This won’t encourage teen pregnancy. It might encourage some girls to opt for having the baby over abortion, which I think is probably the wrong decision for most but their choice to make. And in all other aspects, I don’t see a down side. Education is good. Allowing people to make choices out of something other than desperation is good.
My objection was to what I perceived as a global statement that it was not her fault ever. Perhaps I was reading too much into something that didn’t really matter all that much to the overall point the OP was trying to make.
Out of sheer curiosity, how many of those examples did you make up on the spot?
See, the good thing is that you don’t *have *to write a one-size-fits all policy. I mean, you can if you want, but it’s a lot of time, effort and money to little effect, and no one will be happy with it in the end.
IEP’s, I’m tellin’ ya. Individualized. Girl, parents, teachers and counselors meet and figure it out together. Is her crippling morning sickness over by 10 AM? Then maybe we can move her really critical classes to periods 3-8, waiver her for gym and call her weekend parenting classes with the park district “Home Ec” for credit. Can she submit papers by email instead of carrying them into the teacher’s office? Then set her up for an independent study in History, emailed papers due weekly (or whatever works for the teacher).
Not only does this get her a diploma, it teaches her to be proactive and to be creative. If SHE wants to make it happen, SHE can do that. It’s empowering, and it puts the responsibility for her education on her in a way that’s not too overwhelming for a child to handle.
My mother (sixth grade) once had a student that for some bizarre neurological reason (not related to pregnancy) couldn’t read black type on white paper. She could read black type on pink paper, however. Rather than write a one-size-fits no-one policy that all teachers in all classes had to run copies on pink paper, they came to my mother and said, “How much of a hassle would it be to make her 1 copy of everything she needs to read on pink paper?” And she said, “Not too much, why, would that be helpful?” and they said, “Absolutely!” And so it was done.
“Policy” isn’t always the answer. Addressing each person’s needs as you can might be more useful.
And many children won’t. And I think one way to prevent these children growing up in poverty, or with emotional and social baggage is to allow the mothers the ability to improve their situation after having a baby at a young age. Don’t you?
Why? What good will shaming them do? All it does is produce the emotional and social baggage you claim to be against.
It wasn’t a very good system, actually. Teenage birthrates are lower now then they were then.
I find it hard to imagine that running a seperate night school somehow uses less resources then having something set up for girls to be out of school on maternity leave. There is already a system set up to help kids who have medical issues continue to do classwork; this issue is about whether girls who’ve just had babies should be able to take advantage of that.
You say you turned out okay; do you think that had anything to do with the support you received at the time? If you did have help, why would you deny another girl that same help? And if you didn’t, don’t you wish you had? I personally do not think that making an irresponsible mistake as a teenager should condemn you for the rest of your life. It’s bad for these girls, obviously, but it’s also bad for society as a whole.
I’m more than a little irritated by the attitude of some posters that, “Oh, well, kids will be kids! Whattaya’ gonna’ do?” When one-third of the girls, between the ages of 13 and 17, in any community, are getting pregnant and having babies, there’s a societal disaster in the making, and a school district’s band-aid approach isn’t going to fix anything.
How about a real program that has a goal of reducing teen pregnancy in Denver schools by 50% over the next 15 years? Because it would be at least 15 years before any results are apparent. How about making sure that teen-age mothers who benefit from a maternity leave policy then do, in fact, graduate from high school and attend at least some kind of junior college or training school (because a high school diploma ain’t worth squat when it comes to providing for a family!)? How about a contract between the DPS, the City of Denver and the state of Colorado that all three will cooperate in a joint venture to provide day care, father figures, positive family reinforcement and a sense of self-worth that isn’t sex-based?
**Sateryn76’s ** comments mirror those of one of my students, a young man who’s mother gave brith to him when she was 19, in college and unmarried. He’s never met his father. There were times, he says, when he resented the hell out of his mother’s “mistake,” and it’s been a long, hard road for them both to grow up together without hating each other. Here’s the difference between him and his mom on the one hand and the kids in Denver on the other: My student’s mother had the benefit of a huge support system (it’s called a family, and out here on the plains, family is serious business) that made sure she had incentive, help when she needed it, corrective discipline when required, and unconditional love all of the time. That’s why our teen pregnancy rate is so low our here in rural Colorado (Statewide it’s 8.2%, Denver is 30%+; the arithmetic should be pretty easy.)
