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rivkaI left something out of my previous recap which, according to the training schedule, actually happened Saturday morning. The agenda line item was "Dealing with Classroom Difficulties," and it turned out to be one of the most valuable exercises for me. They paired us up quickly and assigned each pair a classroom problem scenario. We worked out solutions in our pairs and then presented them to the whole class for larger-group discussion. (For example, our scenario: "You're conducting an activity from the curriculum that you thought would be a big hit but it seems to be bombing. The participants don't seem interested and are not responding. What do you do?") I took a lot of notes during this exercise. I liked the way it brought out the skills pre-existing in the group (most of us had taught before or had small-group leadership experience), rather than setting up only the trainers as experts. And I'm sure that some of the scenarios will come up in our class.
I realized that exercise must have been out of place in my memory because, to be perfectly honest, I don't remember anything valuable happening between the half-hour break on Saturday afternoon and dinner. Training fatigue was starting to set in all around. The trainers seemed less focused and more inclined to ramble. And I was seriously tired.
The first topic up after the break was sexual abuse and assault. This was the least well-planned and applicable part of the training, which is a shame. They handed out something called the "Wheel of Power and Control," which is a resource designed for domestic violence work which looks at techniques used to control victims. We were divided into groups and asked to brainstorm about how specific techniques might look when applied in the lives of teenagers. There was never really a division made between teens being victims of adults and teens being the victims of other teens - because of the DV orientation of the handout, I had a reference point of teenagers in violent dating relationships (a surprisingly common problem), but most others seemed to be thinking of child sexual abuse. In the unfocused discussion that followed, the reason for the power and control exercise never became clear.
We did have a good, specific, useful discussion about the possibility that someone in our OWL class might disclose sexual abuse to us. The trainers strongly urged us to make sure that our congregations have a written institutional policy for what procedures should be followed in those situations, but also discussed the importance of familiarizing ourselves with child protection laws as they apply to us. We also talked about what we should tell the kids and their parents about the limits of confidentiality in OWL. The discussion was only marred by the bombastic participation of a guy who is a drug and alcohol counselor by trade, and had a tendency to lecture us loudly about the laws of Pennsylvania as if they were the law, applicable worldwide.
After that, they had us scan a handout on STDs and STD prevention and turn in questions to guide the following discussion. Not many people had questions and I don't remember the discussion being either very interesting or very informative, with one exception: in the middle of it, a woman asked in confusion, "What is cunnilingus?" There was a little silence, and then Adrian, the Kinsey 6 among us, spoke up: "I can answer this one." And he did. I think the rest of us might have just still been stunned that she didn't already know - at least, I was. Few people seemed to have heard of the female condom - I wound up giving a little explanation of its structure, use, and advantages over male condoms. Mostly this session felt like a poorly organized, rambling waste of time. (Did any of us not know that Planned Parenthood is a good resource in this area before the trainers told us six or seven times?)
We then spent some time talking about the question, "What's religious about sexuality education?" I didn't have any doubts myself about whether sex ed belongs in church, but it was probably helpful to discuss the question so that we'll be ready to answer any doubting parents. To me it just seems so obvious that values are inextricably a part of sexuality, and that, as religious people, we need to think of how our religious values inform our choices about sexuality.
After a final session with our peer facilitation groups, it was time for dinner. I haven't said anything about the food yet, have I? Oh. My. God. Let me just give an example: for Saturday night's dinner, we had a roast marinated beef tenderloin, spanakopita, roasted sweet potatoes, fresh green beans and cauliflower, fresh bread with butter, mixed green salad, homemade carrot cake, and ice cream. And every meal was like that, including the homemade freshly-baked desserts.
I don't know about everyone, but my table spent dinner in a bit of a tizzy because we knew that afterward we'd be viewing the infamous OWL slides. Very few people (including me and Adrian) had seen them before, and I knew that even we hadn't had the full experience - holding slides up to the light at random is not like watching a whole show projected on the big screen. And after dinner, that's what we did.
The second time through, the slides were much less shocking to me. Much less shocking. I mean, there were still these great big photorealistically-drawn images of people having all kinds of very explicit sex. But I was able to think about them more analytically. I really noticed this time what a diverse group of images are included in the lovemaking (that's what we call it in OWL) slides: people whose faces aren't pretty, younger and older people, flat-chested women, very fat people, a pregnant woman, a woman with a mastectomy scar, a man in a wheelchair... in addition to the different races and gender pairings I'd noticed the first time around. This time, also, I watched the slide while hearing the script that goes with it. The script, read in a calm neutral voice, talks a little about what the people in the slide are doing but mostly delivers messages about caring, communication, safety, etc. One part I liked discussed the fact that M-F, M-M, and F-F couples do many of the same things in bed.
