It's March 2022

50 degrees in Minnesota in March is basically summer. Or at the very least it is patio season, so I am sitting outside on the patio of a local indie bookstore, Cream and Amber. It is a little after 3:00 on a Friday, and you may notice I am not at work. It’s been about a month since I left my job, the community I was a part of for the past seven plus years. Seems like a time that calls for some reflection. Why am I here, listening to a talk on ethics and power in UX research? What have I figured out?

I have figured out some things about myself. Like how easy it is to live in “human giver syndrome” (thanks, Emily and Amelia Nagoski. but really, it changed things for me). In a small nonprofit, especially after a number of years, I slid into doing and doing to support, to accomplish, without realizing that I wasn’t establishing or maintaining boundaries I needed when there was simply too much happening. I’ve identified a strong desire for growth and for using my skills and experience for something new.

I have figured out some things about what I find curiosity, growth, joy, and meaning in doing, workwise. Those things are facilitation and training, qualitative research and evaluation, relationships and communicating, and ideation and problem-solving.

What have I been doing? Planning a conference. Plants and plants and plants. Doing a pro-bono project with tech people (hence the UX video I’m listening to). Reading a handful of pages of Atlas of the Heart and having to take a pause to process. Applying to jobs (obvi).

Reaction for Action: Testify!

There has been a bill introduced in the Minnesota legislature for creating a model sex ed program that would require schools to cover more comprehensive sexuality content. When it was introduced, we had the opportunity to testify using our research and one of the Reaction for Action group members stepped up to do it on short notice. There are a lot of things that were awesome about this, but something that really hit me was that researching young Minnesotan’s opinions about sex and being able to use it to impact policy was the reason why we all joined the project and why we applied for it. AND IT HAPPENED. A few months ago the group planned out all of the ways we could use the findings and created a timeline, which ended with sharing the data with lawmakers in Minnesota. We figured that would take a while and so we were happily surprised by this. There is still going to be a long journey with this bill, even in the hearing there was opposition raised about comp sex ed, how consent is included in the bill, and how the bill would be enforced and funded. It was fascinating being there and hearing where different lawmakers were at about sex ed, even if it’s a long journey to the kind of sex ed young people in Minnesota want and need.

Check out the recording of the testimony!

Teacher barriers to teaching sex ed

I was re-reading an article today about barriers teachers perceive to teaching sexuality education, as we’re working on writing some info sheets and a paper about our YPAR project, and it got me thinking. The article is Barriers to providing the sexuality education that teachers believe students need which was published in the Journal of School Health in 2013 by fellow Minnesotans Eisenberg, Madsen, Oliphant, and Sieving. While our research didn’t survey teachers, I think this research provides great context for the sex ed experiences of the young people in our sample.

A lot of what the authors found resonated with my experiences both teaching sex ed and working with teachers to implement programming, especially the role of structural barriers. The study found that 48% of participants said “lack of time” was a barrier to providing the sex ed they want to provide. I think there are lots of teachers that I’ve worked with that support sex ed and want young people to get the information they need, but find it challenging to cover that content because of all of the other content they need to provide or their schedule. Teachers’ jobs are complex and often challenging, I get that and try to balance being considerate with my own responsibilities, grant requirements, and general focus on ensuring young people get the information they need. It also didn’t surprise me that concerns about others’ responses to content was a barrier.

A few findings really got me thinking. The study found that the metro teachers were more likely to report district policy as a barrier than the non-metro teachers. It also found that the metro teachers were less likely to teach about puberty and teen parenting than the non-metro teachers. I think there are sometimes assumptions people make about folks and schools outside the metro, that they are all more conservative, politically and program-wise. That could be the case, right, it may be that the non-metro teachers are more in line with their district policies. Maybe more conservative people are working in conservative districts. Or maybe the metro districts are larger, with more teachers, and so many there is a wide range of values and attitudes among those teachers. I’m not sure (obviously), but it is interesting to think about. You’d think I’d maybe have an insight being from outside the metro, but I went to Catholic school so I don’t really know what happened in the public schools. I’m not sure why puberty and teen parenting was less likely to be covered…. the authors don’t really explain potential reasons for that and I feel like I need to think about it more.