And that’s just a girl-focused program. It needs a boy-focused component, too, with the goal of changing attitudes among boys about sex, family and personal responsibility.
Not to be snide, just curious - why wouldn’t tinted glasses have worked?
Do that, too.
But reducing by 50% means you still have 50%. There’s no reason things can be tackled from more than one direction at a time.
All that sounds fantastic! Seriously, I think those are great ideas. But, what do you think should be done about the girls who get pregnant anyway? Should reasonable accommodations be made that allow them to continue going to school, or not? And if not, why not? That’s what we’re discussing, right?
I fail to see how an individualized study plan for each girl would save time or money for the administrator. Having one child with one need is no problem; however, the high number of pregnant girls makes this a huge task.
Is it almost cliche to talk about “the problems of public schools” and I think one cause is requiring programs for every single damn problem.
Let’s see… when I was in school, I had six classes a day. That’s six teachers required to plan independent study materials. When exactly is the teacher supposed to do this? In the abundant “free time” we hear so much about? Not to mention that, various students have various courses, so every teacher is going to have to do this, and tailor it for every girl’s course load.
It’s abhorrent to me to ask teachers to do almost anything more then they are already required to. Particularly when it’s because of a perfectly avoidable situation caused entirely by the parties who are now bitching about their lives being disrupted.
Sorry to be so hard hearted, but from one who’s been exactly there, yes, you messed up, and yes, unfortunately, your life, as you know it, is now ruined. A new, good life can be had, but it won’t be easy, and asking for special breaks is not a way to learn to be a grown-up.
[QUOTE=miss elizabeth]
Why? What good will shaming them do? All it does is produce the emotional and social baggage you claim to be against.
Okay, well, I was trying to imply that I was thinking about social stigma as a tool (at the time, in regard to obesity), not that I had decided that it was the best tool.
That said, I am uncomfortable with some of the current attitudes about teen motherhood. When I was a Girl Scout leader, one of the suggested award projects was to have a “baby shower” for teen mothers who were poor. What?
Why are we celebrating a poor girl getting pregnant? I could (and have) participated in a donation and distribution event for baby items for poor mothers. And I certainly don’t think pregnant girls should be hidden away at the convent. But come on!
I do not think it is appropriate to praise and celebrate a teenager bringing a child into a poor household.
One.
Uh, yes, and I thought the night school thing was wonderful and completely appropriate. What’s the problem, in your opinion, with that idea?
As Sunrazor said, I had a good family. I was lucky to end up here, but it mostly because I made some excellent decisions after I became a mother. In no way would my high school have been helpful to me, even if these programs were available at the time. And where do we draw the line? I always thought that school was to teach the Three R’s, not provide pre-and post-partum “support” for teenage mothers.
Please do not put words in my mouth - I never said I wanted a situation where “an irresponsible mistake as a teenager should condemn you for the rest of your life” I have tried to be very clear that I most certainly do not want that. BUT…
It might be good for teenage girls to know that everything changes in a dramatic and mostly negative way when you get pregnant. There is a hard road ahead, and it sucks for a long time. You don’t get to be a high-schooler anymore. You are a MOTHER.
Yea! I figured out how to multi-quote!!
That’s all fine and dandy, but it shouldn’t preclude a program as discussed in the OP.
The girl is going to be a mother, regardless of this program. The girl is going to see that raising another human being is difficult, regardless of this program. The road ahead is going to be hard for the girl, regardless of this program.
LilShieste
When I was in college in Lafayette, LA, I had a friend who had gone to a prominent Catholic High School there. Her little sister was still in the same Catholic High School and had a friend who got pregnant. She was the sister of the conservative columnist at our college newspaper. If the powers that be at the high school would have found out she was pregnant, they would have kicked her out immediately (as they did another friend who got pregnant). So, she went and had an abortion so she could stay and graduate from the prominent Catholic School. I loved the unintended consequences their policy had on promoting abortion.
Just FYI.
