Last week Centennial health teachers met with the district to begin the process of adopting new human sexuality health curriculum. The motion was put in place because of a grant that was recently received.

“There are different phases of the grant, and right now now they’re in phase one and two, and bringing in the teachers was part of phase two…”

Health Teacher Kristy Ree talked with me about the grant and the curriculum last week.

“Basically [the meeting] was reviewing materials. Looking at the state standards around human sexuality and looking at new curriculum to see what it was covering versus what it wasn’t covering.”

The District has already decided to adopt the new curriculum, so teacher involvement is merely to review the materials and see how they would fit into the human sexuality unit.

“…in our findings there were some good things, but there were also some gaps in what it did cover,” said Ree.

As teachers work to try and figure out how to deal with these gaps the next step is to prepare for the curriculum to be taught beginning next school year. Three other school districts have committed to the new curriculum along with Centennial. David Douglas, Parkrose, and Reynolds will be adopting the same materials.

“In phase three and four [of the adoption of the curriculum] Multnomah County Health Department will come out and actually teach the curriculum to model it; to see how it works in place. And then the last phase will be us teachers, high school teachers to take it on and then train others in the future as well…”

It has been years since new curriculum has been adopted for the health department, so this process has made for a really exciting time.

Health is one of the core classes students are required to take, so adoptions of curriculum like this are necessary to keep students fully educated. Unlike subjects such as math or history, health changes quite frequently.

Every year there’s a new trend, or a new drug, and it’s important that the health curriculum changes to fit what is current.