Another finding that I’m mulling over was that “concerns about others’ responses” was associated with lower odds of covering sexual violence content. Not that that is surprising to me, it can be uncomfortable talking about sexual violence, especially if you’ve experienced it, and you have to be educated about and comfortable with your role as a mandated reporter. Something we found in our YPAR project was that most of our survey participants did not report having sexual violence covered, didn’t learn about consent in school, and did not have their teacher provide sexual violence advocacy and counseling resources. The finding in the article stood out to me because it seems like a clear training we could provide or connect teachers to. It’s certainly something that we talk about often at work.

I often find myself feeling both informed about sex ed and how it happens in our state, and also always hungry to learn more about it, or think more deeply about it. Which is why I was so excited about the opportunity to facilitate our YPAR project! The research from this article is valuable in constructing the picture of sex ed in Minnesota, which is needed to see what gaps exists, why, and how we can improve.

Hello 2019!

I’m not a New Year’s Resolutions person, but I do think it’s important and helpful to reflect on the past year and think about what you’re moving towards in the future. It could have been something I did while I took the week of Christmas off from work, because I feel like it was the first time in a while that I really just mentally disconnected from work (and other stuff like what I’m doing with MPHA), but I didn’t. Mathias asked me last night what my goal is for three months from now, and I honestly had no answer, which isn’t exactly accurate. I feel like I have a lot of things I’m wanting to accomplish or work on. Maybe I just don’t have a plan for how I’m going to do things. And not everything needs a plan.

Something that has emerged as a focus for me this past year is how I can contribute to facilitating connections and space for people to learn and build relationships with each other. Most of what I do with MPHA is the Membership Committee, and we’ve talked a lot about how we could build networks and engage new people in the association who haven’t been like folks outside the Metro, students, people working in different fields, etc. in order to more authentically represent the field of public health and to build a more diverse and inclusive member base. And, how do we that authentically? It’s a lot to think about and work on, especially since we’re a volunteer run association. One of the things I’ve been working, MPHey!, came out of that motivation to open up spaces for people working in public health to build meaningful connections with each other. A friend of mine from my MPH program and I came up with MPHey! as way for people to network but also learn from peers and engage in discussion about tricky or big topics in our field. We did two this year, the first focused on how people can find their place in public health and the second on public health research. And there will be more in the future!

Enthusiastic Woman!

Mathias found this mug for me, which is kind of perfect because I’m generally known to be pretty enthusiastic and it’s been feeling like a pretty successful year for me. I’ve done a lot of being excited about new ideas and agreeing to them this year, and while I’m a little worn out right now, it’s worked out pretty well! I just found out this weekend that I was accepted to present at the National Sex Ed Conference in 2019. I’ll be part of a symposium for 2018 authors of the American Journal of Sexuality Education and also having a round table about the YPAR project. I’m looking forward to presenting on the sexual difficulties work and to discussing what young people in Minnesota think needs to change about sex ed. I haven’t gone to this conference before, so it will also be fun seeing what it’s all about and meeting new people!

Yay! My second journal publication

Four years later, the second part of my MPH culminating experience research has been published! The first part, on adolescents’ thought about sexual pleasure, was published in the Journal of Sex Research in 2016 and this second part, on adolescents’ thoughts about sexual difficulties, has been published in the American Journal of Sexuality Education! Like my previous publication, this is a secondary data analysis of message board comments young people made in a web-based sexual health intervention. This is focused on a message board related to sexual difficulties (e.g., being unable to maintain an erection), the related anxiety it can cause, and how to address it. It includes some quantitative measures as well.

