This was a collaborative project between interdisciplinary researchers from across Canada and housed at the Faculty of Environmental Studies at York University. The researchers spoke to physical education teachers across Ontario to learn about how they implemented the 2015 revised Health and Physical Education curriculum, including the updated sex-education curriculum, which garnered significant media coverage. The goal was to understand the teachers’ experiences more and improve the support they, their administrators, and school boards receive in order to deliver comprehensive sex-education more effectively.

The design challenge was to ensure the report visually represented teachers and sex-education, specifically in a contemporary and engaging way. I solved this challenge using an image of apples on the cover – iconic imagery representing teachers – with one having a condom around it to emphasize sex-education. The cover image appears upside down to represent the contentious, and sometimes confusing, implementation process and the theme of rapid change. Building on the fruit motif, and recognizing how young people communicate about sex and sexuality through emojis on social media (a theme discussed in the revised curriculum and the interviews with teachers), images of other fruit and vegetables were integrated throughout the report. This helps to remind readers that discussing sexuality should be fun and engaging (another theme which came out in the report findings).