The 12 step kids might make good mentors, but a pregnant girl is a bit different. More like a kid who’s still using pretty hard being a mentor.
Exactly. Having a child is not like cheating on a test or kicking a drug habit, where you do it and it’s over. Having a child is a lifelong responsibility, and if you are saddled with one at 17, it means that you will have to miss out on things when you are 18, when you are 23, when you are 30, when you are 35. Middle school kids have no concept of the deprivation and extreme hardship involved in raising a child when you have no education and no career, and unless you have rich parents or win the lottery, that hardship lasts for decades.
I’m with Elenia here. Like I said in my first post, it’s best to be circumspect and err on the side of caution. The pregnant girl can do something else to serve her community, something that doesn’t involve influencing children.
I doubt the pregnant 17 yr old is married and the parents can support the child, if so I think she would be a great mentor.
Other then that, lets face it she will be seen as a pregnant teen. Perhaps she could be a mentor if she was willing to admit she made a mistake and is working hard to be able to do the right thing for her baby.
She’s going to have an awful lot of influence on ONE child in a couple of months. 
I would respectfully reply that this is a very extreme position. If you have a child at 17 you are missing out on things at 35. 35??? Have you taken a look around? It is fair to say without providing cite at all, that the majority of women who are going to give birth have done so for the first time by the time they are 35.
It also says that the 17 year old missing out on stuff is the same as that woman at 35. I’m a guy but at 17 I was a little kid with a grown-ups body. Now I’m past 35 and am grown-up.
The issue here seems to be one of youth, not the committment of parenthood. I feel as though your comment clouds that issue seriously.
I’ve missed out on things that happened in my kids’ lives. Birthday parties, school events, concerts. Why? Not because I decided to be a selfish sloth but because I was working to help pay for our life. As a freelancer, I have to take what comes my way in terms of work. I can say honestly that recently I made a choice to not be there for my kids for selfish reasons and was completely wrecked by that choice. It has nothing to do with age. All parents give things up in order to be good parents, and if you don’t, then in my opinion you’re not such a hot parent.
At 17, you are giving up so much. From where I sit, phall0106 has written the most important post in this thread. Thank you for sharing with us.
Cartooniverse
I admire the student not because of the fact that she is pregnant but because she has, at least so far, not allowed the pregnancy to derail her academic progress. Her own mother was in her teens when this kid was born. There is no father in the picture. This student attended a middle school in her neighborhood where there was and still is substantial gang activity, low student achievement, and many of the other negative characteristics of an inner-city schools. If things move along as they have so far, there is an exceptional chance that she will graduate in the top ten percent of her class. She is not perfect. She has obviously made a huge mistake. But on balance I think her message is compelling. I am beginning to think that this is not going to happen. I suspect that the administration sees this as a public relations nightmare that could require at least some measure of spin. I completely understand that on the surface this looks bad. I still say that if people stop to think about the substance of the message instead of the image, this kid would make a positive impact.
She is due in November. Maybe she will participate in the mentoring program next semester. For some reason that is an irritation to me. Her message would be the same only the package will be different. In addition, I have not questioned any of the other students about whether or not they are parents. We have several students that are parents at school. I only know of female parents but I am quite certain there are single, teenage, male parents as well. It is possible that some of them are members of this club. I don’t think that is any of my business. If this pregnant student is excluded from this mentoring project, should all single. teenage, parents be excluded as well?
I did find the time to look for a little legal background on this topic. Page 9 of this document from the National Women’s Law Center seems like a good place to start, if the OP or student want to make a case over this.
http://www.nwlc.org/pdf/ptl.pdf
The fact that there is the potential for a legal complaint to arise in this case is probably delaying a response to the OP’s email.
Uh, YIKES? Being pregnant makes a girl as unsuitable as a mentor as being a drug user?
