; what if my mom found it in my garbage?! So there I was, in a Walmart bathroom, peeing on a stick. I patiently waited while the lines showed up, very clearly showing that I wasn’t pregnant! I was so happy I nearly cried. It was then and there that I decided getting on birth control was something I had to do to protect myself even more if incidents like this did happen again.

Deciding to engage in sexual activity with someone is quite a big decision. It’s important to protect yourself and your partner because unfortunately, being caught in the heat of the moment can actually take a toll on your future. I’m sharing my experience not to scare people from having sex, but to raise awareness about how important it is to have protection and communication between you and your partner. Even if things feel good and right, they can still have long-term consequences that could affect your future.

For more information about your questions around sex and relationships, your rights to birth control and emergency contraception, and information about pregnancy, visit our Youth Legal Guide.

Q&A: Let’s Include LARCs in Our Sex Ed Conversations

Angela Roberts is a writer for Teen Voices, the global girl news site and mentoring program of Women’s eNews. She is a junior at Peters Township High School in Western Pennsylvania. Being involved in the Teen Voices community changed her life; it exposed her to the burden of inequality women feel around the world and inspired her to become the ardent feminist she is today. Writing empowers Angela, who loves adding her voice to the growing body of work speaking out against sexism, racism, and injustice. NCYL interviewed Angela about her work on the piece “Where Teens Don’t Get Sex Ed, IUD Goes Unmentioned”
(Editor’s note: Angela attends school in Pennsylvania, where the laws guiding sexual education curriculums are different from those in California. The California Department of Education provides explaining the current sex education laws in the state. You can learn more here.)

1) What made you interested in working on this piece? What drew you in to the topic of sexual education and the IUD? 

I first started researching IUDs when Katina Paron, the editor of Teen Voices, emailed me an article published in Mother Jones about the device. Reading this article was my first time ever hearing about the IUD.  As I read more about the device and its success rate, I began to wonder why I hadn’t heard of it before. It didn’t make sense that I had never learned about a method of contraception that the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends as a “first-line contraceptive choice for teens.” 

Yet as I thought about it, I couldn’t remember learning about any sort of contraception in Health class. And I wasn’t alone. As I spoke with my female classmates, I realized just how little information about the IUD there was in my high school.  Out of the 14 girls I talked to, none could tell me any specifics about the device’s function and only two even recognized its name.  When I asked them about the sex ed they had received, my question was often met with laughter.  One girl even quoted the movie Mean Girls to describe the sex ed she received in high school: “Don’t have sex because you will get pregnant and die.” 

Others noted that, although they never felt pressured to stay abstinent, they never learned enough about sex for them to pursue any other option safely. Another girl stated that her sex ed was limited to a single class period during which her teacher read a list of silly, irrelevant misconceptions about sex while the class giggled. Hearing their stories drove me to learn more about my school’s sex ed program and how it measured up.


2) What personal questions did you have that you were trying to answer while working on this piece? Did you find those answers? What did you learn from this experience? 

I agreed to write this article before I even knew what an IUD was. I was also blissfully unaware of the inadequacy of the sex ed I had received. But now that I know just how inadequate my education really was, and how it’s affected my ability and that of my peers to pursue healthy relationships, I’m furious. Refusing to educate kids about contraceptive options and sex is not only unreasonable and ridiculous; it’s also dangerous. 

People who are against providing sex ed to students don’t realize that abstinence-only education does not prevent students from having sex. It stops them from having safe sex. Abstinence only education also creates an atmosphere of shame and indecency around sex – an atmosphere that condones slut shaming and bullying.  Students are also not taught about consent or how to diagnose an unhealthy relationship. Writing this article forced me to consider the importance of providing kids with sexual education as well as the long-term consequences for not providing it.

 

3) What about working on the piece challenged your thoughts and assumptions about sexual education and the rates of IUD usage? 

The more I read about IUDs, the more I recognized them as safe, effective contraceptive options for teens – and the more infuriated I became that my school provides students with zero information on them.  Because I was writing an article about this issue, I researched it way more extensively than I would have if I were just reading about it on my own.  After interviewing my female classmates and discovering just how little they knew about contraceptive options, I felt like it was my duty to expose the inadequacy of my school’s sex ed program.

 

4) In your work with your peers, what experiences of theirs struck you the most? What surprised you the most?

I was most shocked by my classmates’ lack of knowledge on sex and contraceptive options.  The atmosphere surrounding sex ed at my school also surprised me.  When I emailed my Health teacher about the IUD’s absence from the sex ed curriculum he responded, “The scope and content of the topics we are permitted to address in our personal wellness classes do not include these various forms of birth control methods.”  He did not say whether or not he agreed with the present sex ed curriculum – simply that himself and his colleagues were limited in the information they could provide students. The nurse at my school was also a vocal advocate for the IUD’s inclusion in the sex-ed curriculum. Yet despite this support, my school continues to provide students with very limited knowledge on sex and contraceptive options.

 

5) What do you think still needs to be done to improve sexual health education and inform teens of the options available to them like the IUD and other LARCs? 