I’m excited about it. Yes, it was lots of work doing the secondary data analysis and writing to begin with, and then revising it to submit, so it’s great to feel the sense of accomplishment with seeing all of that work acknowledged. But, I’m more excited about the fact that people will be engaging with it and hopefully integrating education about sexual difficulties, particularly the role communication plays, into the sex ed they are doing. I know that doing this research has informed how I am doing my work, and through addressing it in programming, that it is something that is pertinent to young people. I’ve had discussions with young people that have mirrored messages and discussion on the message board, and much like in the message board, seen a young person provide great advice to another about how to support a partner and deal with anxiety about sex and sexual difficulties. As someone who’s not primarily working in research and thinks about how research is used, it is reassuring to see all the connections between this research and my work as an educator. And, that what the participants said in in the study seems to still represent how young people are experiencing sexual difficulties and coping with them.

Will middle schoolers get this meme?

(I’m distracting myself from the election results. Successfully?)

Our YPAR project is at the point where we’re working on disseminating our findings. A month or so ago, we brainstormed all the ways we wanted to use the information which eventually led to sharing the information with legislators and the Governor of Minnesota. But, before we get to that place we talked about sharing the information with our peers (other young people as well my peers in the sex ed field) and creating ways for them to use the data. To get started with this, we applied to present at QQuest, a local festival-conference for queer young people, and will be presenting at the middle school day.

Ok. So. Our research was young people’s opinions about sex ed in Minnesota. There is quite a range of experiences middle school students have with sex ed, with probably a lot of them not receiving much sex ed. The question for us has been how we translate our findings into an interactive presentation that is relevant to middle school aged folks.

We’ve worked on a presentation that focuses not so much on specific questions related to content (e.g., “Did you learn about consent?”) as on broader questions about how teachers and sex ed should work for queer young people. As an expert of sorts about teaching middle schoolers, I brought up the importance of asking questions and having activities that are concrete rather than abstract and having activities that engage a variety of learning styles. Rather than going through results from our research, we are asking the participants their opinions and, true to our mission of engaging the people who it’s impacting the most, hearing their suggestions about how to improve sex ed. I’m looking forward to seeing how it goes!

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“When learning about sexual health in my school, I felt free to ask questions without judgement.”

Of all the questions and opinions that were asked on the YPAR survey, this is one of the ones that I keep coming back to. That might be because I find it deeply sad that 68% of the people surveyed did not feel that they could ask questions about sexual health without judgement. It’s probably that and also that I jump to wanting to figure out how we can fix that. Fearing judgement is a big reason why all people don’t ask questions, and something that is often inherent in youth-adult relationships. If that keeps young people from asking for information they need, that’s a huge problem. Is that because of teacher discomfort or a need for facilitation training? Or is it symptomatic of a larger social discomfort with talking about sexuality topics or how adults interact with young people?

A Year of YPAR: Can there be too much data?

At our last couple meetings, we've been talking about how you analyze qualitative data. It's been super interesting, and I've been remembering how much I enjoyed analyzing the qualitative data for my MPH research. It's just kind of fun, looking at the comments and pushing the group to think about reflexivity and where they might be making assumptions. But it struck me this past week, that it is fun, yes, but it also takes a BUNCH of work to analyze. We're currently at about 330 responses, and while a good amount of the data will probably be best represented by a count (e.g., a lot of people responded simply "consent" to the question about what content they wish had been covered in their sex ed class) there are a lot of complex units that need more analysis. I had been so psyched about seeing how many responses we're getting that I guess I hadn't totally wrapped my mind around how big our data set is, which is totally a good challenge to have. 