The fact that she is pregnant shows that had sex with a boy some months ago. Maybe she used birth control and it failed, or maybe they were not using protection. Yet this mistake puts her on the same level, in your eyes (and lola agrees, “Exactly.”!), as someone who is currently “using pretty hard”!?!
We don’t know the circumstances that got her pregnant, but we do know several things about her: She realizes that she made a mistake. She did not have an abortion. She’s a good student. What does she have to do to earn your respect? As far as I know, there’s no 12 step program for being a mother. The question isn’t whether she can “recover” from being a mother. The question is whether she has learned from her mistakes and she can help other kids who are facing the same decisions.
I can see why some parents would object to her serving as a mentor, but comparing this girl to a drug user is just . . . Well, I can’t come up with anything that’s appropriate outside the Pit. I really hope I’m totally misunderstanding your point.
jacksen, maybe you better make her wear a scarlet A after she delivers, so that you can be sure everybody in the mentoring program knows that she’s the moral equivalent to a junkie. And if the father of her child is a good student I certainly hope that he has some sort of notation in his Permanent Record that will keep him out of the mentoring program as well, since he doesn’t have a pregnant belly to brand him for several months because of his poor decision.
Thanks for this link. I am going to print this out and give it to this student. The way I am reading this is that denying this student an opportunity to participate in this mentoring program would be against the law. The way I see this, the choice belongs to the pregnant student. If I read that correctly she can’t be excluded based on pregnancy.
I do understand the concerns people have shared about having a pregnant, single, teenager mentor middle school students. When the particulars of this case are examined however, one can see that this could be an opportunity for both the mentor and the mentee.
I think some of the strong disapproval expressed on this issue, both in this thread and from other discussions I have had, could be coming from people that have not made big mistakes in their lives. I have. I have benefitted from getting a second…or even third chance. It took me a long time to figure out how to live right and I still get it wrong sometimes. That makes me more willing to grant the same to others who have shown poor judgement or flaws in character.
This student handled this refusal by her teacher with remarkable grace and dignity. When we discussed it she explained to me that her mother was so angry about it that she wanted to come to school and give the teacher a piece of her mind. The student convinced her mother that since she had to sit in this class for the rest of the year, she thought it best to handle it on her own and express her disapproval without making it a big issue. I think this kid has better character than I had at her age. I know she does. There is no way to have a “character contest” but based on what I have observed with this group of students who plan to mentor, my guess is that this kid would be either a win, place, or show finisher.
Not that any of them are “thugs”. They are just people. They are flawed like all of us. But they want to help others so I think that should be encouraged. I call for more encouragement and less screening.
She sounds like a class act, jacksen. Best of luck to her, and her family.
I would need big industrial janitor’s mop to swab up the oozing self satisfaction that radiates out of your post re getting this 7+ months pregnant girl in front of a group of at risk middle schoolers as a mentor. I have to say you seem a lot more focused in this situation on how great it would be for her to be a mentor, than the potential impact her presence as an object lesson on “at risk” kids.
“But she’s great! It’ll be great! Stop being so narrow minded”
I need to keep repeating it’s not about how great this girl is.
I have a teenager daughter and a teenage son. My (now) 17 year old daughter just graduated from high school last spring and is now in Jr. College. She is intelligent, but highly distractable, very willful, and (to be honest) not all that academically oriented. When she sets her mind to the notion that there is something she desires, or might possibly desire, the logic involved in making choices about the appropriateness of that desire is not some Solomonic weighing of the pros and cons. It’s largely emotional and impulsive. If she sees that there is any way possible to do this thing she wants, she will bend every strand of logic to justify it.
Now, your kids may be entirely different, but I’m going to venture a guess that a lot of “at risk” girls are a lot more like my daughter, than not, in terms of judgement and giving in to willful impulses. The object lesson that you can have sex, make a baby, stay in school, and be a mentor is going to be a lot more powerful for those at risk girls being pressured to, or desiring to, have sex than declarations about how hard it all is.
