For hours and hours every week, parents trust their local teachers to care for their children and teach them both academic and life lessons that will serve them well as they grow older.
Some teachers, in the hopes of spreading a positive message and example for others, share their lessons with the world. When one third-grade teacher shared her lessons regarding consent, it proved to everyone that children can and should be taught about it in an age-appropriate manner.
As our children grow, we want to make sure they’re learning important life lessons in ways that are appropriate for them.
Liz Kleinrock, a third-grade teacher at Citizens of the World Charter School Silver Lake in Los Angeles, created a plan for teaching children about consent. After she posted the aids she uses in the lesson online, it spread wildly, making her go viral and creating a self-proclaimed “turning point” in her career.
Kleinrock understands that at first glance, teaching children about consent can seem strange.
“For a lot of adults, the idea of addressing consent with children is alarming because of the relationship between consent and sex. However, it’s important to break down the concept of consent regarding boundaries, comfort, physical interactions and mutual respect before even getting into the subjects of sex, romantic relationships or toxic masculinity,” she wrote in an article for Learning For Justice.
She even describes how consent is taught very early on, even if we don’t recognize it as such.
“In elementary school classrooms, one of the first social emotional topics covered is the importance of keeping our hands and feet to ourselves and respecting others’ personal space,” she explains.
“In early years, teachers redirect students to use their words to express themselves when having strong feelings, rather than using physical actions to get what they want. In these conversations and lessons, educators are already teaching the foundations of consent […].”
On her Instagram, she shows the questions and examples she shared with her students regarding consent.
She gives examples of what consent sounds like, when to ask for it, and outlines scenarios that challenge the students to think about consent with nuance and care. Many of the examples listed were answers given by her students, showing what they think consent looks like.
She also allows the kids to act out scenarios involving giving or denying consent to help them better understand how it would go in a real-world situation.
She makes sure her students have examples of how consent applies to *their* lives as children.
“While teaching my third-grade students about consent, it has never crossed my mind to talk about sex. Instead, we talk about safe physical interactions that occur daily in the classroom and outside at recess, and how to communicate your personal boundaries with those around you.”
She originally shared her method about teaching consent in 2018, when stories about alleged sexual assaults dominated headlines around the nation.
She believes strongly in teaching children early about the importance of consent. “If we prioritize conversations around consent and boundaries at an early age, we lay the groundwork of developing our students’ moral compasses. As educators and adults, we cannot change the past, but we can teach our students strategies to change these outcomes in the future.”
h/t: Upworthy
