Sex ed finished itself up with sexual assault and rape. This was, surprisingly, not much different from the other lessons I've had in health class on sexual harrassment and drug abuse. It took the same basic format: statistics and definitions, followed by scenarios we had to respond to, and finished up with our own "decision-making plan" for a scenario.

Another surprising thing about the lesson was that, like our gender roles lesson (see my previous posts), there were a lot of negative stereotypes being set forth without input from our teacher. This was especially prevalent during the scenarios, where all but one of the scenarios were of girls whose boyfriends were pushing them into sexual activity they didn't want (there was one scenario of a boy who was sexually assaulted by some of his sports teammates).

Not only did this send the message that only girls wanted sex and that they needed to resist advances made by (continually opposite-sex) partners, but also that the lessons the curriculum was trying to teach us was not as much that partners should respect each other's boundaries, but more like you shouldn't be in a room alone with someone of the opposite sex.

There was actually a "tips on preventing rape" sheet we got that was all personal safety tips. Not that I have anything against personal safety, but really, shouldn't the focus on preventing rape be on the rapists, not the victims? Women should feel safe to be in a room with someone, or be walking at night, and shouldn't be made to feel guilty if they are, sadly, sexually assaulted because they didn't "do the right thing."

Unfortunately, my classmates blamed the victims in the scenarios even more than the lesson suggested. I got into a rather lengthy argument with one kid about how a girl who had sex with her boyfriend after he repeatedly pleaded was coerced into having sex. Other students (with implicit support from my teacher) wanted to blame a young woman who went to a fraternity party, drank a little too much, and got assaulted for her own rape.

Not only was the focus on these negative stereotypes and some of the burden of assault on the victim, but the lesson was taught in such a way that it seemed just like every other health lesson we've ever been taught. While responding to scenarios, most kids just put what they knew was the right answer, not what they felt they'd actually do. It was kinda sad, since some of them--like a story where a boy got "faggot!" yelled at him--are things I've seen happen at school, where no one has responded positively.

All in all, sex ed was not as bad as I feared, but certainly not a positive experience. Our curriculum really needs to grow up and face the realities of the world, a world where overused methods, old VHS tapes, and reliance on gender norms and heteronormativity just aren't going to cut it. I hope that somone will update our course soon, so that kids can actually get something positive out of these few weeks.

A lot of schools have community service requirements--mandating that students must complete a certain number of hours of community service before graduating. My school does it a little differently, because we have a special "senior exhibition" service project all 12th graders have to complete to be able to graduate.

Panelists comprised of community members and 11th graders graded the project presentations, and I was able to be one of the panelists. Honestly, I was pretty underwhelmed. The projects I saw were mostly fundraisers for sports teams and for our school's senior prom, not anything that actually gave back to the community.

Our school's thinking about canceling senior exhibitions for my graduating class in favor of just community service hours, and I'm not sure how I feel about that. On the one hand, the senior exhibitions give students an opportunity to show leadership and initiative. On the other hand, you often get students coming up with bad project ideas that aren't much help to anyone, just because they want to pass high school. And should students really be forced to work without pay to graduate in the first place?

What do you think about this requirement, and about community service requirements in general? Should students be forced to complete service hours or projects before graduation, or is passing classes and tests enough? What graduation requirements does/did your high school have?

The Texas Board of Education finally voted to approve new textbook standards that would rewrite US history from a more conservative slant. The vote was 9 to 5 from a Republican-dominated board. Although some experts say that Texas's influence over textbook publishing will change textbooks across the nation, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan disagrees and says that other states shouldn't worry.

The blog Yglesias reports on a new kind of school segregation: where the poorer schools in New Orleans are mostly minority students, and the more well-to-do schools mostly white. According to the article, there are a number of causes, including general housing segregation, dismantling of desegregation, and the flight of white students to more successful charter schools.

Speaking of charter schools, the New York Times had an article this week on financial mismanagement at charter schools. This is not a new trend--many news sources have reported on it in the past. Although supporters of charter schools claim that the schools' lack of oversight enables them to try revolutionary pedagogical methods, it also opens the door to financial mismanagement and outright corruption--like a school the Times cites that spent $67,951 on "staff trips to the Caribbean."

If you're interested in improving your own school, AT&T, along with a group called "America's Promise Alliance" is sponsoring grants for teens who have ideas to improve graduation rates in the US. Applicants can win up to $20,000 to put their idea into action.

