Not Just The Tip Project

Education

Not Just the Tip Project: 

Building Capacity to Teach Sex-Ed in a Trans and Queer Affirming Way

Note: Pour la version française de la description du project Not Just the Tip/Par-delà les préliminaires cliquez ici.

Youth deserve comprehensive sexuality education that caters to their specific needs. However, a lack of confidence from educators and youth supporters to talk about sexual health is one of the main barriers to 2SLGBTQIA+ youth access to comprehensive sexuality education.

We created the Not Just the Tip Toolkit to support educators in talking confidently about comprehensive sexuality education. 

The Not Just the Tip Toolkit gives:

1. 1. Access to youth, educators, and youth supporters to sexual health curriculum that is sex positive and addresses structural oppression; and,
2. 2. Increases the support–in terms of training and resources– educators receive  to teach comprehensive sexuality education.

Our toolkit is geared towards increasing your ability to answer students’ and youths’ questions about sexual health and bridge knowledge gaps surrounding inclusive approaches to comprehensive sexuality education that addresses the needs of diverse students and youth.

How we created the Not Just the Tip Toolkit

Using a national reach, but a local approach, the Not Just The Tip Toolkit was developed through community-based research in partnership with local organizations in our 5 target cities of Ottawa, Toronto, St John’s, Halifax, and Regina.

We asked educators what they needed to provide comprehensive sexuality education with confidence and answered their questions and needs in our toolkit. The text of the toolkit was created by a team of co-authors and reviewed by 3 advisory councils: our project advisors, our youth advisors and our teacher advisors.

We then had community partners in our 5 target cities be trained on the toolkit so that they can in turn train others in their city in the next couple of months on how to use the toolkit for their needs.

Through this process, we were able to create a toolkit that meets these 4 needs expressed by educators in our 5 target cities:

• Strategies to manage power dynamics in the classroom
• Steps on how to navigate unknown topics and missteps
• Guidance on how to integrate marginalized experiences
• Opportunities to reflect on biases, fears, and shame regarding sex

Not Just the Tip Project Team

• Katie Winters
• Shannon Salisbury
• Shawna Rothgeb
• Kyla Christiansen

The views expressed herein do not necessarily represent the views of Health Canada.