Making Connections and Making an Impact

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Making Connections and Making an Impact

I love what I do. I’m grateful every day to have meaningful work that I know benefits young

people, even when it’s hard. Sometimes it can be challenging to have such a short amount of

time with a class; relationship building is immeasurably valuable to education, and we often

don’t get to know the students the same way their regular teachers do. But it’s beautiful to see

the impact we can have, even with just a few sessions, and to know that those messages will

last for years—even decades—after we’ve left their campus. Here’s a short list of some recent

highlights from the classroom:

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Talk With Your Kids Month: no one ever said it was easy…

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Talk With Your Kids Month: no one ever said it was easy…

October is “Talk with your kids” month, and we encourage you to consider the wide number of intersecting topics that affect our understanding of human sexuality, and how we communicate these complexities to our children. 

In order to be comprehensive, sex education needs to cover many, many subjects, but we  can’t do it all at once. And it’s okay to focus on one thing at a time. A focus is not an exclusion. Just because we might be thinking and learning about Intersex Awareness issues on Oct 26, for example, doesn’t mean we can’t make connections between intersex identities and what we know, or want to learn, about mental health, or periods, or vasectomies, or AIDS, or menopause.

read on for a list of awareness days in the month of October that could inspire a conversation:


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Have you checked out all the resources for parents at Amaze.org?

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Since its debut in September 2016, AMAZE has published well over a hundred educational videos on topics including puberty, gender identity and expression, pregnancy and reproduction, healthy relationships, STIs and HIV, sexual orientation, and personal safety, to its YouTube channel and website. 

To reach youth, educators, and parents, Amaze content is published on five social media platforms: YouTube, Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, and Twitter. 

Parents and caregivers can preview every video and curate a playlist of videos they want to share with their kids. It really is an incredible resource!

Check out this series for parents and caregivers on “having the talks”. https://amaze.org/having-the-talks/


Shout out to "Puberty: The Wonder Years"→

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Wendy Sellers, sexual health educator, founder of Health4Hire, Inc., and author of Puberty: the Wonder Years recently chatted with our very own Emmalinda MacLean about the challenges of teaching puberty education. We are delighted to see Emmalinda receiving the recognition she deserves for her outstanding work as an educator.

Read more here: https://pubertycurriculum.com/educator-spotlight-emmalinda-maclean/



Supporting Students. No. Matter. What.

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Supporting Students. No. Matter. What.

Being a human is hard; the world is a difficult place; you cannot fix or heal everyone. Supporting children with empathy, patience, stability, predictability, and agency will give their brains the tools to start healing on their own, and so will normalizing the idea of trauma as something that happens to many people. When all of the adults who care for children recognize that intense reactions, unpredictable emotions, defensive behaviors, and shutting down are potential trauma responses, and respond accordingly, naming and normalizing the need to feel safe, children can see and empathize with it in themselves and each other.


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“How do we support our LGBTQIA+ students?”

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“How do we support our LGBTQIA+ students?”

We have been back to school and working with educators for a month now, and it’s so gratifying to serve our returning clients as well as students and staff on campuses that are brand new to us. But regardless of where our client schools are or how long we have been working with them, the biggest area of concern for staff and administrators is most often, “How do we support our LGBTQIA+ students?” A hugely important question, to be sure, when we have ample evidence that LGBTQIA+ youth are more likely to have suicidal thoughts or attempts, personal safety issues and lower academic achievement than their cisgender and heterosexual peers. We are delighted that Chris Angel Murphy (they/them) breaks it down for us.

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Sex Education is Relevant Year-Round--by Beth Rendeiro, Director of Outreach & Engagement

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Sex Education is Relevant Year-Round--by Beth Rendeiro, Director of Outreach & Engagement

Many schools and educators understand the need for and benefits of comprehensive sex education for their students. In some states, including California, sex education is mandatory for students of certain ages. But for some reason many schools wait until the last three months of the school year to schedule their programming. Is it something about spring? We don’t know each school’s reasons but here are some reasons to schedule the sex education program during the fall or winter.

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Guest Blogger Griselda Gines, B.S., Public Health, Shares Her Journey Story

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Guest Blogger Griselda Gines, B.S., Public Health, Shares Her Journey Story

This past fall, Cal State Northridge Intern Griselda Gines researched external professional development opportunities for the MTSE team. She has expressed to us that this internship allowed her to reflect upon the importance of sexual health education, and to understand that comprehensive sex ed includes a broad scope of issues. She has written this deeply personal blog post in which she shares her personal truth, which has helped to heal and strengthen her. We’ve loved having Griselda as part of our team, and we are certain she will continue to advocate for healthy conversations about sex.

