Professional Development & Family Outreach

The Adolescent Health & Development (AHD) team provides professional development and outreach to families. AHD is committed to engaging teachers, families, and other youth-serving professionals to implement non-judgmental, unbiased, and medically accurate sexuality education. We provide resources that allow trusted adults to connect with youth in a way that promotes their health and well-being. Our main areas of focus are:

• Professional development for youth-serving professionals to build skills and confidence in teaching sexuality education.
• Family engagement activities that include and are not limited to: tabling at school events
• 1:1 coaching when requested. (observing teacher implement a lesson and providing feedback)
• Creating relevant and useful resource tools to better equip teachers, facilitators, and families to have meaningful conversations with youth

Sexuality Education is more than just talking about sex. When sex ed is taught to Oregon Department of Educations standards, it aims to equip youth to build the knowledge, skills, and confidence to make positive decisions about their health and wellbeing. Sex ed supports students in building a healthy sense of self as well as strengthening school culture. Some main topics that sexuality education covers include:

• Healthy Relationships - consent, boundary setting, healthy communication across ALL relationships, not just romantic relationships. This core component of sex ed teaches students from a young age that they have agency over their own body and get to decide who touches them. 
• Understanding Our Bodies - name reproductive body parts (medically accurate terminology), puberty education, and promotion of healthy body image.
• Bullying & Suicide Prevention - Sex ed promotes that everyone deserves respect. This helps to decrease bullying related to body image, gender identity, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, etc. By promoting the message that everyone deserves respect, we can create healthy school culture that in turn aids in decreasing suicide rates.
• Media Literacy Skills - In our ever evolving society it has grown more and more important that youth understand how to discern information taken in through different media sources and how to stay safe while using these media sources. 
• Decision Making Skills - Strong decision-making skills are critical when young people find themselves in potentially risky situations. Sex ed provides students with the opportunity to practice responding to a range of scenarios communicating their boundaries and decisions using assertive communication. 

…and so much more!