Getting Real About Sex Ed

What Today's Students Need

Shafia Zaloom

• Publisher: Harvard Education Press
• Year: 2026
• eBook ISBN:
  9798895570579
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education Teaching Methods

A clear, practical approach for K–12 educators to teach crucial life skills, concepts essential to healthy sexuality, and the capacity for meaningful relationships

In Getting Real About Sex Ed, Shafia Zaloom offers educators, administrators, and caregiving adults concrete language and strategies for integrating sexuality education into daily practice, beginning with students in kindergarten and carrying through to high school graduation. Zaloom advocates Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE), a holistic framework for K–12 classrooms that addresses the cognitive, emotional, social, and physical aspects of sexuality. The book highlights how CSE scaffolds the sexual development of students as it gradually layers in age-appropriate information, skills, and positive values to practice and prepare for safe and fulfilling relationships, as well as how students can take responsibility for their own sexual health and well-being.

Zaloom draws on the latest research and presents real-world scenarios from classrooms across the country that all educators face in developing students’ personal citizenship. With warmth, empathy, and insight, she guides teachers beyond the classroom to the in-between moments of educational spaces: the lunchroom, playground, hallways, and transition periods. She models how educators can deliver developmentally appropriate lessons across grades to inspire personal reflection, integrity, and the capacity to connect with others in community.

In this vital, actionable work, Zaloom ultimately shows how a comprehensive approach to teaching sexuality education equips young people with life skills they need to cultivate mutual respect, care, dignity, and joy in sustained relationships, whether sexual or not, and contribute to a compassionate and just society.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Foreword by Richard Weissbourd
• 1 The Sexuality Education Our Students Deserve
• 2 Building the Foundation: Kindergarten Through Grade Two
• 3 Playground Games: Grades Three and Four
• 4 Body Changes: Grades Five and Six
• 5 Puberty Positive: Grades Seven and Eight
• 6 Big Transitions: Grades Nine and Ten
• 7 Heading into Adulthood: Grades Eleven and Twelve
• Appendix A: Taking Care as an Educator: What About Us?
• Appendix B: Courageous Conversations
• Appendix C: Resources
• Notes
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author
• Index