smart is sexy: designing better sex ed in chicago M
y first time walking into a
ElliE L. Frank is a fourth year at the University of Chicago. She enjoys brevity.
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THE TRIPLE HELIX Winter 2020
Southside Chicago Public School classroom, I was at most five years older than the students I had come to teach. I went in not as a classroom aid or a supplementary teacher, but as the lead educator representing the group Peer Health Exchange (PHE) to talk about a highly-politicized and incredibly important topic: sexual health. PHE is a nonprofit that trains college students to be health educators in high school classrooms throughout major cities nationwide. We aim to provide comprehensive health education—sexual, mental, and emotional—to high school students and to empower young people to make informed health decisions. During the first lesson that I taught with PHE, one thing kept running through my mind: who let me, a college student, teach such fundamentally important information after only twenty-some hours of preparation? The Chicago Public School (CPS) system’s reliance © 2020, The Triple Helix, Inc. All rights reserved.
