Al Vernacchio is a Sexuality Educator and English Teacher at Friends’ Central School in Wynnewood, Pennsylvania. He has been in the teaching and consulting realm for more than two decades and beyond his role of teaching has developed seminar courses that span from the Holocaust to queer lifestyles. He is a member of many associations as well that broaden his experience in education, psychology, and sexuality. He is most noted for his book chapters and lesson plans on sexuality issues. This includes his article “Teaching Good Sex,” which was the cover story for the New York Times Magazine just last year as well as having the honor to be invited to speak at the TED2012 conference (www.psychologytoday.com) On top of these impressive accomplishments he has also dedicated a lot of time volunteering at a large AIDS-service organization, ActionAIDS. His article in the New York Times mentioned above is very extensive and delves into his Sexuality and Society class that he teaches to seniors and gives a background on sexuality education in America and what it looks like in his classroom. The article starts off with the baseball analogy to sex and continues to look at the different terms with a broad range of connotations. It then points out the uniqueness of the offering of Vernacchio’s course in the Quaker school and the history of sex education in schools and how it slowly went from abstinence-only to comprehensive sex education and is slowly evolving into a more open topic with today’s society changing so often. Based on the descriptions of some students in the class, the article points out that Mr. Vernacchio has a gift of talking about sex with ease and in a way that not only educates high school students about the subject but also makes them cognizant of their actions, past and present. To much surprise, there is little criticism of his class by the school or parents, and a lot of parents seem to be glad that he is able to teach their usually private children “healthy information” with thought-provoking assignments that push them outside of their comfort zone. The most interesting thing about Vernacchio’s teaching methods are that he is describing sex and sexuality in an open manner that might at first seem like it encourages teenagers to have sex. However, his end goal is for his students have self-discovery and know themselves well enough that they can make a decision on whether they are mature or ready enough to handle sex. His lessons show the costs and benefits to it and go beyond just the anatomy into the pleasure and also the consequences of that. Mr. Vernacchio is a homosexual male and it does not define him in his teaching or make a point to talk about sex within different communities of sexuality. One way that he opens up to students is talking about his own vulnerabilities and this self-disclosure allows him to connect with students on issues and problems they face and feel on a day-to-day basis (www.nytimes.com). From effective questioning to making use of impeccable analogies, it is hard to question the sound pedagogy of Mr. Vernacchio’s lessons. Vernacchio was able to take his lessons and lectures and condense them into a brief 10-minute talk at the idea conference TED in 2011. There he highlighted the old school terminology relating baseball to sex and his thoughts on reframing the way we talk about sex. In the talk he used a “pizza” metaphor, which captivated the audience by breaking it down how it related from the triggers to the outcome of sexual activity. The talk was concluded by mentioning how if our education models for sex are altered, we may help form healthy sex attitudes for future generations (www.blog.ted.com). It is clear that Al Vernacchio is and will remain a guiding light and source of great ideas for effectively educating America’s youth on sexuality education in a time where it is becoming more and more complicated.