We discussed the slides for some time after the lights came back on, with particular attention to our own personal reactions and how to explain their use to parents. The trainers recommend knowing the slides really well so that you can come back to them to illustrate particular issues at other points in the curriculum.
Finally we spent some time talking about how to handle the Question Box. The OWL model is that, at the end of every class, kids are encouraged to put an anonymous question in a box. At the beginning of the next session, the leaders spend time answering Question Box questions. Our trainers advised two general policies which might not have occurred to me: "it's perfectly all right to stuff the question box with your own questions," and "they have a right to ask any question, but that doesn't mean you have to answer every one, especially if you don't think it's been asked in earnest." They very much don't advise answering questions with "we're going to get to that later in the curriculum." When the kids have burning questions, we're supposed to answer them right away - or at least say, "I don't have that information for you right now, but I can get it by next week." We talked about difficulties which might come up: questions a trainer finds emotionally difficult, questions one of us has very strong opinions on, questions about other people in the group, questions which seem to be asked solely for prurient reasons. This was reasonably good (although it tended toward rambling trainer anecdotes), but I was just too tired to take in much more.
Sunday morning, after breakfast and a little time-killing random discussion, it was time for our peer facilitation groups. The class split in half, and each of us spent the morning alternately being teachers and students in our half of the group. My group was responsible for running an exercise called "Values Auction." We put up sheets of newsprint with a list of 20 values, and read them off with the suggestion that people think about which values are most important to them. Then we announced that everyone would have a chance to put their money where their mouth was. Everyone got a bundle of $300 in play money, and we explained that each value on the list would be auctioned off to the highest bidder. Two of our four-person facilitation team ran the auction, and the other two (including me) joined the audience and got to bid. This was really fun. One of the guys had a great auctioneer's patter, and the "students" got seriously into bidding. With only $300 and a minimum bid increment of $20, we had to think very carefully about where we wanted our money to go. When the auction was over, we switched roles - the auctioneers joined the audience, and the fourth group member and I led a discussion about the activity. We talked about which values went for the most money, how we decided what to bid on, how competition - or even simply the group setting - affected our bidding choices, which values our parents would've chosen for us. I was very pleased with how the whole exercise went.
Then we switched, and were students for the other half of the group. They were doing a lesson on attitudes toward masturbation, from the grades 10-12 curriculum. This one, I thought was less effective. They had us do a guided one-on-one discussion in which, every time they asked a new question, we changed partners. That might've worked okay if we'd really been together as a class as long as the curriculum intended, but in our situation it felt like too much forced intimacy. The one amusing moment was when, in response to the question, "What did your parents tell you about masturbation?" you could hear every single person in the group's answer in just a few seconds: "Nothing." "Nothing." "Nothing." "Nothing." "Nothing." Then we all looked up for the next question. The exercise concluded with a quiz game in which we were divided into two groups and competed to identify masturbation myths and facts. My team won. Our prize? A box of graham crackers. I made a crack about that being ironic, only to discover that it was entirely intentional: the activity closed with a reading from Dr. Sylvester Graham about the dangers of self-pollution.
All of this was fun enough, but the other half of the group got to experience an exercise (also from the grades 10-12 curriculum) in which, in pairs, one person was blindfolded and had to put a condom on a banana while the other partner gave verbal instructions. Hmph.
That took most of the morning. We spent the rest of the time before lunch comparing peer facilitation notes and talking about the respective roles of OWL teachers, parents, and churches in making a successful program. That was useful - less so in defining our own responsibilities, which I think we'd all thought a lot about, than in helping us think about what we can legitimately expect of others.
We had lunch. Unfortunately, my lunch table decided to launch into that perennial favorite topic, "Why parents these days suck." If you can believe it, it started out with someone who couldn't have been more than 24 announcing that "There's so much less parenting going on than there used to be," by which she apparently meant the scourge of working mothers. I tried to be the voice of reason for a while but wound up getting really pissed off and taking my plate inside to eat alone with a book. Sheesh.
After lunch we watched the video that takes the place of slides for the grades 10-12 curriculum. It was a lot like the slides - in fact, much of the lovemaking portion of the video consisted of someone filming the slides from the grades 7-9 curriculum. And for obvious reasons, I guess. The biggest difference was that the anatomy and physiology portion of the video included photographs of naked people and sexual organs, rather than just drawings. We talked about the video and the slides and the whole general "naked people having sex in images shown to children and their parents" thing for a while.
