Our school is running the Keeping Ourselves Safe programme (Te Whiwhi Awhina) currently and I have read the manual on this topic. It contains some pretty heavy material, especially as my class as a whole seem quite young and innocent in general. There has been a lot of giggling and embarrassment due to new concepts being taught. We all had a great laugh together when saying all the names for the body parts including penis, vagina, testicles and breasts!
It can be heavy to speak about these topics with your class, but as the statistics are so shocking with 1 in 3 girls having experienced sexual abuse by the time they are 18, it is a very relevant topic to be talking about. Those statistics probably mean that it could be a current situation for some of the girls in my class, or will very likely happen to others in the future. Terrifying stuff! So despite it being a big topic I believe it is so important to give words to these things, so that students have a voice and a choice of being heard if something like this does ever happen to them.
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