By: Ntarupt Sex Educator Ileana Cruz

At Ntarupt, we serve communities that have been impacted by systemic racial inequities, such as, lack of access to quality healthcare, education, and sustainable living. We provide inclusive, trauma-informed, medically accurate sex education to youth, caregivers, and youth-serving professionals. Teaching reproductive and sexual health in Texas comes with its challenges. Since we usually do not teach in a traditional school setting, our work relies heavily on the support of our amazing community partners, after-school programs, summer programs, and in some cases laundromats and Zumba classes. Like many program providers, the arrival of COVID-19 has caused us to rethink program accessibility and sustainability to continue supporting families and our community. 

LAUNCHING OUR NEW VIRTUAL SEX ED PROGRAMS 

Two weeks after we packed up our essentials to work from home, I along with my fellow Ntarupt sex educators began teaching sex ed virtually. For me, this was uncharted territory, I had been teaching sex ed for three years up until this point, but never virtually. My anxiety began to set in, and I felt an overwhelming thought creeping up, how would I be able to connect and teach with my students virtually? I value the time spent with my students in person, teaching sex ed requires building trust and gaining respect. It is a topic that may be triggering, embarrassing, and/or scary to some? How would the students feel safe to discuss the topics around sexual health in a virtual environment? Talking about sex outside of the home can already be uncomfortable, how would students feel talking about it at home? Would the students even want to engage in a sex ed class with a caregiver nearby?

I’m thankful for the support of my fellow educators at Ntarupt, as soon as we went virtual, we began to create virtual versions of our sex ed curriculums as starting points. Once the modules had presentations, I began to brainstorm ways to engage my students more. I looked up mini videos on youtube to chop up times between me talking. I emphasized the use of sending a private chat through Zoom and every class began and ended with my email address. I wanted every student to know that I was still accessible to them, even in this virtual world.  I began to use these as templates and modified them as time went on. 

I could not have asked for a better group for my first virtual education session. 

EAGLE SCHOLAR PROGRAM 

EAGLE  Scholars is a college readiness program for 7th-12th grade students that aims to address the unique needs of low-income families while mentally and academically preparing them to become first-generation college students.  Like Ntarupt, EAGLE Scholars traditionally provide programming as a direct face-to-face service. Under the guidance of Dr. Janet Morrison, Director of EAGLE Scholars, their summer program transitioned from in-person with hands-on interactive sessions to fully 100% virtual with over a hundred 7th – 12th graders!! 

In this virtual world, I taught the two groups of scholars once a week for an hour on a zoom call with an additional class for anyone to join. I had a class Monday and Tuesday with a class on Wednesday devoted to the students to discuss sexual health topics, how their summer projects were going, and rounds of rapid-fire Q&A with me over the week’s topic. Looking back, I owe a lot to that Wednesday class for the relationships and trust I was able to build with my students. It also helped me as an educator to get a better understanding of where my students were at with the content. If the questions centered heavily around one topic, I would use that and apply it to the following week’s lesson plan to review. Allotting a time for students to discuss opening, freely, with no judgment and no structure really helped the student get comfortable with talking about sex / sexual health and that’s one aspect to my teaching I plan to continue in COVID-19 era and past it. 

To learn more about the scholars and their summer experience watch their reflection videos HERE.

VIRTUAL SEX ED TIPS + KEY LEARNINGS 

As a sex educator, my most fundamental goal is to provide my students with basic sexual health knowledge; however, and more importantly, my purpose as a sex educator is to affirm my student’s power in advocating for themselves in every aspect of their lives, including but not limited to sexual health. Inclusive sex education holds space for the student who identifies as LGBTQ+ but has never had an outlet to talk about it. Skill-building sex education provides an initial blueprint and support for the student who wants to take control of their sexual life including having difficult but necessary conversations with parents and/ or partners, and access to sexual and reproductive healthcare, even in a virtual world. As I reflect, I acknowledge that there was no right or wrong way to navigate a global pandemic, but I have gathered a few takeaways so far:

• Practice doing a condom demonstration in front of a webcam a couple of times before actually doing it with your students. I promise you will thank me later.
• Find as many online resources and hotlines with text services for teen students! Make it easy for your students to access help and information from credible resources. It helps if they are local resources as well. Resources like domestic abuse, mental health, and healthcare.
• Virtual time goes way faster than regular time. Utilize youtube videos to explain certain topics that may be dense in information. Videos from amaze.org have been my go to’s. They may seem cheesy, but most are under five minutes and they get the point across concisely.
• Try out different platforms to find the one that best suits you and your content. Zoom has been the best platform I have used for synchronous teaching. It allows screen/audio sharing, you can create break out rooms, and it has a chat feature where participants can submit questions privately. The chat feature allows students to feel comfortable engaging and asking more questions.

There is still so much more I would like to work on to continue helping my students grow and learn in this virtual world we are living in. I have learned to be okay with feeling overwhelmed or a bit down. There are aspects that cannot fully be re-created online. It is hard not being able to be there for our students in person, especially during such an emotional time. What I can do is continue to make myself accessible to my students and to emphasize my support. All educators are learning as we go. I don’t know what the future holds but I look forward to the day where we can be back in a classroom with our students in a safe and healthy way.

For more information about the Eagle Scholars program visit: https://www.vmydf.com/eagle-scholars-program