My Parents Are the Worst! (It's a Girl...)

I work in a poor, rural school district. Well over 60% of our girls get pregnant by the time they are 19. Many of them become pregnant during their senior year. I am a Family & Consumer Science teacher at the high school. F&CS used to be "Home Ec" and the curriculum at our school included cooking and sewing and that was about it. My students need classes that encourage them to delay parenthood but that also teach them appropriate parenting skills for when they do decide to become mothers and fathers. My students often talk about how poorly their own parents treat them - how they hope they will be different with their own children - show respect, love and sincerity toward them. Right now, they look to me to teach them how to do this, as many of them do not have good role models to learn from. I have offered this mini course in parenting twice so far and, at the end of the unit, my students overwhelmingly agree, that the information is the most important thing they have ever learned in a F&CS course. I was recently funded for one Ready-or-Not doll for my mini course on parenting. I am really hoping to add another. Since I teach two full high school classes at a time the addition of another doll will allow each student to experience what it would be like to be a SINGLE parent. This is, often, the fate of teen parents. Without the second doll, students will need to 'pair up' and will get less time each with the doll. The doll is a technologically advanced version of the egg baby or sack of flour that you may have done in high school. The Ready or Not doll is a far better, more realistic and effective experience because it looks like, weighs as much as and acts like a real infant. Specifically, it offers three different tending programs typical of most babies, to simulate normal baby-tending needs along with fussy periods in each program. The doll is unpredictable to the student ensuring that the student provide constant attention. The dolls cry, coo, and burp in response to appropriate care. I, as the teacher, will be aware of the entire childcare experience and will be alerted to student’s abuse, neglect, panic, or tampering with the control box. Each student will care for the doll for a 48-hour period - driving home the realities of infant care and parenting and taking away the myth of glamor associated with teen parenting. When my students choose parenthood in their senior year of high school or immediately upon graduation they are diminishing their dreams of college and career. They are perpetuating the cycle of poverty and setting themselves up to be in the same position as many of their parents. I don't want to be teaching my current students children, 20 years from now, and hearing them say, "My parents are the worst!"...