I've been trying to think of how to best go about analyzing the qualitative data, which is primarily from two questions. Those questions are about what content they wish had been covered and what suggestions they have for improving sex ed in Minnesota. We did some examples as a group, pairs did one section (mostly out of meeting) and then at our most recent meeting did the section they didn't do the first time. It's worked well, but it seems like it might be too slow of a process. This is my first time both teaching about qualitative data analysis (of which I'm definitely not an expert) and trying to do said analysis in a group. I'm trying to have a good balance of meaningful meetings, but not too many focused on it that we lose momentum. Especially since I think we are all excited about getting to the place of deciding what we want to do with the results. I'm thinking the plan right now is to have pairs do it out of session, then we discuss the themes/challenges in meeting and create a hierarchy in meeting. We'll see how it goes! 

Folklore and Sex Ed

Sometimes you're reading random tweets and end up in an unexpected place. I was doing just that and ended up reading tweets from a folklorist. A folklorist whose blog I read several pages of and recommended Did You Hear about the Girl Who....?  by Marianne H. Whatley and Elissa R. Henken, which I just finished reading. And while I don't think it's perfect, I have found myself referencing it a few times this week while talking with coworkers. 

In this book, the authors (one a folklorist, one a sex educator) share folklore they collected about sexuality. This ranges from urban legends to jokes, and topics from menstruation to anal sex. I recognized some of the stories, but largely felt uncomfortable reading them because they were offensive. That was mostly the jokes. The purpose of the book is to encourage sexuality educators to think about the different jokes and urban legends we hear seriously and think about what the message is. It might be that medical professionals are not giving specific enough directions for birth control, it might be that puberty education for people with uteruses focuses too much on menstruation as solely negative. While I think it would be great if there could be an updated version, some of the references (e.g., spermicidal jelly) are a little old I'm thinking, it really got me thinking. I've definitely heard young people and adults reference folklore and addressed them as I've heard them, and I've never thought as much about overall trends in the jokes and urban legends I've heard. And based on the conversations I've had this past week, it looks like it will inform my thinking moving forward. 

A Year of YPAR: Collecting Data

The Reaction for Action survey has been open for over a month now, and has collected over 300 responses! We've decided to keep the survey open either until we reach 600 responses or the end of September. It's partially because the more responses the merrier, and also to keep working towards having a diverse, representative sample. Even though, we are hoping for more responses, I am pretty impressed by how many we have already. It speaks how to young people are looking for ways to share their experiences with sex ed and their desire to contribute feedback that could improve it for future generations. 

At our meeting tonight, we took a peak at some of the data to see what it looked like. In the survey software we are using you can make a word cloud from qualitative responses, so we looked at those for the two main qualitative "write in" questions. While it was a little imperfect how it comes together and you need the context, it was still interesting! As you can see in the image below, "abstinence" appears in the word cloud but the responses were along the lines of "more than abstinence". 

We spent the rest of the meeting discussing how to do qualitative analysis and then starting to code some of the data. I did qualitative analysis for my MPH research, and while it can be a slow process, it's something I've enjoyed doing. I'm really looking forward to digging into all of the data with the group and figuring out how to disseminate it! 

We do a lot of icebreakers in my line of work. Sometimes it's easier to just pick an answer, even if it's not THE ANSWER. That's the case when people do the "what's your dream job?" icebreaker question... I'm in my dream job but I always say that my dream job is naming colors. It just seems like a beautiful way to engage with the world. 

Today on Minnesota Public Radio's Beautiful World, they did a story about the first color dictionary. I was mesmerized, it led to a very pleasant sitting-in-traffic situation for me. The person who came up with the first color dictionary references colors that are part of every part of life from birds feathers to flowers. Colors are such an important part of our lives!

You should listen! and you can do it right here.

Trend or Tool: Motivational Interviewing & Youth Work

I recently presented on the work I did through the NorthStar Youth Worker Fellowship. My paper (which will be available soon, I think) was on the value of motivational interviewing (MI) training for youth worker, particularly youth workers who are sexuality educators. I have had somewhere over 40 hours of training in MI, and a couple years ago, the leadership where I work decided that all staff should be trained. It was determined to be something that was in line with our commitment to youth-adult partnership and non-directive education and health care. Staff had two full days and then several one hour group practices, so quite the investment in time and resources. After the initial training, we did some refreshers but didn't do any in depth evaluation of the value of that investment. Participating in the fellowship seemed like a great opportunity to evaluate it and explore the way MI may or may not enhance youth work. 