That was about it. We finished up the training with a series of random questions that hadn't fit in anywhere else, filled out evaluation forms, packed up, and went home. Fully qualified sex experts.
I realized that exercise must have been out of place in my memory because, to be perfectly honest, I don't remember anything valuable happening between the half-hour break on Saturday afternoon and dinner. Training fatigue was starting to set in all around. The trainers seemed less focused and more inclined to ramble. And I was seriously tired.
The first topic up after the break was sexual abuse and assault. This was the least well-planned and applicable part of the training, which is a shame. They handed out something called the "Wheel of Power and Control," which is a resource designed for domestic violence work which looks at techniques used to control victims. We were divided into groups and asked to brainstorm about how specific techniques might look when applied in the lives of teenagers. There was never really a division made between teens being victims of adults and teens being the victims of other teens - because of the DV orientation of the handout, I had a reference point of teenagers in violent dating relationships (a surprisingly common problem), but most others seemed to be thinking of child sexual abuse. In the unfocused discussion that followed, the reason for the power and control exercise never became clear.
We did have a good, specific, useful discussion about the possibility that someone in our OWL class might disclose sexual abuse to us. The trainers strongly urged us to make sure that our congregations have a written institutional policy for what procedures should be followed in those situations, but also discussed the importance of familiarizing ourselves with child protection laws as they apply to us. We also talked about what we should tell the kids and their parents about the limits of confidentiality in OWL. The discussion was only marred by the bombastic participation of a guy who is a drug and alcohol counselor by trade, and had a tendency to lecture us loudly about the laws of Pennsylvania as if they were the law, applicable worldwide.
After that, they had us scan a handout on STDs and STD prevention and turn in questions to guide the following discussion. Not many people had questions and I don't remember the discussion being either very interesting or very informative, with one exception: in the middle of it, a woman asked in confusion, "What is cunnilingus?" There was a little silence, and then Adrian, the Kinsey 6 among us, spoke up: "I can answer this one." And he did. I think the rest of us might have just still been stunned that she didn't already know - at least, I was. Few people seemed to have heard of the female condom - I wound up giving a little explanation of its structure, use, and advantages over male condoms. Mostly this session felt like a poorly organized, rambling waste of time. (Did any of us not know that Planned Parenthood is a good resource in this area before the trainers told us six or seven times?)
We then spent some time talking about the question, "What's religious about sexuality education?" I didn't have any doubts myself about whether sex ed belongs in church, but it was probably helpful to discuss the question so that we'll be ready to answer any doubting parents. To me it just seems so obvious that values are inextricably a part of sexuality, and that, as religious people, we need to think of how our religious values inform our choices about sexuality.
After a final session with our peer facilitation groups, it was time for dinner. I haven't said anything about the food yet, have I? Oh. My. God. Let me just give an example: for Saturday night's dinner, we had a roast marinated beef tenderloin, spanakopita, roasted sweet potatoes, fresh green beans and cauliflower, fresh bread with butter, mixed green salad, homemade carrot cake, and ice cream. And every meal was like that, including the homemade freshly-baked desserts.
I don't know about everyone, but my table spent dinner in a bit of a tizzy because we knew that afterward we'd be viewing the infamous OWL slides. Very few people (including me and Adrian) had seen them before, and I knew that even we hadn't had the full experience - holding slides up to the light at random is not like watching a whole show projected on the big screen. And after dinner, that's what we did.
The second time through, the slides were much less shocking to me. Much less shocking. I mean, there were still these great big photorealistically-drawn images of people having all kinds of very explicit sex. But I was able to think about them more analytically. I really noticed this time what a diverse group of images are included in the lovemaking (that's what we call it in OWL) slides: people whose faces aren't pretty, younger and older people, flat-chested women, very fat people, a pregnant woman, a woman with a mastectomy scar, a man in a wheelchair... in addition to the different races and gender pairings I'd noticed the first time around. This time, also, I watched the slide while hearing the script that goes with it. The script, read in a calm neutral voice, talks a little about what the people in the slide are doing but mostly delivers messages about caring, communication, safety, etc. One part I liked discussed the fact that M-F, M-M, and F-F couples do many of the same things in bed.
We discussed the slides for some time after the lights came back on, with particular attention to our own personal reactions and how to explain their use to parents. The trainers recommend knowing the slides really well so that you can come back to them to illustrate particular issues at other points in the curriculum.
