Workshop Descriptions, Fri

MORNING WORKSHOPS – 10:00-11:30

Sexual Ethics for the Twenty-First Century: Helping Students Think Deeply About Moral Values – Deborah Roffman, MS, CSE
This session tackles the following questions: How do our students perceive the relationship between sexuality and morality? Do they believe moral issues are at stake, or do they view sexuality as fundamentally amoral? Where do their ideas come from, and how can we encourage them to think deeply?

Sexuality Education and Developmental Disabilities: What Works, What Doesn’t – Katherine McLaughlin & Erin Livensparger
People with developmental disabilities are often excluded from sexuality education, almost as if they are incapable of having sexual thoughts, feelings and needs.  In reality, they too need the information and skills for making healthy decisions.  This workshop will explore effective ways for teaching people with developmental disabilities about sexuality.

Get Real: A Promising Program that is Working – Shira Cahn-Lipman
This workshop will provide an overview of Get Real: Comprehensive Sex Education that Works, the comprehensive sexuality education curriculum developed by Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts. It will describe some of the basis of the curriculum, including the Social Emotional Learning framework and the central role of parent engagement. It will also include an overview of the some of the preliminary findings from the ongoing 5-year impact evaluation. 

What is Your “Bi-Q?” – Terri Clark, MPH, CHES
In many ways, people who are bisexual constitute a hidden population.  When recognized, bisexuality is often considered “part gay” and “part straight”, rather than being its own unique identity.  Further, bisexuals may face discrimination and resistance with the LGT community.  Participants will develop a better understanding and awareness of bisexuality to help them better address diversity in sexuality education.

Postpone or Protect: Building Safe, Responsible Relationships – Su Nottingham & Al Craven
This workshop will combine usable, student centered, interactive strategies for recognizing and avoiding unhealthy relationshps allowing movement, discussion, and real life examples in a bias-free package. The materials persented are easily adapted to reflect community requirements, and provide a safe environment to discuss serious relationship issues that influence today’s youth.

Ten No-Fail Strategies for a Lifespan Approach to Sexuality Education – Peggy Brick, M. Ed., CSE
Participants will enjoy ten interactive strategies they can integrate into almost any curriculum to enable students to gain a lifespan perspective on their lives. These easy and endlessly adaptable strategies quickly become teacher favorites as they help students understand how they will develop along a continuum from childhood to old age.

Women’s Anatomy of Arousal—Secret Maps to Buried Pleasure – Sheri Winston, CNM, RN, BSN, LMT
Illustrated lecture offering a unique new understanding of female sexuality and women’s elegant, integral, multi-purpose “Babies, Bliss & Bonding” system. Tour the entire Female Erectile Network (going far beyond the clitoris and g-spot), explore the pleasure functions of the uterus, discover the source of female ejaculation. Radical, essential, foundational information, highly recommended for professionals working with adults!

 

MID-AFTERNOON WORKSHOPS – 12:30-2:00

How to Be a Top Presenter – Charlie Glickman, PhD
Being a great sex educator doesn’t happen by accident. In this interactive and engaging workshop, you’ll learn how to create useful objectives, get tips on how to apply them in your workshop planning and teaching, discover how they can help you create effective exercises, and make sure that your participants are getting what they need.

Where is Your Line? Creating a Sex-Positive Language to Discuss Sexual Boundaries and Consent – Nancy Schwartzman
This program features a screening of “The Line” and introduces the Where is Your Line? Campaign. “The Line” is a documentary about a yung woman – the filmmaker- who is raped, but her story isn’t cut and dry. How can schools develop programs that address sexual health, safety and consent?

Creating a Sexuality-Ready Youth Development Setting – Amanda Perez, M.P.H. & Meghan Weidl, M.P.H.
This workshop will provide an overview of an innovative capacity building assistance model for creating sexuality-ready youth development settings. Participants will discuss the importance of organizational policies that regard sexual and reproductive health (SRH) education, preparing youth providers to address SRH with their participants, and ways to enhance the physical environment via the provision of SRH resources.

BE AFRAID! BE VERY AFRAID! Examining Fear-Based Methods in STI Prevention – Kirsten deFur, MPH
This workshop will explore the rationale and approaches of fear-based educational methods and offer participants an opportunity to identify alternative methods of teaching about sexually transmitted infections that are not based on fear.  Note: this lesson plan will be included in the Center for Family Life Education’s newest edition of the curriculum, Teaching Safer Sex.

