Comprehensive Sexuality Education

We have the pleasure of hosting Susie March this week at our school. Susie is a consultant who works with schools in developing Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE) programs. Tashkent International School integrates CSE into our Psychological, Social, and Emotional Learning Program. Last school year, we had some challenges with our CSE curriculum from families. The goals of her visit are as follows:

Develop a common understanding of the CSE curriculum and why our school teaches CSE of all stakeholders, students, faculty, and parents.
Train and support teachers in delivering the CSE curriculum and manage sensitive topics when students bring them up in the classroom.

My big takeaway from my time with her is that schools need to offer a robust CSE to safeguard children. When students have the knowledge and tools about sexuality, harassment, and abuse can be avoided or dealt with more safely. Susie ended her talk today with the idea that our sheltered international school students are released into the world and get to university in a different country, and being happy and able to deal with real-world challenges are just as important as high IB scores.

Things to Remember

The United Nations views Comprehensive Sexuality Education as a human right and a safeguarding measure for children.
UNESCO developed the International Technical Guidance on Sexuality Education
Susie said in her experience of working with hundreds of schools, female students are most interested in learning more about Sexual Harassment and Consent & Boundaries. With male students, they are a bit more scattered in their interests, with Pornography and Sexually Transmitted Diseases being the top two choices. She used a Diamond-9 technique with 45 different topics, and students need to prioritize which topics they would like to learn more about.
Susie March is seeing much confusion around misogyny from international school students.
The US State Department Office of Overseas Schools partnered with CASEL to develop Social Emotional Learning & Child Self-Protection Standards and Benchmarks for International Schools.
CIS mandates that accredited schools offer CSE.