On Friday, March 13th, TPPP was privileged to host a Professional Development Meeting with Christina Meneses from the YWCA St. Louis Regional Assault Center entitled “Covering Consent”. Christina introduced the topic with a brief history of sexual assault and rape laws. TPPP Members all received a copy of the article Consent: Not actually that complicated.

To get ideas on how to teach consent, Christina prompted the group in an exercise. Everyone was asked to write a “want”, “will” and “won’t” list of their personal preferences for pizza toppings. Then, everyone broke into small groups to negotiate a pizza order based on those lists. There were some interesting results as groups negotiated over both plain and exotic toppings (in some instances with extra cheese).

Christina also suggested educators use media examples to discuss consent and that you ask for both unhealthy and healthy examples. One specific exercise Christina has used is “Athena’s Play” which you can find on the Virginia Department of Health’s website. She mentioned the Sexplanation video as another reference. As an update, Sexplanation just added a new video based on the tea analogy.

Our thanks to Christina and all of the TPPP Members who joined us for the discussion. Our next professional development meeting will be on Friday, May 8, 2015.