Along with that, I was interested in how MI could be used in the types of group settings we work in. Those settings range from implementing evidence-based programs in classrooms to more flexible out of school time groups. I interviewed most of the educators at the Annex, our executive director, and two health mentors from another organization.  

People identified a number of benefits and challenges. The benefits included enhancing communication skills, supporting youth-adult partnerships, and role clarification. Challenges included feeling uncertain about whether or not you're using MI, not having enough time, infrequent meetings with a young person, and not knowing how to use MI in a group setting. Despite all of these challenges, everyone enthusiastically recommended that all people who work with young people should be trained in MI. However, there needs to be a commitment to continued training and discussion about MI to support practitioners in feeling confident in their MI practice. 

What I found was super interesting! There's a lot of suggestions for next steps from what I found, especially thinking more about how to use it in group settings. We've already started at the Annex and did a refresher for our monthly professional development meeting on Monday. Based on this research I did, we made sure to include opportunities for people to reflect on their MI practice and to affirm that they are successfully using it. This feels like just the start for me. 

A Year of YPAR: Reaction for Action

After a lot of discussion, thought, and excitement, the YPAR group's sex ed survey is finally live! We created, reviewed, piloted, edited, and did the process again. It was a real collaborative process, and I'm impressed with what the group came up with. Also, someone on our team is like a Qualtrics superstar, so we are using fancy survey software. Legit. (To be clear, that someone is not me.)

Also legit is that we came up with a team name, "Reaction for Action." Get it? because we are looking to get young people's reactions about sex ed in order to take action and change things! Right now, we're in the data collection phase. Some of us tabled at a community event on Friday, and there were a number of young people who were excited about the opportunity to share their opinions. It affirmed that this whole project is relevant and important to young people.

All of this is to say, if you are or know someone who is 13-24 and went to middle or high school in Minnesota, please consider taking the survey! We'll be sharing it out through our networks and social media, and we'll also be publicizing it at the Annex's booth at Twin Cities Pride this coming weekend. We're hoping to hear from at least 300 people, from a broad, diverse group of people. After that, our focus will be analyzing the data, figuring out what it means for us, and using it. I'm really excited about what that looks like, everyone is going to have SO many great ideas. 

To App or Not to App

Hey everyone! Writing to you from San Francisco, where I am with two of my Annex colleagues and Mathias for YTH 2018. We've been thinking a lot in the past year about how we can use technology to increase access and be a tool for health equity, and the YTH (youth+tech+health) conference is a way for us to learn and get inspired. We have had a lot of ideas, but we've been looking for concrete steps and guidance. So, here's what was most interesting, exciting, and thought-provoking from day 1!

The day started with an inspiring talk by George Hofstetter, a young person whose experience in a hackathon as a 13 year old started him off on a path of using tech to address social justice issues. He talked about how important representation is for young people of color, and how valuable experiences of skill building can be. I have pretty much no idea how to code anything or do a hackathon, but I'm interested in thinking more about how we could partner with folks who do to host a hackathon at work that's focused on sexuality and social justice. We know that there are many young people who are interested in engaging in social justice work around sexuality and sexual health issues, and it might be a super cool way for us to collaborate with people who have a different skill set from us and open up a space for young people to learn and experience this type of work. Or show me how to code things... because I'm willing to bet some of them are ahead of me. 

I got some good tips about how to protect privacy in online research, which is applicable to what our YPAR project. The group decided they wanted to use an online survey, in order to reach a large, diverse group of people and while we are not asking participants about their sensitive sexual health history, it's important to do what we can to provide participants with privacy in case someone comes up and sees the survey, for example. 

