8th Grade Program
👩🏫 Four 45-minute sessions
🛜 Parent/Caregiver Zoom Info Session
Parent & Caregiver Resources
📚 Reading List for Grades 6, 7 & 8
📎 Resources for Caregivers & Kids
📎 Teen-Friendly NYC Health Centers
Videos
▶️ Don't Confuse Love & Abuse
▶️ How Do Birth Control Pills Work?
Take-Home Activity
👩🏫 Session 1
Our first session focuses on helping students recognize the qualities of healthy, unhealthy, and abusive and relationships. Topics include trust, consent, equity and respect. We'll watch two short videos. The first highlights characteristics of healthy relationships, and the second follows a young couple's new relationship and explores red flags and abuse. These videos serve as engaging starting points for discussion, and a group activity.
👩🏫 Session 2
In this session, students will review reproductive anatomy and physiology, then work in small groups on an interactive activity matching organs to anatomical illustrations. This hands-on exercise helps prepare them for deeper discussions in Sessions 3 and 4.
👩🏫 Session 3
This session focuses on sexual activity, HIV/STI and pregnancy prevention. Students will learn about no-risk, some-risk, and higher-risk sexual activities, and will discuss abstaining from sexual activity as well as barrier methods as options for safer sex. All conversations about sexual activity emphasize that it should occur between people with adult bodies who can freely and enthusiastically give consent. To support these discussions, students will also view a short educational video on the correct use of external condoms.
👩🏫 Session 4
In this session, students will learn about hormonal contraceptives for pregnancy prevention, how they work, and why these methods do not protect against HIV or other STIs. We will also watch and discuss a short video explaining how hormonal contraceptives work. The session will also cover emergency contraception and provide information about safe, teen-friendly programs and health centers in New York City where young people can access inclusive, affirming education and medical care.
