Abstract
Institutes for community / sexual health educators provide residential, intensive, skill-based training for sexuality, HIV, and family planning educators working in schools or community-based organizations. Begun in the Northwest, one-week institutes now take place in five regions of the U.S. and focus on increasing skills rather than knowledge. Instead of presenting content information about sexuality education topics, core staff and participants explore principles of effective education; analyze and practice—with peer and staff evaluation and feedback—effective teaching methods; facilitate and evaluate specific activities for teaching about particular topics (e.g., HIV, puberty, contraception, abstinence, safer sex, abuse, and self-esteem); design sexuality education lessons; solve problems of real education efforts in their home settings; plan for actual application of skills; and, in the community formed by the residential setting, explore and understand their own diversity, generalizing to the diversity of the population at large, and defining how to assess the needs and special characteristics of their own learners.