(This blog is from the Summer of 2016.)
It’s T-minus 1 day until camp starts, and I can’t tell if I’m nervous or incredibly excited. Probably both.
This past week has been a flurry of preparations and last-minute freak-outs surrounding lesson plans, materials, and scheduling. Nevertheless, with the help of the Girls Inc staff I feel very confident in the curriculum I’m going to be teaching.
The curriculum that I am most anxious about teaching is Will Power, Won’t Power. The curriculum focuses on healthy communication in all sorts of relationships, learning to be assertive, and sexual education. I’m stoked about the lesson content, as I am very passionate about female empowerment through means of sexual education and feeling in-control of their physical bodies. However, I realize this can be a sensitive topic, and I am unsure about how the girls are going to react or how much education that they have had in the past. Above all, I’m hoping that they will grow to be comfortable talking about their own body, and understanding the importance such knowledge holds for their physical health both now and in the future.
See, facilitating the STEM course, I can handle. I live and breath STEM. Proper sexual education, however, is something my friends, sisters, and myself were more-or-less denied when we were younger. In our conservative community, we could not talk to our parents for these things, and thus had only the internet to learn some very important things about ourselves. Google was the only source of information we had, and we had no idea whether or not it was true, or false. People in my life, who I care about, have suffered from this lack of information. Through Will Power, Won’t Power, I will be providing this crucial information. Not all of them are destined to be scientists, but all of them will need this knowledge.
So yeah, it’s a little daunting. But I’m definitely up to the challenge, and am ready to try my best!
I can’t believe camp is finally here!