Introducing teenFEMM: A Better Sex Education Approach for Teens
Our teenFEMM curriculum is making its way to the classroom and producing great results!
This July, Middleweb—an online hub that provides resources for middle-grade education—featured a study on how two educators successfully taught a new approach to sex ed for teens in the classroom.
These educators taught teenFEMM to students using multi-sensory learning and co-teaching. The article, authored by Dr. Megan Reister, Brigid Utz, and John Perozich, is entitled “Using Active Learning with Middle Schoolers.”
teenFEMM offers a science and evidence based program that teaches girls about themselves. Inadequate and inappropriate sex ed content often focuses only on sex and birth control.
Dr. Reister and Brigid offered teenFEMM as an after-school course for fifth and sixth grade girls at a small, private, Catholic K-8 school.
Dr. Reister is a former hearing itinerant and special education teacher in Delaware and Pennsylvania. She conducts research and teaching as a Special Education and Early Childhood Professor in the Education Department at Franciscan University of Steubenville (Ohio).
Brigid Utz is a teacher with a B.S. in Middle Childhood Education, planning to pursue her M.S. in Special Education.
How FEMM Connects with Teens
To prepare for their class, both teachers went through the teenFEMM certification course. Brigid says, “It was awesome discovering things about human physiology that we didn’t even learn in classes we had taken in high school regarding biology concepts for females.”
What makes teenFEMM different from other sex education?
Over the course of a semester, Dr. Reister and Brigid taught their students about general female physiology and the basics of the reproductive cycle. They incorporated co-teaching—taking turns presenting the material to the students. They also added in creative multi-sensory activities to reinforce what the girls were learning in the teenFEMM curriculum.
“We added in as an extra review of the content those hands-on activities,” says Dr. Reister. “One of the all-time favorites was creating the reproductive system using Play-Dough.”
teenFEMM’s sex education empowers women.
Another activity students loved was the sketch-to-stretch. Brigid explains:
“We would have the students draw an image—a picture of a girl—and then they stretched it out with key words. In that activity we were looking at different body systems, so they were able to draw that and then draw further into the reproductive system, which was what we were focusing on within the curriculum.”
The girls also enjoyed the Mystery Bag. Dr. Reister says:
“We brought in a purse and inside we had different objects that they could reach inside and feel and touch and describe to one another to try to guess what vocabulary word item was in the bag.”
Why do We Need a New Approach to Sex Education?
Comprehensive sex ed is not adequate for the needs of teens. Teens need to know how and why their bodies are changing, and be equipped with scientific evidence in order to allow them to make informed choices.
teenFEMM provides this information.
But using the teenFEMM curriculum and multi-sensory activities, Dr. Reister and Brigid succeeded in helping their students enjoy the learning process. It was a satisfying experience for both the girls and the teachers.
“Sex education”, if it’s going to mean anything and actually be helpful to teens, must thoroughly address hormones, ovulation, and each part of a woman’s cycle in-depth. Brigid says,
“I think [teenFEMM] is a great curriculum and students were really able to engage with it, and then further engage through multi-sensory activities to promote that active learning.
“There were so many times when [Dr. Reister] and I were saying, ‘Wow, I wish we had this when we were going through this kind of class in school.’”
Interested in becoming a certified FEMM teacher and helping teens learn this critical sex education information? Learn more here!
