These curricula materials are for educators working with young adults. It is a bit more in depth than the high school curriculum and discusses human sexuality in a broader sense.
Adult Human Sexuality: Connections
Developed by the Birds and the Bees for an adult human sexuality class.
Adult Human Sexuality Week 1: Welcome
In the first week of the adult human sexuality class, we focus on meeting the others in the class and establishing a level of respect and expectations for the class.
First, the group will create a list of rights and responsibilities. We’ll start with a writing reflection of what participants think the rights and responsibilities should be. As needed the facilitators will prompt important rights/responsibilities that should be included on the list including: to be heard, to ask any questions, to not be put down, to pass, to not have assumptions made about you, to have your own feelings, to say hello and good-bye to group members, to be present and confidentiality. We will briefly discuss each right/responsibility. These rights/responsibilities will be posted in each session. The rights and responsibilities help establish safety and the tone of the sessions. They serve as a guideline so participants know what is expected.
We will also create a question box and name cards and then there will be an ice breaker activity so the group gets the chance to learn about each other. Then, there will be a discussion about what human sexuality is and discuss the group’s thoughts of human sexuality.
Lesson 1 Materials
Human Sexuality Newsletter Week 1
Adult Human Sexuality Week 2- Antatomy & Reproduction
You’re probably sick of seeing my fruity anatomical models, but I just can’t help myself from teaching them- at least I gave you a different picture. I love that activity. One of the participants in the class has trained to be an EMT and is now working on becoming an nurses assistant so he was able to explain the reproductive processes and anatomy. On the other hand, other folks had a hard time looking at pictures of the developing fetus and seeing progression from cells to a more complex organism. I think there just wasn’t enough context and exposure to those images. All the participants in our class had this piece of sex ed before so they knew all the basic parts of anatomy. We got into a nice discussion about reproductive anatomy and why it’s private and why it’s taboo.
When talking about reproduction, be careful not to limit conception to just intercourse (although this is critical information too). In our activity we framed sperm entering the vagina as through intercourse or a medical procedure. You could go into more depth and talk about different fertility options. Why? First, intercourse is not the only birth story and specifically it’s less likely to be the birth story for children with gay or lesbian parents. I think it’s important not to assume that heterosexuality is the norm. Second, many individuals have difficulty conceiving and need fertility support. I think it’s important not to assume fertility is the norm.
For the supplemental materials my co-facilitator and I got into an interesting situation. The book she wanted to use was only available in the children’s section at the public library. It was a really nice resource, but we were concerned about sending adults to the children’s section. All the reproduction books with pictures were in the children’s not fiction section. In the end, we decided to include it, but put a warning where it was located. I’m not sure this was the best choice, but that’s what we went with at the time. We also encouraged participants to watch “Life’s Greatest Miracle”. This is a great teaching tool, and they could stream it for free!
I’ve attached the lesson plan and supplemental materials below.
Materials
- Anatomy & Reproduction lesson plan
- Anatomy & Reproduction Worksheet Packet
- Anatomy-cheat-sheet (explains reproductive organs and their functions at two levels)
- labels (for fruity anatomical models)
- Reproduction Level 1 (this one has fewer pictures and the language is a little simpler)
- Reproduction Level 2 (this is more appropriate for individuals with no cognitive impairments)
- Connections Newsletter Week 2 (this is a newsletter that goes home with participants and expands on topics covered in the class)
Adult Human Sexuality Week 3- Crushes
The main activity this week was a series of worksheets designed around walking participants through the steps of having a crush: places to meet someone, why you notice someone, deciding to talk to them or not, signs of being interested, approaching someone, asking out on a date, and saying “No”. Probably the most difficult question on the worksheets was, “why do you notice this person?” Many of the participants focused on things the would like if they got to know someone. It took several prompts, but they were able to start thinking about the things they notice about others, the things that draw their attention. When we got to different ways to approach someone there were many questions on bar etiquette. We talked about buying drinks for others, when it’s expected to approach people and when it’s not, and the difference between the bar sitting area and table sitting area. We didn’t get to our final activity, but were were going to sequence the road map with pictures of couples at different stages. We have a little bit of a time management problem because there’s no clock in the room. It’s the little things!
We gave them two additional resources this week. First we sent them to a website on how to build self confidence. We also suggested the book, What Men With Asperger Syndrome Want to Know About Women, Dating and Relationships by Maxine Aston.
Get all the materials for this weeks lesson
Adult Human Sexuality Week 4- Dating
The previous week focused on crushes so this week’s topic, dating, was a natural extension. We did a lot of role playing and it went wonderfully. We were able to pull out parts of the role play to reinforce many of the different concepts. The last time I had done role playing was with middle school students- adults are just so much different to work with. They took the role plays very seriously and put a lot of effort in. One of the actors did turn out to have a comedic streak so the activity was fun as well as thoughtful.
