Consent: A New Teaching Model

Hey there!

OMG! Last week I had a major sex ed AH-HA/breakthrough moment 🤩

For a while now, I’ve been searching for a more authentic, effective way to teach consent. I wanted something memorable that not only teaches the rules of consent but also gives students a real-life process (a.k.a. skill cues) they can follow and actually use. Something that truly captures what empowered consent looks and feels like.

That’s when C.A.R.E. entered the chat 💬

I’d been trying to find a word that reflected all the complex layers of consent…one that could be used as a model that outlines how to ask for consnet, how to respond, and what makes an experience genuinely consensual.

And honestly? I don't think anything fits better than the word care.

Because at its core, consent is about:

• Caring for yourself
• And caring for others
  
  

✨ So today, I want to share a few consent ed tools I prototyped last week and hope to add to the Project School Wellness Sex Ed Curriculum later this year: The C.A.R.E. Rules of Consent and the C.A.R.E. Consent Skill Cues.

📌 #1) The C.A.R.E. Rules of Consent

These are four essential principles that every experience and interaction needs to not only be consensual but also to be non-exploitative and non-coercive. 

📌 #2) The C.A.R.E. Skill Cues for Establishing Consent

The second educational tool is a set of consent-specific skill cues! Skill cues are the foundation of skills-based health. It only makes sense that the process of establishing and maintaining consent gets its own. 
 

What I love about this is that it uses the same word to outline two distinctly different processes: one for the person asking and one for the person responding. 

I’m still workshopping it, but I tested it out with a high school class last week, and the reception was super positive. Students got it 🙌

Oh, also here’s a sneak peek at the C.A.R.E. sorting ☝️ and detective activities👇. They still need a little refining, but I was so excited to introduce it to students! 

I’ll be adding these to the sex ed curriculum later this summer/fall, but wanted you to be the first to see it.

Let me know what you think! 

Talk soon,
Janelle