Sex Educator Training Classes

San Francisco Sex Information offers a unique class on human sexuality twice each year.

The mission of the SFSI training is to train people to provide accurate, nonjudgmental sex information to the public. At the end of training, a trainee should make significant progress in basic sex information, communication and education skills, and personal insight.

San Francisco Sex Information’s Sex Educator Training Is Now More Accessible

SFSI’s Sex Educator’s Training is now available to you 3 different ways:

1. Professional Development & Volunteer Intensive Track. Take advantage of the time-proven SFSI training of every other weekend for 2 months. You’ll experience 60+ hours of instruction in just 2 months—more than most medical students receive during their professional education! You’ll hear from individuals and panels of speakers, as well as watch videos, slides, and films covering all aspects of human sexuality. This is the most direct way to become a SFSI volunteer. We highly recommend this route : it offers the tighest learning experience and valuable networking opportunity with your peers in the class. We reserve most of our seats for people who wish to complete the training in one cycle.
2. Professional Development & Volunteer Extended Track, taken over 1 year. Full SFSI training in 2 training cycles. Do you want the advantage of the continued training of volunteering on the SFSI switchboard, but do not have the time to take the training all at once? Now you can stretch the training over 2 training cycles by completing 2-3 weekends this training cycle and coming back to finish in the next training cycle. Weekend one must be taken during your first training cycle.
3. Professional Development By the Weekend. Have you always wanted to take SFSI training but can’t commit to 4 weekends? Are you interested in augmenting your professional training with certain topics, without duplicating your existing training? Now you can take just one weekend at a time. We recommend this track to health care professionals, mental health care providers, educators, and other in the helping professions.

Course Content & Objectives

Basic Sex Information

One of the objectives of training is to impart information about human sexuality. While it is not possible to cover every aspect of sexual behavior in detail, our aim is to give each trainee at least some information about as many areas of sexuality as possible. Full course trainees should leave the training with at least a passing familiarity with core sexuality subject areas. These include:

• sex, gender, and orientation
• sexual anatomy and physiology
• sexual function and dysfunction
• pregnancy/birth control/fertility
• STD symptoms, treatments, and prevention
• harm reduction
• safer sex
• masturbation and fantasy
• BDSM, fetishes, variations
• relationships
• oral, anal, and penis-vagina sex

Communication and Education Skills

A unique feature of our training is the emphasis on communication. Many of our graduates feel that the communication skills they learn from this class have helped them become more effective communicators in everyday life.

Trainees should be able to communicate information about human sexuality and their own sexuality to others, whether in an educational or private context. This includes the ability to:

• Listen effectively.
• Communicate about sex without becoming emotionally overloaded.
• Ask pertinent clarifying questions.
• Suspend judgments.
• Present information in a way that is clear, comprehensible, and appropriate personal insight

Throughout the training, trainees are exposed to information, ideas, lifestyles, practices, and opinions that may be unfamiliar or challenging. Our goal is that trainees develop increased insight about their own sexual desires, history, and attitudes. This includes:

• Being aware of judgments and assumptions.
• Being aware of how their own histories, families, contexts, and cultures have informed their feelings and attitudes about sexuality.
• Being able to recognize emotional triggers that interfere with their abilities to process information about sexuality.

Training Schedule

Our next training after this one will be in the Fall of 2013; dates will be announced in Summer 2013.

Interviews for the next training are still being scheduled. If you submit an application, you will be notified by email when the interview dates are available. Interview meetings typically include an introduction to SFSI and last about 90-120 minutes.

Training typically starts at 10am and ends no later than 6pm each day. This may be modified on some days, so ask.

Our Spring 2013 dates are:

The First Weekend is required in the initial training cycle of the Professional Development & Volunteer Extended Track option.

Please fill out an application if you are interested in attending an orientation/group interview. Please note that we cannot offer alternative or individual interviews; so if you cannot attend either of the scheduled orientation/group interview sessions for a given training, you will have to wait to apply to a later training.

For more information, please contact the training coordinators at tc@sfsi.org.

Tuition

The tuition for either of the Professional Development and Volunteer tracks is $300–$800 with a sliding scale. The tuition for the Professional Development by the weekend track is $175-$250 per weekend.

• If you have questions about your tuition, please talk to our training staff during your orientation.
• A limited number of partial scholarships are available for the volunteer intensive track.
• Training fees are due in full on your first day of class unless a payment plan is arranged in advance.
• No scholarships or payment plans are available for the Professional Development by the weekend track.
• SFSI does not provide refunds for non-attendance.

Please fill out a Training Application here.

If you are interested in taking the upcoming training or being kept apprised of future trainings, please fill out an application here.