There desperately needs to be a more open conversation about sex in my school. Right now, it’s stifled and this shows greatly in the attitudes and comments of students. Since I live in a fairly conservative area, it is unlikely for parents to provide their children with information on contraceptive options. If kids also don’t receive this information at school, their risk of having unprotected sex increases significantly.  If schools just set aside one day to talk about the contraceptive options that are available (including LARCs) this would, if not completely remedy the issue, substantially decease it.

 

6) Having worked on this piece, do you have thoughts or advice for other teens on how to empower themselves to get access to effective birth control and sex ed? 

Teens need to realize that it is within their power to obtain effective birth control. IUDs can be available for no cost, just as much as any other contraceptive device, to all teenage girls living in Pennsylvania and in other states as well. Although not receiving adequate sex ed at school can be really frustrating, there are a number of people on YouTube who are dedicated to providing teens with accurate, nonjudgmental information about sex. I highly suggest checking out Laci Green’s channel as well as Sexplanations, which is produced by Hank Green.

 

Want to know more about your contraceptive options? Visit our Youth Legal Guide section on Preventing Pregnancy for information and links to resources. You can also check out great contraceptive information resources such as Bedsider.org and TeenSource.

We Spend All Day In School. We Should Get Our Health Education There Too

By Sierra Freeman

My experience with health education, like most people, is very relative to where I grew up and my personal background. With the Internet, many teens today have access to any information they need at their fingertips. I think this is an important tool to take advantage of. Although the Internet is really crucial in being able to reach teens, there is still a lack of education as a whole of inclusive, culturally competent, and comprehensive health education.

There are schools that have incorporated this comprehensive care into their curriculum, but why aren’t all schools doing so?

Why aren’t we providing legitimate care and health resources to students before college? Most young adults are dependent on their parents for this information, but this doesn’t happen in every home and can be biased. In my opinion, this is why it’s crucial for schools to step in to provide accurate, unbiased information regarding overall health that allows students to connect to health resources and take control of their own health and boundaries.

I’m not saying that parents can’t provide this accurate information; there can just be barriers that stand in the way if this isn’t done in the right way. There can be fear, shame, or lack of knowledge wrapped into information being presented or maybe even not discussed at all. If we have an institution in place where young adults are required to spend the majority of their life (school), then we need to make sure we are utilizing this space and time in a way that actually benefits the health of young adults.

If we don’t have this set in place, this information can be very distorted. For example, what if a young woman’s entire idea on sexuality comes from the media, where women are constantly over-sexualized? We need to put more of a priority on health education, regardless of where we live and what our community’s and/or family’s personal beliefs are.

 

In January 2016, California’s California Healthy Youth Act (CHYA) went into effect.  This new set of laws will help ensure that California students receive instruction in school that includes comprehensive and accurate prevention information for sexually transmitted infections and unintended pregnancy, as well as information about healthy relationships and local health resources.    The California Department of Education has a website about California’s comprehensive health education laws. http://www.cde.ca.gov/ls/he/se/

Learn more about your health rights in school by visiting our guide here.

Why Confidentiality Matters for Teens

By Sierra Freeman

Confidentiality. This word is so important to me now as a 22-year-old woman. But I hadn’t always paid much attention to it. Why is confidentiality so important to me now? Let me backtrack to the first time it ever became relevant to my own life.

I was a sophomore in high school and I had just become sexually active with my first boyfriend. Everything was so new to me and I didn’t know much about sexual health. For the most part, things had been going smoothly until one night when a condom broke during sex and I freaked out. I had never anticipated this happening.

Immediately so many questions started going through my head. Who am I going to tell? Does this mean I am automatically pregnant? Seriously, what do I do right now? My sexual education was very primitive at the time; I seriously didn’t know the answer to these questions. I remember my boyfriend spoke to his sister, who then told me about Plan B, the emergency contraceptive that you take after having unprotected sex. All of a sudden I had this moment of relief knowing that there would be people I could talk to. However, instant panic came over me again when I thought about having to ask my parents for money or for help making an appointment. This is where confidentiality came in to save me.

Reflecting now, I realized that when you are young, you don’t feel that you can be treated as an individual with your own experiences, thoughts, and concerns. Health was not something I felt in control of in my life. I was still looking to my parents to schedule appointments for me and to provide advice or to handle my health problems. However, the moment I was faced with a problem that I didn’t feel comfortable sharing with them, I freaked out because I didn’t realize that I had confidential support.

After the incident, I reached out to my boyfriend’s sister and a couple of my closest friends, who helped me feel supported and safe. They directed me to Planned Parenthood and went with me without my parent’s knowledge. I was able to get the services I needed and all of my questions and concerns were answered. I felt safe in doing so and for the first time, I was able to speak with adults about reproductive health and the options that I had as well as how to pay for it.

I never realized, until that moment, that it my sexual health was something I had always wanted to talk about, just not with my mom in the doctor’s office. In my case, Planned Parenthood was my first taste of receiving confidential services that were so crucial to me at the time. As young adults, we have the right to confidentiality. At first, I felt slightly shameful, like I was being dishonest to my parents. However, I am proud of myself for taking control of my health and my body. If there is any advice I could give to my teen self, it would be that confidentiality is my right and not something I should EVER feel bad about.

Visit our Privacy Section of the Youth Legal Guide to learn more about your rights to confidential health care.