Beyond this, there is a somewhat taboo topic that has not been discussed in this thread so far, but needs to be. A fair number of these at risk girls are coming out of houses, families and cultural peer groups where having kids early is often the norm, not the exception. Some of these girls are not enthralled with school and see having sex and making a baby as achieving “womanhood” in their particular peer context. Some of these girls want to have babies, and the only thing holding them back is fear of how they will manage this.
Providing a powerful example of how all this is potentially managable is going to speak a lot louder to the logic centers of a young middle school teenagers brain than statements about the difficulty of managing it.
A person came to the club meeting and requested volunteers for the mentor program. This student made the choice. I support this choice. Sorry if my post came off as radiating self satisfaction. I do not think she should be excluded from the opportunity. And no, it isn’t all about what is good for the pregnant student. I guess we just disagree about the potential for damage. Based on what I have heard the student say, I think she will make a difference…in a positive way. I am not sure about how this should work. Obviously many parents are going to share your view on the issue. They certainly have the right to object to their child being mentored by a pregnant teen. If the parent objects, then another match would be needed. The mentoring is going to be more of a one-on-one deal so there will not be any putting her “on dispaly” in front of a bunch of at risk kids. It seems unfair to be shocked or put off at the sight of a pregnant teen in front of a group of younger students because single, teenage, fathers are not obvious so they get somewhat of a pass. Seems like a double standard. I did not go out and seek opportunities for single, pregnant, teenagers to mentor at-risk students. I understand your concerns about it. I guess it seems that I am focused on the pregnant teen because …that is why I posted the question. She is the focus of the thread. Obviously when there is a mentorship program there should be mutual benefit.
Shall I help you find that mop?
If you have a child at 17, you’ll probably still be missing out on things at 35 and even later. Not events like graduations and proms, but the life you could have had if you waited a few years to have a child. My sister and sister-in-law both had their first children at 19. That’s a little later than 17, but still young. Instead of finishing college in four years, it took them nine or ten taking classes part-time at night. That meant that they had to work at low paying jobs for an extra four or five years, which might have been fine if either one of them had married wealthy men, but neither one did. Time and finances have always been tight for my brother and sister in law, and probably will continue to be for a while, since he hasn’t finished college yet at 39.(but he’s still working on it). My sister is financially OK, even though she never got any child support - but only because at 27, she still lives in my parent’s house.
This is the part that concerns me. She is apparently intelligent, determined to finish school and quite responsible for a teenager. Yet she didn’t learn from her own mother’s example- and she was sharing the hardships along with her mother. That didn’t make the difference for her- why would you expect her talking about poor decision making to make the differnce for less exceptional at-risk. kids?
Is she planning to raise the child? If so, mentoring after she delivers might send an even worse message- you can go to high school, have a child and not even miss out on extra-curricular activities. Might not be the messge either you or she wants to send, but I bet it’s the one some of those at risk students receive.
I don’t understand why she didn’t manage to avoid the same mistake that her mother made. Astro already pointed out that this teenage motherhood deal sometimes turns into a cycle in which each generation continues the pattern. It seems that the exact opposite would be the case. When I discussed this with her I thought her message was exactly the message I would want a young girl to hear. She talked about how many of her plans for going away for college were now compromised. Now she is going to live at home and attend community college. She is going to have to depend on her mother and her aunt to help her with the baby while she finishes high school and college. She talked about the financial strain and how instead of buying a cute outfit for herself she will have to use all of her money for essentials…diapers. She talked about being disappointed in some of the things her boyfriend has said. In all her message impressed me as being and stunning and real. It moved me. On top of that I see her struggling every day yet finding a way to get it done. Her attendance has been perfect. It seems that this is the first thing that starts to change with some of the other pregnant students I have had. I guess the fatigue just makes them give in. They usually are absent too much to stay on top of the work load and sometimes it escalates from there. Before all of this came up we were talking. I mentioned to her that I thought she had some interesting comments in class and that I was very pleased with her work. She answered something along the lines of… “well I have to do well because it’s not just about me anymore.”
