Santa Fe school district programs aim to educate middle school teens

“It just happened one day. I was walking my ex-girlfriend to her house, and after that we decided to go to a park. That’s where it got more touchy I guess,” said an anonymous student at Capital High School. That day, he would lose his virginity at the age of 14.

His encounter is not unusual. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 18 percent of ninth-graders in New Mexico reported on a 2017 youth behavior survey that they had engaged in sexual intercourse. In addition, 3.7 percent of students reported they’d had sex before age 13.

But what kind of sex education do these young people receive in middle school, and do they feel ready for those encounters?

In the Santa Fe Public Schools system, students learn from a number of providers, from school nurses to trauma centers and Planned Parenthood. The middle school sexual education program is broken down by grade, according to nurse Liane Norris, who serves on the Nurse Leadership Team for Santa Fe Public Schools and is the mentor for the Middle School Human Sexuality and Reproductive Health Program.

The seventh-grade curriculum focuses on “preventing sexual harassment, influence on sexual behavior, teen sexuality in a digital world, and preventing and addressing dating violence,” she said. In eighth grade, the curriculum focuses on “sexual violence, birth control, sexually transmitted infection education and bystander behavior.” Santa Fe Public Schools also provides information on the human reproductive system in both grades, as well as providing the curriculum in Spanish.

While the curriculum does cover sex and how to have safe sex, Norris said that abstinence is a key aspect of the program.

“It is the most effective method of birth control and is our primary recommendation,” Norris said.

Planned Parenthood also teaches sex education in middle schools.

“Day one is influence on sexual decision-making, both external or internal. The second day, for middle school, is sex and tech. How to navigate those spaces in a way to keep them safe and realistic,” said Persephone Wilson, director of education for Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains. For example, she said, the curriculum discusses the question of whether pornography gives viewers unreal expectations about sex.

In addition to Planned Parenthood, Santa Fe Public Schools partners with Solace Crisis Treatment Center and Resolve, an organization dedicated to preventing violence of all kinds, including sexual assault.

Students who spoke with Generation Next about their sexual experiences in middle school had mixed feelings about the encounters. A student from Santa Fe High School who did not want her name in the newspaper said she got involved in a same-sex relationship in eighth grade, and one day things moved a little too quickly when it came to sex.

“She was just a really close friend of mine. We had romantic feelings for each other, but we never acted upon them — until then,” the student said.

“Then, she mostly just expected me to do sexual things with her, and I didn’t want to.”

She said her knowledge of same-sex intimacy was limited. “My parents never taught me about same-sex [relationships],” she said.

Now, as an older teenager, she said she feels more prepared and educated about sex than she did as an eighthgrader. She believes that people who identify as gay or lesbian are much more accepted than they were in the past.

“We talk about more taboo things,” she said. “We have learned to open up and deal with things, and talking about weird, taboo things is something our parents have to deal with.”

On the other hand, the Capital High school student had a slightly different experience.

“I felt prepared. I had a condom, and we had talked about it,” he said. “I just made sure she was OK with it first, too.”

While his experience wasn’t necessarily a bad one, he does regret losing his virginity when he did.

“I feel like I should have saved that for someone more special in my life,” he said.