First of a two-part report on sexual education in Guam’s public school system

By Elizabeth Wells
For Triton’s Call

The 2014 National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy report estimates that on Guam there are 48 births for every 1,000 girls age 15-19. This is double the U.S. national average of 24 births, giving Guam one of the highest teen pregnancy rates in the country.

Other statistics from the 2013 Guam High School Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) suggest that nearly 60% of sexually active teens reported that they did not use a condom during the last time they had sexual intercourse, 92% did not use any form of birth control, and 98% reported that they did not use both a condom and birth control.

Despite these alarming numbers, sexual health education being provided to students in the public school system is limited.

According to the Guam Department of Education (GDOE) Health Standards and Performance Indicators provided by Paul Nededog, project director of Curriculum and Instructional Improvement, indicator 1.4 for middle schools describes ways to reduce and prevent injuries and other adolescent health problems. The example given for this is to “know that abstinence from sexual behaviors can prevent pregnancies, sexually transmitted infections, and HIV.”

However, the YRBS revealed that 24% of students claimed they were never taught about HIV/AIDS in school.

Kyla Aquino, a local advocate for comprehensive sexual education in schools and founder of the GuamSexEd.org campaign, said she got the idea for her campaign when she attended George Washington High School back in 2004, where she received very limited information regarding sexual health during one week of her health class.

“The instructor appeared to have felt awkward about the subject as the lessons were limited to keywords on the chalk board like ‘vagina’ and ‘penis’,”, Aquino explained. “The lessons and information from the book was limited to anatomy and the negative possibilities of sexual intercourse.”

Over a decade later, it appears that not much has changed.

Kritstian Salvilla, a freshman at the University of Guam, who graduated from Southern High School just last year, had a similar experience.

“I actually don’t remember anyone coming in and teaching us about it,” Salvilla said, referring to sexual education. “I only had one health class and it was mostly about human anatomy, but nothing about sexual health.”

Salvilla also said he was never taught anything about condoms or contraceptives.

On the other hand, Maria Gardeleza, who also graduated from Southern High School in the spring of last year, said she did receive adequate sexual health education that made her fully aware of the risk factors of sex and how to protect herself. However, this was during a parenting class her junior year, which she chose to take as an elective and is not a required class for all students.

According to the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS), Guam applied for, and received both the Title V Abstinence Only Program fund and the Competitive Personal Responsibility Education Program (CPREP) fund for the Fiscal Year 2014. Together these totaled $447,505.

The curriculum for CPREP calls for teaching both abstinence and the use of contraceptives. While the GDOE performance indicators call for instruction on both mental and physical health related to sexual behaviors, contraceptive use is not mentioned in any of the indicators regarding sexual health.

Efforts were made to contact Joe Sanchez, deputy superintendent, as to how these funds were used, but messages were not returned.

Aquino, who has done her own extensive research on teen sexual behavior, also blames culture for the high numbers of unwanted teen pregnancies.

“We allow our teenagers to become teen mothers.” Aquino explained. “For example, a high school student gets pregnant at fifteen and are still allotted a baby shower, or still allowed to live at home and their parents treat them as a child. How can teenagers understand the impact of teen pregnancy and the risks associated with sexual intercourse, if after, the results are celebrated.”

This mentality appears to be reflected in the public school system.

On the Guam Education Board (GEB) Official Website, the site lists its board policies that “detail the operations and procedures that govern the function of the GEB and the GDOE students, teachers, staff, and administrators.”

While no policies are listed regarding HIV/AIDS and STD education or pregnancy prevention, a policy does exist for when students become pregnant. The policy states that the GEB recognizes its responsibility to support pregnant students and encourage them to stay in school.

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By Elizabeth Wells
For Triton’s Call

The Guam Department of Education (GDOE) has implemented sexual education into the health curriculum for high school students with the Safer Choices program, a component of the federal Personal Responsibility Education Program (PREP). The PREP program is part of a competitive grant under the Affordable Care Act.

The three-year PREP grant, totaling $387,158, was instituted in high schools in 2013 on a “trial-basis,” said Paul Nededog, project director of Curriculum and Instructional Improvement for GDOE. The program was then fully implemented for the next two years.

With the implementation of the Safer Choices program, Nededog said the high school administrators and GDOE management have begun to address the problem of high teen pregnancy rates and high risk youth behavior on Guam.

“Their drive is to justify and make commitments to continuing the implementation of the Safer Choices Program, to build capacity and developing program strategies more effectively, to improve the health curriculum through the following school years,” Nededog said. “We also have calls from the schools and discussions with GDOE management to continue and have sustainability of the program after the PREP grant ends on Sept. 29, 2016.”