It would be inaccurate to say that I am not concerned about the message she will send to younger kids. I am concerned. I do not at all want other students to think getting pregnant in high school is to be in any way glamorous. It’s just that based on the conversations I have had with her, I believe she would reach kids and send a powerful message. Would I have gone out and recruited an army of pregnant teens to be mentors? No. In this particular case I think it would be good. On top of that thought is the thought that there will probably be mentors in this group that are already sexually active. Statistically you would have to consider that this would be the case. I don’t know how you could justify excluding the pregnant teen when you can’t exclude others that are sexually active. There could possibly be males that already have kids. I don’t know of any but I have not asked and I think this is not my business. I don’t feel comfortable questioning students about such personal issues. On the other hand, I can see how it would be well within our scope of concern to ask them how they may respond to certain questions posed by a mentee. The application did not go into that depth. It asked them about interests outside of school, participation in extracurricular activities, performance in school, and why they wanted to be a mentor.
What I have noticed about reaching kids that are being unsuccessful is that they sometimes reject the “do-gooder” type of kid. I had a freshmen advisory a couple of years ago and I had a male, senior, varsity basketball palyer come in and talk to my kids. He was, on his best day, a marginal student. He was “hoping” to graduate by taking more than a full load his senior year. Our students can skip the hour lunch and take a class instead. We don’t encourage that but if that is the only way they can walk with their class, we think it’s a good thing. He was also going to participate in a “credit by exam” program. So I had him come in and talk to my freshmen about how his life was especially difficult because he refused to work hard as a freshman or sophomore. He got himself so behind and as a result he was taking classes all day as a senior while many of his friends were enjoying an off campus period that allowed them to leave school early…get jobs etc. The students in that freshmen advisory that were solid A / B students were not especially interested in his message. But the kids that were going down that same path connected with him. The A / B students were more interested when I had a kid from Honor Society come in and talk to them about building their college resumes with athletics, activities, holding offices or leadership positions in various clubs, etc. Different kids need different messages and all of it is good.
This is exactly what I meant.
This is an excellent point. Combine it with astro’s post, and it’s the whole problem right there.
It’s not about her. It’s about the kids she’d be mentoring.
It’s not the fact that she’s pregnant that anyone at the school cares about. It’s that she’s visibly pregnant: they are not asking ALL the girls who want to participate if they are pregnant, right? They’re not asking anyone at all if they have done some “bad thing” that might make them unsuitable, right? They are only asking if the signs of that bad thing are visible: I’d bet they don’t really care who does what as long as nobody can tell.
I wonder how readily they’d accept the guy who got her pregnant. Probably without a second thought. I’d wager they don’t ask the boys who want to mentor, “And have you gotten anyone pregnant lately?”
Strange how that works.
Not funny but sadly predictable. The same male Admin’s who discuss what a total slut she must be while eating lunch in the Teacher’s Lunchroom are the ones who worked mightily to get inside the underpants of girls when THEY were in High School. Although of course if asked, they’d tell you it was a different time. :roll eyes:
The boy? How responsible is he? I’d hope his family and he would feel incredibly involved and responsible. Doubt that is so, but you never know.
And yeah, I’m a guy who remembers High School. Just not through rose-colored glasses.
Side note: for any teachers and Admins reading this who are working up a head of steam because I’m not a teacher and yet wrote the above post, keep this in mind: Mom was a teacher, then Admin. when I grew up. I heard it ALL. I also Sub Taught for a year and spent countless days at the local H.S. in the Teacher’s Caf, as well as Teacher Prep Rooms where I was privy to virtually everything. If they were holding back cause a sub was in the room, god help us. For example, to this day nobody in town knows a girl was raped in a stairwell the autumn that the new High School was opened. People have ways of keeping things …quiet. 
So no, I’m not a teacher, but I sure have spent time in that environment. And, I listen carefully.