Curriculum Highlights
Understanding Self
and Body
Explore your body and its changes with confidence in a sex-positive and community-informed environment. Learn about anatomy, puberty, and personal hygiene while understanding and asserting your rights through body autonomy. This comprehensive approach empowers you to foster respect for yourself and others.
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Interpersonal Relationships
and Social Skills
Master the inclusive skills needed to navigate a variety of relationships. Understand the distinctions between friendships, romantic connections, and sexual relationships. Gain evidence-based communication skills and learn to identify healthy versus unhealthy dynamics in a way that fosters personal growth and respect.
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Navigating Social Contexts
Confidently handle social situations with an informed perspective, from dating to managing your social media presence. Learn evidence-based behaviors for public and private settings, and recognize red flags to navigate social interactions safely and responsibly.
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Sexual Health
and Behavior
Empower yourself with comprehensive knowledge about sexual health. Our inclusive, sex-positive curriculum covers sexual feelings, safe sex practices, STI prevention, and pregnancy options, helping you make informed decisions about your sexual well-being.
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Sexual Safety
and Advocacy
Learn to recognize and respond to abuse, harassment, and trafficking with a focus on community well-being. Our evidence-based curriculum equips you with the tools to seek help, advocate for yourself, and support others, enhancing personal safety within a broader, inclusive community.
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Ethical Considerations
Understand your legal rights and responsibilities through a comprehensive and evidence-based approach. Gain insights into age of consent laws, legal protections, and advocacy techniques to confidently navigate and protect your rights.
Accessibility
and Inclusivity
Our curriculum is fully inclusive and accessible, incorporating tools for nonverbal learners such as communication boards and flip charts, ensuring everyone can engage. Interactive tools, anatomical models, and easy-to-understand graphics make learning comprehensive and accessible to all.
Overview of our Curriculum
Inclusive Education for Healthy Relationships and Safety
The program will run like a community college class. It will take 2-4 months, depending on how many classes we hold each week. You can attend in-person classes in the Portland area or join online if you live outside Portland or have trouble with transportation or mobility.
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We keep class sizes small so that every student gets the attention they need. Each class will have at least two teachers to help students learn. Our educators know that people learn in different ways, so we use a mix of teaching methods. This includes visual, sensory, hands-on, and auditory lessons. Most of the learning happens through activities and discussions because we know that’s how many people prefer to learn. We also make sure nonverbal learners can join in class activities.
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When the course is over, students will have a chance to practice their new skills at a social event. This event gives them a safe space to practice with support. There will be community partners, fun activities, music, and food. Alumni will also be invited to this event. As Boundaries and Beyond grows, we plan to create more opportunities for current students and alumni to practice their skills with our team’s support.
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The future of Boundaries and Beyond includes training for parents, guardians, and support professionals. We know these people play an important role in our learners’ social lives. We want to make sure they can support our learners outside the classroom, too. We’re also excited to start training peer educators who will help us teach lessons in and out of the classroom.
It would be wise to embrace the concept that adults
who are developmentally disabled hit every spot on
the sexual identity continuum, from straight to gay, cis to trans, sexual to asexual, romantic to not romantic, and more. Therefore, informing individuals about the gamut of sexual health and autonomy is essential if true inclusion is to be achieved. Most standard sex education curricula concentrate more on heterosexual aspects and on the negative aspects of sexuality (HIV, STDs, unwanted pregnancy, assault), without thorough coverage of identity or safety issues.
- Kennedy Krieger Institute