According to the Federal Department of Health and Human Services’ executive summary for the PREP program, the program’s purpose “is to support projects that educate youth between the ages of 10 and 19, and pregnant and parenting youth, under the age 21, on abstinence and contraception for the prevention of pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections, including HIV/AIDS.”

The Safer Choice component overview of lessons and activities provided by Nededog includes requirements for both abstaining from sex and practicing proper use of contraceptives.

The program was integrated into the health curriculum for high schools in 2013, but has not been added to the standard curriculum for the Guam Public School System. Nededog said sexual education within the curriculum is all funding-based.

Nededog explained the reason some students may have reported lack of education on these matters is because the program has only been integrated into the health program within the last three years. High school students are required to take health class in order to graduate, and the majority of students do so in their freshman or sophomore year.

The program is “evidence-based” and Nededog said GDOE received positive feedback from the past three years. The PREP Performance Measures exit survey reported that 54 percent of the 2,121 students surveyed were much less likely to have sexual intercourse in the next six months, 36 percent reported being much more likely to use a condom, and 27 percent reported being much more likely to use birth control.

“It’s really great that school administrators saw the results and continued to implement the program,” Nededog said.

It was also recently announced that the GDOE has received an additional five-year state PREP grant, which they will use in order to continue with the program.

According to Jesseca Boyer, vice president for policy for the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS), the PREP program was first authorized in fiscal year 2010. The PREP program represents the first time federal funding allotted to teen pregnancy and HIV/STD prevention programs has been required to be medically accurate, age-appropriate, and informed by evidence.

Boyer said in her opinion, adolescents benefit most from comprehensive sexuality education, which addresses human development, relationships, personal skills, sexual behavior and sexual health—not abstinence-only programs.

“By definition, abstinence-only programs withhold this information and often use fear and shame instead of skill development to promote abstinence until marriage as the only acceptable choice and do not prepare youth to lead sexually healthy lives in the future, including in marriage,” Boyer said.

While the PREP program aims to better educate adolescents on sexual health, many challenges are still prominent not only in Guam but across the United States. According to recent study by the Journal of Adolescent Health, between 2006–2010 and 2011–2013, there were significant declines in adolescent females’ receipt of formal instruction about birth control (70% to 60%), saying no to sex (89% to 82%), sexually transmitted disease (94% to 90%), and HIV/AIDS (89% to 86%). There was a significant decline in males’ receipt of instruction about birth control (61% to 55%).

Boyer explained that the challenges lie in where adolescents are getting, or not getting, their information. With an abundance of information online without quality control, or guidance on how to interpret this information, misinformation about sexual health happens regularly, she said.

“I believe it [high-risk youth behavior] has to do with our societal norms that continue to stigmatize sexuality and frames sex as taboo.” Boyer said. “This combined with the inundation of hyper-sexualized cultural messages in media create an environment in which we fail to provide young people with information to navigate their own development and interactions with others as they wade through conflicting messages about sexuality all around them.”

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The objective of MACIMISE was to test the hypothesis that students in American-affiliated Pacific Island (AAPI) classrooms would perform better in math classes when taught culturally-based math practices with their regular curriculum. The research was grounded in ethnomathematics, the study between mathematics and culture.

The seminar was conducted by Don Rubinstein, Ph.D., professor of anthropology and Micronesian Studies at the Micronesian Area Research Center. Rubinstein began as a research investigator for the project in 2010, and took over as project director in 2014.

Rubinstein described the project as having a “split personality.” On one hand, it facilitated professional development, and on the other hand was the research itself.

Twenty-two math educators, referred to as “The Macimisers,” were selected for the project. By the end of the project, the AAPI gained five new Ph.D. educational professionals, and the remaining educators had completed their masters.

“In that sense, the project’s contribution to capacity building and professional development was really significant,” Rubinstein said.

For the research aspect, the results were considered inconclusive. However, improvements in math scores were seen in grades one, four, and seven.

The final evaluation report addressed capacity building, successfully reported research methods, and evidence that the curriculum incorporated the use of mathematics and contributed to the mastery of mathematical concepts. The research team concluded that the units were in need of more work.

“All Macimisers expressed the belief that using culture was an important aspect of teaching math,” Rubinstein reported.

The project consisted of five phases: training P1 math educators, conducting cultural research, developing culturally based math curriculum, piloting and then refining these units, and evaluating the impact of student learning.

The research was funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) due to the widespread concern of low math scores in AAPI schools.

For more information, visit the website at macimise.prel.org.

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