Classes for grades 6 and 8 are based on a research-based curriculum from Advocates for Youth.
Grace Clever
Signs can be seen for the Iowa City Community School District in Iowa City on Tuesday, September 13, 2022.
Middle school students in Iowa City have started taking new classes on building healthy relationships and preventing sexual violence.
Classes are taught by the Rape Victim Advocacy Program and are intended for 6th and 8th graders. The most recent change was made by an amendment passed by the Johnson County Board of Supervisors, and the original program taught classes in her 7th grade and her 9th grade.
RVAP Assistant Director Michael Shaw said one of the goals of the class is to connect with students and provide resources.
“Another aim of our work is to provide young people with information related to communication, consent and relationships, and to help them find useful ways to engage in safe and healthy relationships. It’s about providing something,” Shaw said.
Shaw says the reason classes are now taught to younger students is to get the information to students as quickly as possible.
“We are re-examining how we do what we do better and we want to bring it more in line with our curriculum. [the school district] We need the support we need to make sure this information reaches young people,” said Shaw.
Some of our efforts to provide sex education to students are aligned with United Action for Youth. In this partnership, the two groups alternate in which grade they work, so students are consistently receiving sex education classes.
Shaw explained that the curriculum used is based on Advocates for You’s “3Rs.”
- Rights: “Youth have an inalienable right to honest sexual health information.”
- Respect: “Young people deserve respect.”
- Responsibility: “Society has a responsibility to provide young people with all the tools they need to protect their sexual health, and young people have a responsibility to protect themselves.”
The 3R curriculum is based on the National Sexual Education Standards, research-based standards for sexual health education, Shaw said.
According to the website of the American Council on Sexuality and Information Education, which helped create the National Sex Education Standards, its goal is to “provide clear, consistent, and candid guidance on the minimum core content essential to sex education.” That was it.
Funding for the classes comes from the Johnson County Juvenile Justice Youth Development Program. The program has a total of $400,000 in funding for the 2023 fiscal year, with $27,000 going to her RVAP in class.
Johnson County Youth and Family Services Manager Laurie Nash said the juvenile justice program and the funds it provides to groups like RVAP are part of the county’s long-term commitment to helping local youth. I was.
“We want to know which children are most at risk for involvement in the juvenile justice system and give them opportunities to learn, opportunities for leadership, and time to engage with their peers outside of school. We are thinking about how we can provide outreach to serve young people, to promote their positive development from the outset, before they are involved in any kind of juvenile justice system. to the children.
RVAP’s programs — and other programs funded by Juvenile Justice Youth Development — benefit young people, Nash said.
“The reason they continue to invest is because the research and all the data shows that making these early investments is going to have a better community in the long run, both from a human perspective and from a financial perspective.” Because it shows that things matter, the future,” she said. “So I’m very excited to be able to continue this.”
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