To support educators navigating a new virtual learning environment this fall, the Sex Education Collaborative has released a short video sharing 5 tips for teaching sex education remotely!

Are you ready for back to school?  The Sex Education Collaborative has 5 tips to help you teach sex ed remotely.

In addition to the video, educators can find resources to support their teaching efforts via the online Training Hub. The SEC website gathers trusted trainings and resources from national, regional, and state-based sex education experts for access wherever educators and administrators are working.

The SEC envisions a world in which all young people’s right to comprehensive, high-quality sex education is recognized and fulfilled. This vision can only be realized if educators have the knowledge, training, and support to effectively deliver sex education–whether in-person or remote.

Training and professional development offerings can be found at SexEducationCollaborative.org.

Valerie Sedivy, our Director of Capacity Building and Evaluation, will be your first point of contact if you’re looking for training or support. Her passion is helping you figure out what you need (and what you don’t), and in finding creative and feasible ways to meet those needs. Read more from Valerie.

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By Valerie Sedivy, PhD

August 28, 2020

Like everyone else, we’ve been making the mad dash to convert our previously-planned live events to virtual events. We’ve run these events quite a few times since then, and along the way, we’ve learned about making these events engaging, and even, dare we say, enjoyable:

Live virtual programs have some upsides.

Our participants tell us that they are excited about reaching more young people who couldn’t participate in live programs due to transportation, schedules, etc. And some people find it easier to engage when they can participate in a variety of ways, like typing in the chat box in addition to talking aloud.

If at all possible, don’t go it alone!

It’s hard to manage technology and run interactive activities any time, but especially when those inevitable last-minute glitches pop up. You might need to educate your organization’s leaders about the need for help behind the scenes, but it’s well worth it. We call this person our “producer,” and they make sure everything runs smoothly with the primary trainer takes the lead.

Build in micro-energizers as you transition to a new activity, or at least every hour.

It’s great to promote movement, but make it optional because some people may be in a shared space where they don’t want to call attention to themselves by moving around.

Have a plan for how to respond to messages.

Expect to receive messages through the chat feature, especially if someone raises a concern. If you have a co-facilitator/producer, they can be in charge of responses requiring immediate attention.  If not, tell your participants that you will keep track of their messages to you and get back to them if you can’t respond right away.

Test your activities ahead of time.

Recruit your friends and family, youth advisory committee members, and anyone else you can think of, so that you have a sizable group to test out any activities requiring breakout rooms or games. Make sure to test these activities on mobile devices, too, unless you know that everyone will be using a computer.

Take the time to learn how to use your platform’s features to make sessions more interactive.

It’s not as hard as you think to use features like breakout rooms and annotations, even for the technologically challenged. And there are plenty of free tutorials out there to help you figure out how to use these features.

Make sure you can see each other frequently, if not all the time.

If you use slides, turn them off whenever you don’t really need them, so people can see more of one another’s faces. People feel more engaged when they can focus on each other.

Want help bringing these lessons to life? Ask us about scheduling a virtual training or technical assistance to help you convert your existing lessons to interactive live virtual events.

Valerie Sedivy, our Director of Capacity Building and Evaluation, will be your first point of contact if you’re looking for training or support. Her passion is helping you figure out what you need (and what you don’t), and in finding creative and feasible ways to meet those needs. Read more from Valerie.

The post Seven Things We’ve Learned from Leading Live Virtual Events appeared first on Healthy Teen Network.

It’s been quite a year, hasn’t it? A global pandemic. Political upheaval. Civil revolution. The murder hornets that surely are due back any day now (see the principle of Chekhov’s gun.) All that on top of all of our individual concerns: our families, children, and friends; our employment, food, and shelter; our mental health, physical health, and emotional health.

It’s A LOT.

I do not know a single person who is not struggling significantly right now. Each person has their own kaleidoscope of challenges, but that does not make the burden or the stress of bearing it all any less real for each individual circumstance.

As each person has their own set of difficulties, so too do we each need our own set of self-care practices to fit with where we are right now and the specific challenges we are facing. It’s cute (but not necessarily helpful) to say “go take a long, hot bath” to someone with kids and a full-time virtual job.

Self-care, to be sustainable, has to be realistic. It has to fit your time, your circumstances, your energy level.

The point of self-care is to literally care for Your Self. If you are not caring for Your Self, Your Self will be unable to keep caring for everything else. You will burn out, run out of batteries.

The burn out may show up as overwhelming fatigue, it may show up as a feeling of emptiness, or it may show up as medical problems that force you to stop cold. You cannot run indefinitely without replenishing yourself. It is practically a cliché at this point, but the quote remains ever true:

Mental Health Care

I found this checklist, originated by Lindsay Braman, a Licensed Mental Health Counselor Associate in Washington state, floating around Facebook in the early stages of quarantine. As someone with an anxiety disorder, having something as clear and simple as a checklist to help walk days back from boundaryless timeless voids into small, manageable tasks and chunks of time was a lifesaver.

Carol Partonen was previously employed with Healthy Teen Network as an Administrative Associate.

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