Shafia Zaloom

"Shafia Zaloom is a brilliant educator who is passionate about teaching human development. Her rapport with teens is

magic and her curriculum creative, thought-provoking and, most of all, necessary."

-Peggy Orenstein, New York Times Best-Selling Author of Girls & Sex and Boys & Sex

 
 

A clear, practical approach for K–12 educators to teach crucial life skills, concepts essential to healthy sexuality, and the capacity for meaningful relationships

What today's students need.

 
 

In Getting Real About Sex Ed, Shafia Zaloom offers educators, administrators, and caregiving adults concrete language and strategies for integrating sexuality education into daily practice, beginning with students in kindergarten and carrying through to high school graduation. Zaloom advocates Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE), a holistic framework for K–12 classrooms that addresses the cognitive, emotional, social, and physical aspects of sexuality. The book highlights how CSE scaffolds the sexual development of students as it gradually layers in age-appropriate information, skills, and positive values to practice and prepare for safe and fulfilling relationships, as well as how students can take responsibility for their own sexual health and well-being.

Zaloom draws on the latest research and presents real-world scenarios from classrooms across the country that all educators face in developing students’ personal citizenship. With warmth, empathy, and insight, she guides teachers beyond the classroom to the in-between moments of educational spaces: the lunchroom, playground, hallways, and transition periods. She models how educators can deliver developmentally appropriate lessons across grades to inspire personal reflection, integrity, and the capacity to connect with others in community.

In this vital, actionable work, Zaloom ultimately shows how a comprehensive approach to teaching sexuality education equips young people with life skills they need to cultivate mutual respect, care, dignity, and joy in sustained relationships, whether sexual or not, and contribute to a compassionate and just society.

 
 
 

Shafia Zaloom, professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

 
 
If it is true that there are as many minds as there are heads, then there are as many kinds of love as there are hearts.
— Leo Tolstoy
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Helping young people learn how to cultivate healthy relationships is my deepest offering.

 
 
 
kid anxiety

Working with Shafia

Every school has a specific culture with a unique set of strengths and challenges. I understand the dynamics of school communities from the perspective of board member, administrator, teacher, advisor, coach and student.

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Thoughts on Consent

Title IX. Adjudication. Due Process. Survivor. Perpetrator. As different college campuses wrestle with the issue of sexual assault, it is more important than ever that young people learn about and embrace opportunities to understand consent.

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In a culture that all too often pushes young people to disconnect, evade vulnerability, and prioritize performance, kids are looking for more connection and guidance.

 
 
There can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way in which it treats its children.
— Nelson Mandela
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