Littleton High School takes all forms of education very seriously, especially when it comes to the health and safety of their students. Sexual education, and other education regarding human anatomy, helps keep students safe and knowledgeable about the people around them and the consequences of their actions.
While being an uncomfortable topic, made that way by society, sexual and reproductive education is one of the most important things that young people should learn. It is a way to keep teens safe, and make children compassionate and more aware of what is happening in both their own and others’ bodies.
Despite most teens and young people not desiring to reproduce until later in life, many acquire the ability to do so at an early age, and it is very important that they know how to take care of themselves and others.
Megan Mitchell, an IB Biology teacher at LHS, is currently teaching reproduction in class, and spoke about some of the things she is doing and why they are so important.
While teaching her class, Mitchell says, “I had a lot of students commenting like, ‘Oh, it’s so nice to learn this about myself.’ I was like, yeah, you should, it’s complicated.”
Mitchell was asked about how this education helps students in the long run. She said, “There’s a lot of misinformation… and so helping debunk that, and then going into the signs of, like, why this could not possibly be true, I think helps.”
Sex and reproductive education has been seen as something that is weird or embarrassing, yet I believe that some of that stigma is going away. Mitchell agrees, saying, “I was in high school 10 years ago, so not that long ago, and we never have had the kind of conversations that we were having in this class.”
Along with IB Biology, the health classes for this semester have recently reached their sex education and relationships unit. Stephanie Evilsizer spoke about some of the things that she teaches in her class.
The health classes at LHS combine their healthy relationships unit with their sex education unit. Evilsizer says, “We start off with healthy relationships, like, what does any healthy relationship look like, whether it’s friendship, a dating relationship, or whatever.”
Once they reach the sex education portion of their class, Evilsizer says, “We start with basic reproductive anatomy. I like to go into a decent amount of detail about the reproductive systems and what job each part in the system performs. Then we go into birth control, STDs. We talk a little bit about conception, how pregnancy happens, then we finish up with risk reduction and safer sex practices.”
One of the reasons that students don’t learn sex ed is because it is such an uncomfortable topic of conversation. No child wants to talk about it with their parents, and most parents don’t really want to talk about it either.
When asked about how she deals with their awkwardness, Evilsizer says, “I don’t find it awkward or uncomfortable at all. Sex ed is my favorite unit of the whole semester, and I think that is just because I think that it is so important. I mean, I approach it in a very matter-of-fact way, but I do try to do it with a dose of humor, because you’re talking about body parts with a bunch of 15 year olds.”
All of our teachers are here to make sure that their students leave high school with more knowledge than when they entered, and that does not exclude the important topics that aren’t considered in the overall subject matter. The fact that our biology classes are helping teach these students about themselves is truly amazing. What is also amazing is that for the students who don’t end up taking biology, they have a required class to teach them the basics of biology.