We also did an activity where we asked participants to think about the characteristics in a relationship that were most important to them. We had a couple red flags on the list (like one about physical mutuality) and they were all tuned into why that is important. This activity lead to a nice open discussion where we talked about other items on the list that were important to us. For the most part, people in the group are really centered on having similar interests and values.
Free free to use the materials we’ve developed.
Materials for this week
Adult Human Sexuality Week 5- Power in Relationships
For those of you who have come to a workshop, this activity was similar to what we did in the workshop. We thought about power and control in relationships and specifically the benefits of having more power, benefits of having less power, drawbacks to having more power, and the drawbacks to having less power. Once we got it all up on the board we used put a circle in the center and talked about how different situations would be red flags that a relationship would be unsafe. We also did a shortened version of the “What Should I do Worksheet” and role played some of the different scenarios (like one friend calling another friend because her boyfriend just told her there was a greater age difference than she assumed).
We want more people to get good sexuality education so feel free to use our materials. If you improve on them, let me know!
This Weeks Materials
- Connections Lesson Plan Week 5 Power in Relationships
- Worksheet packet 5
- Connections Newsletter Week 5
One of the participants in our group loves to do trainings and so we included a online training program to identity dating violence in teen relationships. You may find this site really useful too. Dating Maters offers a 1 hour and 20 minute training that will allow you to identify examples of teen dating violence and understand the consequences of teen dating violence. The training will teach you the risk factors, protective factors, warning signs, and challenges for seeking help for teen dating violence. The material is a good starting place for adult relationships too.
Adult Human Sexuality Week 6- Physical Intimacy and Human Sexual Response
This activity was a little more difficult than we expected (I don’t know why I didn’t expect it to be hard- we’re talking about sexual activity after all!). It was hard for us to explain each of the sexual activities. Part of the point of this activity is to talk about the variety of sexual activities, but sometimes we get caught on our own hang ups and assumptions about what people need to know. On the other hand, this material was difficult and new for many of the participants in the group. Talking about sexual activities can make people feel uncomfortable. I think, in the end we struck a nice balance between expressing the diversity of sexual expression and having opportunities to set personal boundaries. I would make some revisions to the lesson plan and those revisions are reflected in the lesson.
We did a mini pretest which we revisited at the end. The bulk of our activity involved sorting sexual activities into categories and talking about the continuum of intimacy. The relationship categories really helped set up the continuum so I would recommend doing that step first (the relationship categories aren’t listed in order. I would do it from left to right- outside a relationship, in a casual relationship, in a serious relationship, only if married or in a lifelong partnership, and I don’t think I would ever do this). I would then move into talking about how these activities have a continuum. I changed the picture a little to better represent the continuum concept.
We then talked about the human sexual response cycle. As we were talking we used the sexual activities to help make the sexual response cycle more concrete.
We ended with revisiting the pretest questions and talking about our own values. Most of our group really values the emotional components of relationships.
In the newsletter there is a great video for human sexual response that you might want to check out 🙂
If you’re teaching human sexuality and would like to use these materials, go for it.
Materials this Week
Adult Human Sexuality Week 7- Sexual Health
For our sexual health week 
we talked focused on STDs and contraception methods although we did include more general health information in the newsletter. We did a condom demonstration and then practiced putting on condoms (we used bananas as our phallics). It was really important that we did that because several parts of putting on condom were tricky such as opening the wrapper and making sure it wasn’t inside out.
We talked about the “morning after pill” and STD testing. This is a more complicated topic for individuals with medical guardians. Individuals have the right to these forms of medical care without guardian approval if they are part of post sexual assault forensics. But what about outside of that context? This was especially timely as we had this class the same week a New York judge struck down age limits on the “morning after pill”.
We played a game with contraception methods and STDs that mimic Go Fish. It was a lot of fun. The cards for the game are below. Depending on your audience, you could either print out two copies of the same cards or there are two versions of each card so you can squeeze in twice as many facts.
If you’re teaching a class on this topic and would like to check out our materials, I’ve included them below.
Materials
Adult Human Sexuality Week 8- Sexuality and the Law
At this stage in the game, my partner in crime took over teaching the course. This is part of training paradigm were testing out where we partner with a community agency to teach the course. We process course development together, I start out as lead facilitator, and then we transfer over. For person who is facilitating also develops the materials. In the end, the agency gets a copy of all the resources we developed (all the ones I’m sharing with you here). If you’re interested in doing something like this and are in the Champaign-Urbana area, contact me:)
Everyone in our group really understood topics of sexuality and the law at the extremes so we spend most of our time processing situations that would be more nuanced and contextual. These situations are quite difficult, even for individuals who have few/no intellectual impairments. We gave some general guidelines, like Facebook commenting guidelines and also tried to simplify legal language.