Finally we spent some time talking about how to handle the Question Box. The OWL model is that, at the end of every class, kids are encouraged to put an anonymous question in a box. At the beginning of the next session, the leaders spend time answering Question Box questions. Our trainers advised two general policies which might not have occurred to me: "it's perfectly all right to stuff the question box with your own questions," and "they have a right to ask any question, but that doesn't mean you have to answer every one, especially if you don't think it's been asked in earnest." They very much don't advise answering questions with "we're going to get to that later in the curriculum." When the kids have burning questions, we're supposed to answer them right away - or at least say, "I don't have that information for you right now, but I can get it by next week." We talked about difficulties which might come up: questions a trainer finds emotionally difficult, questions one of us has very strong opinions on, questions about other people in the group, questions which seem to be asked solely for prurient reasons. This was reasonably good (although it tended toward rambling trainer anecdotes), but I was just too tired to take in much more.
Sunday morning, after breakfast and a little time-killing random discussion, it was time for our peer facilitation groups. The class split in half, and each of us spent the morning alternately being teachers and students in our half of the group. My group was responsible for running an exercise called "Values Auction." We put up sheets of newsprint with a list of 20 values, and read them off with the suggestion that people think about which values are most important to them. Then we announced that everyone would have a chance to put their money where their mouth was. Everyone got a bundle of $300 in play money, and we explained that each value on the list would be auctioned off to the highest bidder. Two of our four-person facilitation team ran the auction, and the other two (including me) joined the audience and got to bid. This was really fun. One of the guys had a great auctioneer's patter, and the "students" got seriously into bidding. With only $300 and a minimum bid increment of $20, we had to think very carefully about where we wanted our money to go. When the auction was over, we switched roles - the auctioneers joined the audience, and the fourth group member and I led a discussion about the activity. We talked about which values went for the most money, how we decided what to bid on, how competition - or even simply the group setting - affected our bidding choices, which values our parents would've chosen for us. I was very pleased with how the whole exercise went.
Then we switched, and were students for the other half of the group. They were doing a lesson on attitudes toward masturbation, from the grades 10-12 curriculum. This one, I thought was less effective. They had us do a guided one-on-one discussion in which, every time they asked a new question, we changed partners. That might've worked okay if we'd really been together as a class as long as the curriculum intended, but in our situation it felt like too much forced intimacy. The one amusing moment was when, in response to the question, "What did your parents tell you about masturbation?" you could hear every single person in the group's answer in just a few seconds: "Nothing." "Nothing." "Nothing." "Nothing." "Nothing." Then we all looked up for the next question. The exercise concluded with a quiz game in which we were divided into two groups and competed to identify masturbation myths and facts. My team won. Our prize? A box of graham crackers. I made a crack about that being ironic, only to discover that it was entirely intentional: the activity closed with a reading from Dr. Sylvester Graham about the dangers of self-pollution.
All of this was fun enough, but the other half of the group got to experience an exercise (also from the grades 10-12 curriculum) in which, in pairs, one person was blindfolded and had to put a condom on a banana while the other partner gave verbal instructions. Hmph.
That took most of the morning. We spent the rest of the time before lunch comparing peer facilitation notes and talking about the respective roles of OWL teachers, parents, and churches in making a successful program. That was useful - less so in defining our own responsibilities, which I think we'd all thought a lot about, than in helping us think about what we can legitimately expect of others.
We had lunch. Unfortunately, my lunch table decided to launch into that perennial favorite topic, "Why parents these days suck." If you can believe it, it started out with someone who couldn't have been more than 24 announcing that "There's so much less parenting going on than there used to be," by which she apparently meant the scourge of working mothers. I tried to be the voice of reason for a while but wound up getting really pissed off and taking my plate inside to eat alone with a book. Sheesh.
After lunch we watched the video that takes the place of slides for the grades 10-12 curriculum. It was a lot like the slides - in fact, much of the lovemaking portion of the video consisted of someone filming the slides from the grades 7-9 curriculum. And for obvious reasons, I guess. The biggest difference was that the anatomy and physiology portion of the video included photographs of naked people and sexual organs, rather than just drawings. We talked about the video and the slides and the whole general "naked people having sex in images shown to children and their parents" thing for a while.
That was about it. We finished up the training with a series of random questions that hadn't fit in anywhere else, filled out evaluation forms, packed up, and went home. Fully qualified sex experts.
