Sexuality Educator and Researcher
At the start of the pandemic, educators were pushed to find new ways of effectively educating students. For some educators, this meant finding reliable methods of distanced learning, and for some, it meant hybrid forms of teaching where students and teachers alike needed to be able to switch modes of teaching and learning while maintaining a connection to the material. A problem with existing sex education and consent curriculums was that they were tailored and thoughtfully made for the context of in-person learning. Suddenly, the carefully thought out and trauma-informed ways of structuring the classroom, moving in the space, and structuring activities were moot. Educators were suddenly without any existing resources trying to navigate heavy conversations about consent and sexual violence virtually. The activities that they relied on were no longer translatable to the space or their students’ learning styles and resources. It became clear that to be effective and impactful educators and students needed a chance to indicate their new learning styles and needs. “Yes And…” needed to be a curriculum that educators could use for their in-person teaching, but it also needed to be a resource that acknowledged the differences between digital use and distanced learning.
The two primary audiences of “Yes, And…” are the educators using the curriculum to teach and the students learning the material from the curriculum. Teachers were recruited through the Champion Teacher email list at Planned Parenthood of Delaware as well as the educators who partner with Christiana Care Hospital (the group who funded the project).
The other participants were the students, and the student participants came from classes the Champion Teachers taught. We the PPDE staff observe these classes annually as part of our contract with Champion Teachers to teach curriculums we write and also facilitate in the community.
Participants were asked how their experience of the curriculum in distanced learning contexts was. The same activities from the in-person design of “Yes, And…” were included initially for participants to experience and navigate. Usability testing was utilized to assess aspects of the transfer to distanced learning were conducted without issues or confusion, which aspects had some pieces that forced participants to problem-solve, and which pieces did not translate effectively, leaving participants to either abandon specific tasks entirely or adapt the activity themselves. The ways educators adapted tasks was valuable information, as was where in certain tasks educators tried new methods of completion or moved to do other activities entirely. For example, the consent stoplight activity is designed in the in-person curriculum to be a moving activity that happens in the space of the classroom. The educator reads aloud short phrases or body movements, and students have to determine if the examples are “green”, an example of clear consent, “yellow” a murky example of consent that requires more context or conversation to be consent or “red” examples of non-consent. Students would be asked to move to the far left of the room, the middle, or the far right. If teachers had tight classroom spaces, an alternative suggestion was to hand students paper cards with the colors to hold up from their seats. This activity was reported as one of the activities that students and educators found confusing in distanced learning. Some students did not have camera access or chat access, so holding up colors or typing the colors did not work for their learning style or resources. Teachers also reported feeling overwhelmed by the reliance on chat for participation because the chat was hard to read while they were teaching and sharing their screen with the examples of phrases and body movements.
These findings informed a need for a distanced learning adaptation that allowed teachers to focus on their students and the material, and a way for students to engage with the material if they did not have camera or chat access with their technology.
A focus group of the educators was held in addition to the usability testing to assess what educators said they did to problem solve as well as their actions in real-time while teaching the material. This focus group consisted of six Champion Teachers and provided clarity on how the chat is frustrating to rely on while teaching because it moves quickly and is not always visible. Some teachers also indicated that they do not make video mandatory in class because it takes the focus off students who do not have the means to have the same tech access. These teachers had a pattern of fewer students on camera and were less inclined to use colorful paper. They also said that colorful paper was a cost to families and no longer a material they could provide.
Usability testing and the focus group prompted the changes to the distanced learning product in the form of the curriculum being written specifically for online learning. Educators and students indicated that they liked activities that engaged everyone and required a degree of participation, so PPDE created a link to the slides of the curriculum where each student could go in on their own time and move the phrases and examples on a moveable slide to visual images of a red light, yellow light, and green light. This activity can be done synchronously and asynchronously which also addresses access issues, internet speed, and tech limitations students and educators might face. Because the slides can be copied, students are able to complete the activity in a new timeline and send their slide deck to the educator should grading or proof of learning be necessary.
The state of Delaware legally requires that students receive at least one unit of consent education between 6th and 12th grade. When distanced learning became the framework many educators were working within, it was possible that educators would only have the time or energy to translate the first module of “Yes, And…” to an online format. As the first module of the curriculum is designed to fulfill the state requirement and teach the foundation of consent education, only one-sixth of the curriculum needed to be utilized. This would have meant that at minimum, hundreds of students were not accessing the material in the other five modules. If students were slated to receive their consent education this year in their grade and their teacher elected to do only the one required module because it was taxing for them to translate the material online, those students would potentially never have had access to further consent education before graduation. This has a tremendous impact on the students, their potential behaviors, and their understanding of a critical and vital concept in our society. By adapting all of the modules, “Yes, And…” was able to emerge as pre-existing and tailored material that was ready for teachers to quickly and easily plug into their virtual and in-person classrooms alike. As a result, over thirty-four teachers have already taught the full curriculum, with some of them having classrooms of over thirty students each.
An evaluation process with set questions was put in place for educators to be able to express their experiences of using the curriculum. Every time an educator finishes the curriculum, they submit this evaluation of the product. If an educator does not finish the program, it is flagged by PPDE’s champion teacher program tracker and that educator is reached out to specifically for a check-in to see if something specific posed a barrier to completion or if they needed additional resources to feel supported in teaching. Students at the end of the curriculum complete an exit survey that also records for the state that they received consent education. However many modules a student took, they have the ability to remark on them and how their experience of learning was. This information is routinely looked at and used to reflect on ways to make the curriculum as accessible and usable as possible.