People in the class were really interested in crime statistics regarding sexual violence. We didn’t include a lot of that information, but it is something that we might want to consider in the future. It’s hard to balance providing people with accurate information but not sensationalizing or using scare tactics.
This week we used a case study activity. I’ve never used this as a teaching tool before. We read a news article about Facebook stalking. I think the idea of using case studies is really interesting and I would like to test out this tool in the future. I’d love to hear from you if this is something you’ve had success using.
The article pictured below was featured in the Newsletter this week. It’s from Connect Ability; a website that was specifically developed for individuals with developmental disabilities.
If you’re thinking about teaching this on your own, feel free to use the materials we’ve developed (below).
Materials
- Connections Newsletter Week 8
- Lesson plan Sex and the Law
- Sex and the Law Worksheet
- Sexual Harassment Simple Definitions
- FACEBOOK STALKER article abstract
- Inappropriate, illegal, or normal? Scenarios
Adult Human Sexuality Week 10- Closing
This week was just a review. We had three review activities, but only got to two of them because we spent a lot of time on questions. I posted all the topics and subtopics on the board and asked everyone to write three to five questions they had about any of the topics we covered in class. Some of the questions were “What is considered to be by law a legal age to be sexually active?”, “What defines a person as a specific gender?”, What is the difference between having a crush on someone or just being in lust?”, “Can you provide an example of different ways for someone to commit voyeurism?”, Why do women get paid less than men who share the same job duties, nowadays, as a result of these stereotypes?”, & “Is it possible for a guy who may have any type of diseases to pass it on to a girl through rape?”. I think actually seeing the questions tells me a lot about what people are picking up from class and what are areas we might of glossed over more. I think it could be really fun to do this same activity the first week of class and then repeat it at the end.
If we would have got to everything, we would have role played situations where they would need to get information on sexuality topics after the class was over. We did talk about this topic. We did close with a values exercise where participants thought if they agreed or disagreed with different statements. We had a lot of like minded people in our group so we would talk about why someone might feel differently then we do. We sent participants home with a book that included supplemental material, material we covered in class that wasn’t in the handouts (activity based information), information from the newsletters, additional resources, and the worksheets they completed during class. I hope that will be a useful resource for folks in the future. We had such a nice time teaching the class- I hope the participants enjoyed it as much as we did (I think that they did!).
If you’re thinking about teaching this class, here are the materials we used.
Additional Materials
Adult Human Sexuality Week 9- Gender Roles
It was really fun teaching about gender roles. Gender roles and gender identity were difficult concepts. Most of the people in the group talked about wearing a dress as if it made you a women. So we talked a lot about biology and society and how those both influence people and gender. We also talked a lot about gender stereotypes and how they can put limits on how people act.
Our big activity this week was making gender stereotype collages. We found images from magazines that we thought reflected gender stereotypes and made them into a collage. We talked about which stereotypes were easy to break and which ones were hard to escape. The men found a lot of images they thought were more realistic depictions of women. In the future, I think it could be fun to structure that into the activity.
Throughout the entire session, one of the things that was really difficult is that there are gender roles, gender stereotypes, and gender identities. They influence each other but they’re different. It’s not so critical that folks in the class understand the precise definitions, but it might have been helpful to walk through that a little bit more concretely. On the other hand it led to really nice discussion questions, for example one participant asked “What makes a person their gender?”
We used a couple videos in class. The first video focused on gender identity. It shows person in the process of gender reassignment. Over the three year period you can see how their external appearance reflects gender identity more and more.
The second video is more about gender stereotypes and gender roles. One of our participants brought up how boys don’t like to play with “girl toys” and I remembered having seen this and pulled it up (it’s nice when it works out like that!).
If you want to take a stab at teaching this on your own, hear are the materials we used.
Additional Materials
Young Adult Human Sexuality Group: Connections
I’m partnering with a local service provider to offer a 10 week human sexuality class, Connections. I’m really excited about it. The goal is that the community agency will be able to continue offering classes in the future. They will have someone who has experience teaching a class and they will also have a set of materials. This is my first time doing a co-operating method of training so I’ll be keeping you posted on how it is going. If this is successful, it’s a model that I would like to pursue so if you’re in the Champaign-Urbana area and you’re interested, let me know.
The group is really great. I love working with middle school and high school students, but adults are just refreshing. This week we mostly just got to know each other. We did some of my favorite get to know you activities such as making collage of who we are on the outside and the inside.
We also have an undergraduate social work student working with us. She’s developing a newsletter that will go home each week with the participants. The newsletters expand on the topics that we talk about in class.
The other thing that is really neat bout this group is that one of the participants comes to the planning meetings and helps set the group up. He’s taking a participant and instructor role.
The Birds and The Bees 