I know, but my point is - how is this program going to work? It seems super-complicated to determine how to keep a student caught up with work when they have a new baby (and post-pregnancy body issues). I would imagine it would be much harder to make it to school every day when you have a child.
At what point does it become unreasonable to demand a student attend class? So they get 2 or 4 or 6 weeks of “leave”. Then what? What if the baby gets croupy and can’t go to daycare (assuming it’s even available)? Should we start assigning “vacation days” to mothers? I hate to say it, but the logical next demand would be a higher limit of absences for mothers.
I’m a little surprised that anyone wants to continue to go to high school when they have a baby. A concentrated class load for a few hours in the evening would seem to be much more effective - hopefully, less time away from the baby would mean less daycare costs and more bonding time.
I’m trying not to address my concerns about the costs of all of this. Since this is a public school, I can’t help thinking about what the Colorado taxpayers think about “free” daycare in the school and the like…
I don’t know why. I do know they were tried and found not to be as effective as pink paper, although they did help some.
Oh, I’m not much interested in saving their time or money, except by not putting them on tasks that are a waste of it. I agree that it will take a lot of time, money and effort to fix the problem. I just think it’s more effective to do that on an individual basis, rather than a general policy.
Supposed to do what? Grade a paper sent in via email? Same time as she grades the rest of the papers on paper, I expect. Sit in a meeting to determine the best schedule for the student? It’s not like every faculty member has to be there every night for meetings - it can be done with little more time than a parent-teacher conference. Remember, this is only done at the request of the student. Realistically, most of them won’t want to do the hard work to graduate. Some of them will. Show me a decent teacher who’s not willing to work when the student is willing to work.
I agree that teachers ought not be overburdened with exceptional work loads, but I think that’s better solved coming at it from the other end: I don’t think special ed mainstreaming is a good thing. I’d rather free up a mainstream classroom teacher to help the bright pregnant student by removing the chronic masturbating kid with an IQ of 60 from the classroom. But that’s probably a discussion for another thread.
Why? I’m asking that, seriously. Why? Why should being a mother preclude one from getting an education?
Mostly you’re coming off like the surly old doctors who refuse to give Residents safe working hours because they were hazed by the same system, or parents who refuse DVD players in the car because they were miserable on long car rides as kids and so their children should be too.
(That’s not to say that there aren’t good reasons to keep long medical hours or not have DVD players in cars. There are. But “because I suffered, so should you” doesn’t strike me as a good or logical one.)
What’s good for many is great for a few. The cost is going to be stunning, but the cost of NOT doing anything will be greater over the longer term. The idea is to reverse a trend, then keep applying what works. The smaller the problem grows, the smaller the cost of addressing it.
Since you’ve volunteered yourself as a teenage mother–did your education end when your baby was born?
Exactly, and the program is supposed to help by making it easier (i.e., “much harder” → “harder”).
Part of the reason you give somebody 2 or 4 or 6 weeks to deal with the new baby, is so they have some time to figure out how to handle special circumstances - setting up day care plans, designating emergency contacts, scheduling your life around school and the baby, etc.
In the corporate world, women get maternity leave. Maternity leave with a set duration. Most women are able to make it back into the office after their leave is complete. If they need to go home early, or miss a few days after that, then it comes out of a PTO/sick day allottment. If they do not have any PTO/sick days left, then you run into the same problem you’re describing. In this case, it could lead to the woman quitting her job or possibly being fired. In the case of a mother/student, it could lead to the girl dropping out or getting kicked out of school.
The program isn’t trying to make it easy for the mother - just easier.
LilShieste
I just realized I didn’t fully answer **Miss Elizabeth’s ** questions, specifically, why a goal of only 50%? I wasn’t really clear on that.
A fifty percent drop of any problem is a huge chunk of progress. The goal isn’t to just reduce any problem by half, but to keep reducing it by half for every allotted time period. The reality is that the lower a bad thing goes (crime rate, disease, illiteracy) the harder it is to fight because it becomes rare. The good news then is that there are so few cases that it’s easier to customize solutions.
As I said, the cost would be horrendous but, having in mind the last thread I started, I’m betting it would cost less to turn around the teen pregnancy problem in America than it would to go back to the moon.