by Hannah Lowenstein

For many students, high school is a time of discovery. The purpose of the high school’s health classes is to ensure that students are well-equipped to make healthy decisions as they come face-to-face with real world situations. However, some students said they feel the health classes are not doing an adequate job covering certain health issues.

Sophomore Henry Peebles-Capin said the health classes generally covered sexual education and mental health issues sufficiently and neutrally, but taught very little about LGBTQ topics. A graduate from the Class of 2011 who wished to remain anonymous agreed.

“I wish that I had been taught about ways to protect yourself and your partners that might not come up in a straight relationship. For example, making sure that your fingernails are cut short to reduce bacteria,” the alumna said. “Most guys already have short fingernails, so that is not an issue when they are having sex with a woman, but two women might need to think about that.”

The alumna said that the other issue is being inclusive toward people who do not identify with the sex they were assigned at birth.

“The next step would be to talk about female-bodied and male-bodied people,” the alumna said. “Improving the sex education curriculum to reflect the diversity of sexual and romantic experiences that BHS students and alumni may have would keep us on the cutting-edge of education.”

The alumna said it is important for everyone, not just same-sex couples, to learn about different forms of sex other than vaginal intercourse. Health and Fitness Curriculum Coordinator Teddi Jacobs said that LGBTQ topics are discussed, albeit not extensively, and that there are limitations to what the health curriculum should teach.

“We don’t spend a lot of time on it; we have one or two lessons,” Jacobs said. “We’re not a ‘how to’ course, and we’re not going to teach you about gay sex. What we will teach you are protection methods, and we do that. It’s up to the people to know their relationships and to make sense out of what’s available. I say it’s not a ‘how to’ course because it’s the same way we wouldn’t teach you how to smoke marijuana. It’s prevention education.”

Peebles-Capin said he noticed this focus on prevention as opposed to practice, especially surrounding birth control.

“They talked about it a little, like how to get birth control,” Peebles-Capin said. “I think they just mentioned it once in my health class.”

Jacobs said that students are primarily taught about the forms of birth control potentially available to them. Students can go to the nurse’s office or drugstore for condoms, and to Planned Parenthood or their physician to inquire about alternate forms of birth control.

However, one student, who wished to remain anonymous, said there are repercussions of having an incomplete education on accessing birth control and what to do in the event of a pregnancy scare.

“My period was late, and I was freaking out,” the student said. “I couldn’t really focus on things, my mental health was suffering, I was losing sleep about it. I was just so stressed out. And I didn’t know what to do, because the health classes didn’t really cover it.”

The student ended up going with her partner to CVS to buy a pregnancy test after several days. The couple was very relieved when the results came up negative, she said.

“I had to figure that out on my own with friends,” the student said. “[My health class] didn’t talk about Planned Parenthood, so I didn’t even know what was going to happen if I was pregnant. I didn’t know what Planned Parenthood would do, if I needed my parents or insurance. I was completely in the dark and it was very scary.”

Jacobs said that the health classes follow the national guidelines and have used the “Get Real” curriculum, a program designed by Planned Parenthood and researched by Wellesley College, for the past five years. According to Jacobs, research shows that using this program has delayed students’ risk behaviors by two years, giving them time to gain more wisdom and maturity before they decide if they are going to engage in sexual activity. Jacobs also said that for health classes to really be effective, they need to be extended to grades six through ten instead of just seven through nine.

According to Jacobs, the health curriculum is continually adjusted. About three years ago, after collaborating with the Brookline Parent Education Network, the department implemented the “Break Free from Depression” model designed by Children’s Hospital, which tries to reduce stress by bringing more mindfulness and meditation into students’ lives. Following the lessons, students fill out sheets indicating if they would like to talk to an adult or if they need immediate help.

However, junior Isabella Zutrau-Pell said that she felt health classes only teach one point of view. This led her to found Sex+BHS, a Facebook page and community which opened a dialogue between students about sexual education and mental health. She said she hopes to destigmatize these issues and give students new perspectives not offered by health classes.

“[What the health classes teach] is a bit like abstinence education, because they teach you all the bad things and all the fear,” Zutrau-Pell said. “They also teach you safety precautions like sex is a disaster. There’s a huge social aspect that should be implemented, like if you sit your parents down and talk about birth control they might freak out, and they don’t teach you that.”

Jacobs said health classes are intended to have kids work on relationships and decision-making skills, and that nothing is taught in a negative way.

“Pretty much everything we teach is: ‘Here are your choices, and yeah, here are your consequences,’” Jacobs said. “You’re making decisions that could last a lifetime.”

Hannah Lowenstein can be contacted at [email protected].