April and May are looking like they'll continue to be pretty busy months for me, but it's the great type of busy when you get to do all sorts of cool things and engage with interesting people. One of those things is this Saturday, April 7, when I'll be on a panel about peer educators and public health at an ENTIRE (!) conference about peer educators at Carleton College.
I'm pretty excited about it! My first experience as someone officially in the role of sexuality educator was as a peer educator at Grinnell College. The Sexual Health Information Center, the student run sexual health group, had just been started my junior year of college. I was encouraged to apply to be a peer educator by a friend of mine who knew that I was interested in reproductive justice. I really own him a lot for encouraging me to do it. It's funny to think about now because I'm pretty confident in myself as a sexuality educator, but I was really uncertain about whether or not I could actually talk and teach about sexuality topics. I felt like I had to be an expert to do that, and there was no way I was anything near an expert at the time since most of I knew was from like casual conversation, not from "real" sex ed. Now I know that being a good educator is not about knowing the answer to every single possible sexuality question, but understanding that came years later for me.
Peer education has been proven an effective intervention model in a wide range of public health, but what I've been thinking about lately is how it can serve as workforce development in public health. (Not coincidentally, that is what I'm supposed to addressed on the panel) The experiences I had as a peer educator definitely helped me think about what I was passionate about and provided me with opportunities to gain some practical skills. For me, it clearly helped me on my path to a career in public health. Aside from being someone who's been a peer educator, I've also worked with, trained, and hired people who have peer educator experience. I think we gain hard skills like planning lessons or creating work plans, but I think the empathy and relationship-building skills are really important and may be a unique characteristic of the background and skills of professionals who have been peer educators.