I’ve just finished a month of delivering RSHE workshops across different secondary schools in Greater Manchester and I am absolutely exhausted. The good kind though…because more than 1,000 young people have been educated, informed and hopefully left knowing a little bit more about themselves, their relationships, their bodies and keeping themselves safe.

It’s been a real mixture of RSHE too. I’ve delivered Keeping Safe Online with Year 8 girls, Consent & Pizza with Year 9 and finished with Contraceptive Choices for Year 10. Basically, I’ve spent three days talking screenshots, situationships, sex, consent, condoms and contraception…a standard week at work for me.

Screenshots, Situationships & Keeping Girls Safe Online

One of the biggest pieces of delivery was working with around 200 Year 8 girls on keeping safe online.

I’ve worked with girls and young women for years, and the online part of their lives has obviously changed enormously in that time. Friendships don’t finish at the school gate anymore. Neither do fallouts, relationships, pressure, rumours or arguments, they’re carried around in their pockets all day.

So Screenshots & Situationships is about giving girls the opportunity to actually talk about that world.

We explore friendships and relationships online, what gets shared, what gets screenshotted, pressure, boundaries and the things that can go wrong when something intended for one person suddenly isn’t private anymore.

It isn’t about telling girls that phones and social media are terrible or giving them another lecture about putting their phones down. The online world is part of their real world, so good RSHE needs to acknowledge that and give them practical ways of navigating it safely. And judging by the conversations and questions, they certainly had plenty to say!

Consent, but make it make sense

Next up was Consent with Year 9, another subject I’ve been teaching in schools for years and one that I still think needs much more than simply teaching young people the legal definition of consent.

Young people need to understand what consent actually looks and feels like within relationships. That means communication, pressure, assumptions, changing your mind, recognising somebody else’s boundaries and understanding your own.

As always, there were questions, discussions and plenty of laughs in the right places. That’s something I really value in my workshops. RSHE can cover serious subjects without the room needing to feel serious and uncomfortable for an hour.

In fact, I think young people often learn more when it doesn’t.

And finally… contraception!

and out came the kit.

Contraceptive Choices with Year 10 is exactly what it says on the tin: helping young people understand the different contraceptive options available, how they work and where they can access reliable sexual health information and support.

I’m a big believer in making RSHE as practical and memorable as possible, which explains the collection of colourful demonstration models currently taking over my kitchen.

There is something very different about allowing young people to see resources, ask questions and properly explore a subject rather than putting a PowerPoint on a screen and talking at them.

But the best bit of this month…

The thing I’ve come away thinking about most hasn’t actually been any particular workshop. It’s been the young people.

Across every school I’ve visited, students have been engaged, respectful and genuinely interested. They’ve asked mature questions, listened to each other, joined in and laughed, at the bits they were supposed to laugh at! And I really wanted to acknowledge the schools and teachers behind that too.

I get to walk into lots of different schools and see what happens beyond the headlines we so often hear about education and teenagers. I see teachers putting enormous amounts of effort into their students, wanting the very best for them and creating environments where outside educators like me can come in and have these conversations properly. When that groundwork has been done, you feel it almost immediately when you walk into a classroom.

I’ve been delivering relationships, sex and health education in schools for 28 years and genuinely still love what I do. I’ve seen SRE become RSE, then RHSE… I’ve watched the subjects we need to discuss change enormously and I’ve watched the sector become increasingly confident about having conversations we once struggled to get through the classroom door. There is still plenty more work to do, obviously, but months like this make me notice the positive change too.

One extremely tired sex educator, But a very happy one. ♥️

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I deliver practical, engaging RSHE workshops, drop-down days, interventions and staff training for secondary schools, covering topics including consent, contraception, sexual health, online safety, pornography, sexual harassment, healthy relationships and harmful sexual behaviours.