How was your sex ed? Did your gym teacher present it, or were there guest speakers from the local teen clinic? What worked, and what didn’t? Five teens from Cutler Orosi in the Central Valley have a new idea that you can watch:

They teach it themselves! As members of the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Project, they designed the lessons and connected with students to teach them all about the birds and the bees.  What I’m wondering, is – does that work?

Personally, all I can remember from sex ed is some seriously terrifying slides of syphilis sores and my teacher going on and on about how condoms weren’t really all that great at preventing pregnancy. I learned about sex from my friends, trial and error, and some (at first) awkward talks with my mom. Sex ed didn’t do much… of course, that was back in the day… gasp! TEN years ago?! When I became a sex ed teacher in Sonoma County, I used every trick in the book to get the message across… we made it super simple “Herpes, HIV, and HPV – viral STIs you can’t cure” and pulled off some pretty fabulous condom demos.

Sex ed in California, from the outside, seems pretty great.  The state requires all sex ed to be comprehensive, aka talk about ALL forms of birth control, not just abstinence. Everyone can get info from a ton of different sources – our favorite TeenSource.org, teentalk.org, and MTV’s GYT site. Lots of schools have peer educator groups, like Berkeley High’s PASSHEN, the Balboa Teen Health Center Advisory Board in SF, and the teens at Cutler Orosi.  So I want to hear from YOU – what was the best sex (ed class) you’ve ever had and why?

And if you haven’t gotten enough – watch this video that received 2ndplace at last year’s Sex::Tech conference – a sex ed class that might REALLY work.