Three Portland high school students are reinventing sex ed
{A shorter version of this story appeared in the September issue of Portland Monthly.}
When 18-year-old twins Milena and Sofia Ben-Zaken and their friend Tess Waxman, also 18, were at Sunnyside Environmental School, their sex ed instruction was laughably brief. "We had one day on puberty in the 5th grade," Milena recalls. “We didn’t really have sex ed in 8th grade, either, except for on the 8th grade retreat,” Sofia says. It wasn’t until their first year at Northeast's Grant High that they finally had a thorough sex ed class. By then, they said, a lot of their classmates had already been sexually assaulted.
This absence of meaningful sex ed is not uncommon in Portland Public Schools. Though Oregon has long had sexual health education requirements—with new, more progressive standards passing in 2015—many teachers cop out because they feel unqualified or uncomfortable teaching it. When Jenny Withycombe, PhD., joined PPS as “teacher on special assignments” for health and physical education just two years ago, sex ed at the middle school level was hit or miss. “It was sometimes happening, sometimes not,” she says. “More often not.”
Tess (second from left, 2nd row), Sofia (second from left, front), and Milena (far right) founded Let's Talk last year as a way to teach their younger peers about sex (in all its forms), birth control, body issues, STIs, and consent.
In the fall of 2016, the Ben-Zaken twins and Waxman set out to change that. With the guidance of their English teacher, Susan Bartley, the young women met every Monday, interviewing a cross-section of their peers about what they wished they’d learned in middle school. The resulting curriculum—they dubbed it “Let’s Talk”—is inclusive and robust. In addition to covering the basics of birth control, STIs, and sex (in all its varied forms), their lesson plans cover LGTBQ+ issues, body positivity, and consent. Over the past two years, they and a handful of their Grant High classmates have taught the lessons to 7th and 8th graders at Sunnyside, Laurelhurst, and Mt. Tabor.
Whitycombe was so impressed by a class they taught at Laurelhurst that she welcomed them on as “community partners.” She champions Let’s Talk to middle school teachers throughout the district. “They had clearly put so much time and effort into it,” says Whitycombe. She was also delighted to see the middle schoolers unusually at ease discussing sexual subjects with kids just a few years older than them. (Needless to say, that’s not the case when their math or science teachers cover the subject.) “We’re more their peers than their superiors,” says Sofia, who says they all served as counselors at Outdoor School, which served as an inspiration.
As any sex educator knows, props help break the ice. “Sometimes, if they’re really quiet, I make them pass around the herpes pillow,” says Milena. When she tosses it to a kid, they have to answer a question. The young women also use a plush “Sammy the Sperm” and 3-D replicas of the male and female reproductive systems. But Waxman’s favorite part is passing around the anonymous question box. The rule is that everyone must put something on a piece of paper—even if it’s just a drawing or a smiley face. That way, more students ask real questions. Even jokey questions, though, are an opportunity for education. “We get a lot of jokes about pulling out,” says Milena. “And we talk about how that’s not a sufficient method of birth control or a sufficient way to protect against STIs.”
In the wake of the #MeToo movement, their lesson on consent—which they wrote two years ago, when they were juniors—seems especially crucial. Waxman will spice things up with a food metaphor. “I’ll say, ‘OK, Pretend you’re making someone a sandwich. You would want them to have what they want on the sandwich, right? Like, should I put mustard on it? Would you like this?’” If a group seems super uncomfortable, Milena says she reads directly from the lesson plan, which has examples of what is not consent. The list begins, “People CANNOT give consent when under the influences of drugs and alcohol. If someone sounds uneasy it does not count. If someone is pressuring someone into a yes, it does not count. If someone clearly states their limit or needs, do not try to bend them.” At the end of the unit, kids share something they’ve learned. “A lot of times it is about consent, which is cool to see,” Waxman says.
The trio are off to college this fall—Sofia is going to Occidental, Milena to Barnard, and Waxman to Mills College—but they’ve trained about 10 classmates to teach Let’s Talk during the 2018/2019 school year. Whithycombe—who says many PPS teachers, especially if they aren’t health teachers, are anxious about teaching sex ed—couldn’t be happier. “I think when the teachers see it [high school students teaching sex ed], it takes some of that fear away,” she says. “The word will keep spinning!”
