Starting at the Beginning: Healthy Sexuality in Preschool Classrooms with Abby Soule + Liv Hockenberry
Join us as we welcome Abby Soule (she/her) and Liv Hockenberry for Starting at the Beginning: Healthy Sexuality in Preschool Classrooms on Tuesday, May 24th at 7pm EST over Zoom!
This workshop will be recorded and will be made available to everyone who registers for 7 days following the workshop.
This 1-hour workshop aims to provide participants with the knowledge and skills to create a comprehensive, age-appropriate, sex positive preschool classroom or home environment for preschool aged children. This workshop focuses on creating an environment for children that fosters 3 key components:
Building healthy relationships with yourself and others
Developing bodily awareness and autonomy
Recognizing and respecting your unique likes and dislikes
Research shows that early comprehensive and age-appropriate sex education can help reduce shame, delay the onset of first sexual encounters, protect children from harm and abuse, and open them up to pleasure and their own preferences. Through breakout rooms, lecture components, and interactive polls, participants will learn the skills needed to approach parenting or teaching in a way that will reduce shame and set children up to eventually become sexually and confident healthy adults.
By the end of the workshop, participants will:
Understand why sexuality education belongs in preschool classrooms
Leave with examples of language they can use with their preschool students to begin helping them develop healthy relationships with their sexualities, and keep them safe.
Understand the principles of sex-positivity and how to make a comprehensive, age-appropriate, shame-free, and sex-positive classroom
About Abby Soule
Abby Soule (she/her) is an LGBTQ+ affirming sexuality educator and full spectrum doula based in Brooklyn, NY. She studied Sociology and Social Policy at Tulane University, and chose courses that centered frequently-often marginalized conversations - gender, non-monogamy, sexuality, and pregnancy - that inform the sex-positive lens through which she views the world today. Abby has over ten years of work experience with children of all ages, including being a nanny, postpartum doula, after-school elementary school teacher, and practicing as a full time sexuality educator in both New Orleans and New York City. Abby first became interested in early childhood sexuality education while teaching teenagers and young adults. She realized that sex education in its most basic form was not enough, and that starting these conversations when people were teenagers was far too late. Abby believes that a person’s sexuality is an integral part of all human life that starts the day they are born, and believes in a future where consent, pleasure, bodily autonomy, and respect are prioritized by all.
About Liv Hockenberry
Liv Hockenberry (she/her) is a sex educator in Boston, Massachusetts. With 10+ years in the child care and education fields as a babysitter, camp counselor, live-in nanny, preschool teacher, and middle school teacher, she has observed just how desperately children of all ages need comprehensive sexuality education. She became particularly interested in human sexuality education in early childhood classrooms during her time as a preschool teacher when she noticed we have little to no resources for young children to develop language about their physical pleasures, displeasures, boundaries, and healthy relationships. She hopes that one day these conversations are commonplace in preschool classrooms and dinner tables across the country as they will lead to healthier, safer, and, above all, more enjoyable experiences for all people.
To Register:
Tickets are available on a sliding scale ($3-$50) to ensure folx of varying economic backgrounds are able to access the sex education they deserve. We ask those who have the financial means to help "spread the wealth" by contributing to the community pool so that we can offer a limited number of sponsored free tickets to those who need it.
We kindly ask that those who have the financial means to purchase a ticket do so, and save our sponsored free tickets to those who do not.
To access this workshop for free, please enter the code SHIP-FREE when registering.
After you register, we will send you an email with the event login information (be sure to check your spam folder!). If you haven't already, make sure you download Zoom before we all log on: https://zoom.us/
Can't make it or want to cover the cost of another person's ticket? Click 'Support the Host' to donate!
If you have any questions, or experience any issues registering, please reach out to learn@weknowship.org