Shut the Phone Up:  Exploring Electronic Communication, Boundaries & Professionalism – Melissa Keyes DiGioia, Susan Milstein, EdD, MCHES, CSE, & Carey Roth Bayer, Ed.D., R.N., C.S.E
The increasing popularity of communicating via text, tweet, facebook, or blog can lead sexuality professionals to question what affect social media has on professional settings. In this interactive workshop we will review common electronic communication formats and explore their impact on the work environment including personal and professional boundaries.

“What’s Sex Got to Do with It?” – Increasing Sexual Health Literacy in Care Providers to Foster and Adoptive Youth – Anna Randall, DHS, MSW, MPH, ASW
With ever-increasing U.S. foster youth pregnancy rates, the courts are now demanding that foster care providers ramp up their role in pregnancy prevention and sexual health education with youth. In this interactive workshop, discover foster youth’s special sexual health challenges; learn tools for training service providers, and practice sexual health communication skills between workers and foster youth. 

Bullying, Harassment, and Relationship Violence: Creating a Safe Space for Youth to Learn, Grow and Respond – Carol Petrucci
Educators will learn to create a safe space in their classrooms to allow open discussion, and strategies to empower youth to deal with bullying, harassment, and relationship violence in their personal lives and in the school environment.

 

AFTERNOON WORKSHOPS – 2:15-3:15

“You’re Out, Baseball!” A New Model for Teaching the Concept of Sexual Activity – Al Vernacchio, M.S.Ed
This workshop examines baseball as a metaphor for sexual activity in the United States and the potential for unhealthy outcomes that result when using this model.  An alternate conceptual model will be offered that can replace the baseball model and offer greater potential for healthy, fulfilling, pleasurable sexual activity.

Insights for Raising Confident Women – Joyce McFadden
Based on her study of 450 women, Joyce McFadden will reveal how a mother’s reluctance to discuss sexuality with her daughter impairs her daughter’s self worth on every level, and creates distance in the mother-daughter bond throughout the life cycle.  Ways of building confidence, instead of unintentional shame, will be offered.

A More Inclusive & Balanced Multicultural Education Through Children’s Literature – Gabriel Flores, Ed.D.
Review and discuss the findings of a 2009 research study entitled “Teachers’ Attitudes in Implementing Gay-Themed Literature as part of a Balanced Multicultural Education Curriculum.” Participants will discuss the study’s Teacher/Educators’ beliefs and workshop participants, perceptions, obstacles, and educational needs with respect to implementing gay themes in the multicultural education classroom.

Testicular Self-Exam (aka. The Testicular Whisperer) – Matthew A. Morales, MBA
In this workshop, participants will learn how to teach Testicular Self-Exams to their participants so as to improve the discovery of testicular cancer in its early stages. The workshop will identify icebreaker activities that will allow participants to feel more at ease in discussing the topic and learning the exercises needed to complete testicular self-examination.

Creating Change through Policies:  Advocating for Comprehensive Sexuality Education – Tracy Windeknecht & Catherine Dhingra, M.S.
What is lobbying?  What is advocacy?  What can you do to ensure that young people are getting medically accurate information about sex and sexuality?  In this workshop, participants will gain knowledge about policies and policy change, with specific attention to school policies about sexuality education.

Gossip Girl is 16…and Pregnant!: Examining Sexual Influences in Popular Media – Judyth Brown & Claudia Lux
Celebrity drinking on The Jersey Shore…domestic abuse of Teen Moms… What’s next?! Participants will deconstruct and analyze television programs aimed at young people, taking a closer look at why they are so appealing, and the messages they give about sexuality and self-worth.  Participants will learn strategies for teaching media literacy in the context of the “real” reality of youth in America.

Kiss Me Thru The Phone: Teaching Healthy Sexuality Through Hip-Hop Music and Ringtones – Alison Bellavance, M. Ed.
This session will examine lessons learned from media literacy activities conducted with youth in diverse populations, focusing on the incredibly popular genre of hip-hop. Participants will review trends in consumption of digital music and ringtones, and examine activities/examples to reframe the genre as an opportunity to teach about healthy sexuality, relationships, body image and safer sex.