TW: child sexual abuse, sexual assault, miscarriage

I grew up in a strict Catholic Mexican household in which, as a woman, we had daily chores to do and were expected to behave a certain way. Every Sunday we attended mass and had dinner at 6pm everyday followed by chores and our favorite telenovelas. At an early age, my two sisters and I knew when there was anything sexual being displayed on TV; we had to look away. My grandmother took care of her 7 grandkids until I was six years old. After that my sisters and I would stay home alone until my parents came home.

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Comprehensive Sex-Ed? Elementary, My Dear!

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Comprehensive Sex-Ed? Elementary, My Dear!

“Sex-ed that starts in kindergarten” sounds alarming to some people. Which is a shame, because the reality is absolutely wholesome and adorable. We talk about different kinds of families, messages about gender, keeping our bodies clean and healthy, setting boundaries to stay safe, and standing up for yourself. They’re the same messages that most parents and educators tell us they want to reinforce continually as children grow.

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We're Back! Live & In Person!

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We're Back! Live & In Person!

One of the highlights of being on campus is running into students from previous years, and the Pasadena Waldorf High School students made our day when a group of them saw us walking into the main office, and one announced to her friends, “Those are the sex-ed people!”

Yep, that’s us, we’re back, and it’s great to see you too.

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MTSE Co-Founder Emmalinda MacLean Trains Sex-Ed Teachers for a New Texas Organization

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MTSE Co-Founder Emmalinda MacLean Trains Sex-Ed Teachers for a New Texas Organization

I’ve been joking for years that my life’s mission is to raise an army of sex educators. Well, the joke is on Texas, because last month we started the Dallas branch. I couldn’t be prouder to support a like-minded startup taking flight in another city, and I am in deep admiration of the courage of the Texan sex-educators I met there.

If you’re wondering what qualifies a person to be a comprehensive sex-educator, or how we can teach someone to do it in a weekend, think about how people become parents. There’s a lot to know and to learn, it’s the work of a lifetime to get good at, but you don’t have to be perfect or know everything to be a great parent to a child who needs you.

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The Questions Students Are Asking — and why they’re important! By Guest Blogger Sam Joson

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The Questions Students Are Asking — and why they’re important! By Guest Blogger Sam Joson

More Than Sex-Ed gives students the opportunity to ask questions anonymously after each class session. Sure, there’s always a fair number of troll questions, but most of them truly show the different ways young people are learning to move through the world. Below, we explore the kinds of questions students are asking by grade level and why it’s important to pay attention to what they want to know.

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9-12 Year Olds and “Performative Discomfort”

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9-12 Year Olds and “Performative Discomfort”

There’s a certain kind of behavior we sometimes see from preteens, especially when class is discussing body parts or functions, that we describe as “performative discomfort”. Kids this age will go out of their way to tell us that they find the material “gross”, they use the barfing-emoji, they tell us they’re disturbed, they ask why we have to talk about these matters before lunch. Sometimes they seem to be telegraphing to their peers that they consider this topic taboo or off limits. We understand—and we remind students—that discomfort is a natural and very understandable part of the learning and growth process.

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Brave New World: The Perks of Virtual Sex Ed

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Brave New World: The Perks of Virtual Sex Ed

I trust that by now we’re all pretty familiar with the frustrations and drawbacks of online education, and we join with parents and students in hoping to be back in classrooms in person as soon as it’s safe to do so. But the more virtual sex-ed classes we present, the more we’ve noticed certain unmistakable advantages to the remote model too—and we hope to be able to re-create some of these benefits in a post-pandemic future.

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Destigmatizing Pleasure to Dismantle Sexual Shame

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Destigmatizing Pleasure to Dismantle Sexual Shame

Even as a very young child, I was aware of the stigma and taboo surrounding the subject of sex. Society’s discomfort with sex was apparent in the hushed tones people tended to use when speaking of it; it was apparent in the flustered demeanor my parents adopted when I would ask a question about a line in a movie, or a song; and it was apparent in the fact that, when I was 10 years old, my mom took me out of the house (“an outing, just the two of us”) in order to have “the talk” in private.

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Why YOU need Sexual Health Education Training!→

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Why YOU need Sexual Health Education Training!

Our culture is flooded with messages about sex, bodies, gender roles, relationships, and power: children are absorbing them from an early age. Without a trusted source of accurate information, these messages become many people’s only sex education. What messages are your clients receiving? Which ones are you sending?

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More Than Sex-Ed in Schools Across Los Angeles—De Toledo High School

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More Than Sex-Ed in Schools Across Los Angeles—De Toledo High School

We are thrilled to work with a variety of schools!
They may be charter, pilot, or independent schools, but one consistent feature is that each has administrators and teachers who profoundly recognize the value of well facilitated conversations with students about personal relationships and sexual health.

Meet De Toledo High School in West Hills!

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