And lastly, a non-education update: Facebook just announced that they're going to simplify and further secure the privacy settings for their users. I'm pretty excited because this has been one of my recent causes: after a lot of research and with just as much help from my friends, I started a project on YouthNoise to alert people about the insecurity of Facebook and urge them to send in letters through Facebook's privacy feedback page. I'm glad that Facebook's responded to complaints, but if you're a Facebook user, I still encourage you to send in your own comments to Facebook, whether it's about what they changed or what they kept the same. Apparently, Facebook listens to users' voices, so make sure you tell them how you feel about their site!

I just started my school's sex ed program on Tuesday, in my AP Biology course. At my high school, sex ed isn't offered until 11th grade, when all students get it as part of their biology course. If you go to middle school in my school district, you also get sex ed as part of 6th and 8th grade. 6th grade was most puberty, and 8th was mostly showing us pictures of STDs so we'd be too scared to have sex. I'm going to be reporting on my experiences with sex ed this year, because even though our school's program is moderately comprehensive, it's nowhere near perfect.

Friday we didn't have much sex ed, due to the Earth Fair at school, organized and run by our campus Be Green club (more on them in a previous blog post). However, we did learn a little more about the female reproductive system. Unfortunately, what we did learn was pretty misleading. Our teacher asserted that the vulva and the labia were virtually the same thing (they're not), while the clitoris is nothing more than the remnant of the penis. Both of those statements were not outrightly incorrect, but still not exactly the the right phrases to use.

On Monday, we covered genital self exams, and I actually learned some pretty interesting things. For instance, testicular cancer is most common among males ages 20-34, I believe, and is extremely fast-growing. This is why it's so important for young men to do genital self exams and to go to their doctors if they notice anything's wrong. The same sorts of things are true of young women and their genital health--self exams are important for everyone!

I especially liked the self exam lesson, because I thought it was a great way to encourage total sexual health for teens. Too often the emphasis of sexual health is placed on just making sure you don't get STDs, when really sexual health encompasses so much more. Teaching about self exams also emphasizes that you don't need to be sexually active to take care of your sexual health.

Our next lesson covered HIV/AIDS, and although we started off with journalling our assumptions, like with the gender roles lesson, our assumptions got corrected by the teacher if wrong, so we actually learned the correct info on HIV/AIDS. We also played a game where we heard "myths" and "facts" about HIV/AIDS, and we had to guess which one was which, which was a decently enjoyable way to correct common misconceptions.

On Tuesday, we continued the HIV/AIDS lesson, by learning about the importance of STD testing. Unfortunately, the bulk of the movie was an old VHS tape apparently made after 2000, but with '80s style "special effects" that pretty much destroyed the seriousness of the topic for most of my classmates. Instead of concentrating on the video, we mostly concentrated on how the directors really shouldn't have used that distracting transition. For some reason, this seems to be the case with most sex/drug ed videos I've seen since middle school (note to aspiring film directors: this would be a great problem for you to fix!).

We worked on our end-of-the-year biology project today instead of doing sex ed, but we'll probably have another lesson on Friday. I'll update you on that one later. Until then, here's an article for you to read from the New York Times on increased federal funding for comprehensive sex ed.

Have you been following Step It Up? It's a truly unique step and dance competition because it requires teams to represent a cause that matters to them, both on and off of the dance floor. If you aren't familiar, cruise by our Step It Up homepage to learn about the competition, the causes and the teams!

The last two weekends, I dropped by Saturday choreography workshops where teams were able to meet with a professional choreographer in order to fine tune their routines.  I met with finalists, as well as their coaches and organizers from the NYC Department of Youth and Community Development, to witness the fine-tuning going on as teams enter the closing stretch of this multi-month competition.

This is a big weekend for fans, because the teams' PSA videos are set to debut online, and voting to re-open from June 1 through finals on June 7. That's one last week to make your voice heard-- 30% of scoring depends on voters.  If last year's videos are any indication of what teams will come up with, we're in for some inspiring material.

For teams, the last choreography workshop will be held on Saturday, May 29 at Junior HIgh School 45 in Harlem, 10 am to 5:30 pm-- don't pass up this opportunity for last-second improvements!

So keep your browser tuned to PlayCity for all your Step It Up 2010 coverage.  Check out the finalists' profiles, watch their videos, learn about their causes and their community service projects.  You can also check out photo albums from a number of Step It Up events at our Flickr page. 

Stay tuned for more coverage and get pumped!