Another big thing I've been thinking about today was apps. I think it's easy to think that an app is the best option tech-wise, because we have so many apps and know that young people use them. But, a website can do what an app can or more, without a number of challenges that come with creating an app. According to my in house developer, Mathias, is it easier to make a website than an app. Making an app can be expensive and can require a lot of maintenance. Obviously there are some great apps, but as a nonprofit without developers on staff, you have to think through the best use of resources and what will actually be effective. This may all be very obvious to you, but I guess I've never really thought enough about it! 

That's not all that I learned about today, but that's all I've got for now! I'm looking forward to tomorrow. 

A Year of YPAR: Recruitment

Motivations

The members of the YPAR group range from 15-24 years and have differing levels of experience doing research, but all have had some type of sex ed and are motivated to address what they see as problems. The questions came later.....

A Year of YPAR

There's been an exciting development at work in the past month! We've been awarded funding to do a Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) project. The changes in the Office of Adolescent Health Teen Pregnancy Prevention Project grants hits me on so many levels both because it impacts the work we are able to do and because I know that the thousands of young people we see each year deserve access to high quality sexuality education. And there are thousands and thousands more young people who aren't getting it. While it wasn't new, I became really motivated to do what I can to contribute to the change we need around sexuality education and access to sexual/reproductive health care. As someone who believes deeply in the power, knowledge, and resources of young people, I see my role as really supporting efforts to bring youth voice to the forefront of this. Over the years, we've heard from young people that they want to have more of a say in the sex ed they are receiving. They are curious about why they are receiving the sex ed that they are, and how different it is or isn't from others places in Minnesota.

A description from YPAR Hub at Berkley says that "YPAR (Youth-led Participatory Action Research) is an innovative approach to positive youth and community development based in social justice principles in which young people are trained to conduct systematic research to improve their lives, their communities, and the institutions intended to serve them." Our goal with this YPAR project is to research what young people around Minnesota think about their sex ed and what they recommend changing, and to partner with young people who to increase their leadership in our field in developing research skills. 

Long story short, I am so super excited that we have the opportunity to engage in YPAR. While I've done research before and have engaged young people in our programming, particularly sharing their insights and opinions, I haven't been part of a YPAR team before. It's going to be a learning experience and I am looking forward to it! I'll let you know how it goes. 

Training Opportunity on PYD and Sexuality Education!

The more time I spend working in this field, the more I learn about the awesomeness that is integration of positive youth development, sexual health care, and sexuality education. And the more I learn, the more convinced I am that it is essential to do our work through a positive youth development lens. In my experience, intentionally using positive youth development results in programming that is more engaging to young people and better meets their needs. 

Maybe you're at the start of thinking all of this, maybe this is just confusing. Maybe you work with young people and are terrified that they'll want to talk to you about sex. Well, you're in luck! A colleague and I are doing an online training November 16, 2017 from 10:00-11:30 a.m on how and why to use positive youth development when talking with young people about sexuality topics. It's similar to the workshop we did at SXSWEdu last March, but we've broadened the training to be applicable to pretty much any adult who could end up talking to a young person about sex and sexuality. It's an interactive, live online training, which means anyone can join us even if they don't live in the Twin Cities. 

Our learning objectives are to:

• Identify a range of sexuality topics beyond pregnancy prevention
• Explain how a positive youth development (PYD) lens can inform discussions about sexuality topics with young people
• Describe the importance of providing education and support around sexuality through a PYD lens
• Identify strategies for discussion of sexuality topics that foster healthy development, health protective behaviors, and connections to caring adults and services
• Understand how to integrate existing youth work skills into sexuality education

Click here to get more information and register! We are doing it through a great organization, the Youth Intervention Programs Association (YIPA). If you're a youth worker or interested in learning more about youth work, you should definitely check out their website and their online training library. Hope to you'll join us!