A. Students would receive factual knowledge from competent individuals on the various methods of pregnancy prevention.
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1. I would have a speaker from Planned Parenthood or someone from a local women’s health center to present the various methods of pregnancy prevention. After hearing and seeing the presentation and hearing the pros and cons of such methods as condoms, diaphragms, pills, shots, and Norplant, students could then ask frank questions.
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2. As a follow-up activity, students could have a discussion on whether or not condoms should be offered to students from school clinics. We would also discuss parental reactions to the distribution of condoms from school clinics.
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3. Students could also be assigned research projects on such topics as the pill, RU 486, “the morning after pill” from France, and Norplant. There was a recent television program dealing with the problems many women faced in having Norplant removed from their arms, which could result in a class action suit. I would present the latter issue as a research project for students to find out the status of the suit.
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4. As literary activity, I would have the class read
My Darling, My Hamburger
by Paul Zindel, which deals with the issue of teenage pregnancy. There is a humorous section in the novel when a high schoolteacher tells her female students that when on a date and you find yourself in a potentially hot and heavy situation, have the strength to break away and suggest to your date, “let’s get a hamburger.”
B. Students would come away from involvement with this unit having improved their self-esteem and having learned how to be assertive when communicating with others.
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1. These two particular objectives speak to the peer or boyfriend pressure issues. Students would learn through activities conducted by a parenting teacher strategies that would empower them not to yield to any one’s pressure and that it is acceptable to say, “No” and mean “No.”
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2. I would invite the school social worker to my class to conduct a mini workshop on the topic of building self-esteem.
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3. Students would record what they learned about assertiveness and self-esteem in their journals.
C. Students would learn that with parenthood there comes serious responsibilities.
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1. An activity that could be used just to allow students to experience first-hand the responsibilities of parenthood would be to use the “Flour Babies” project. This is the activity where the students would carry around a doll or a five pound sack of flour for a week pretending they were a parent. They would have to see to the care of their pseudo-child twenty-four hours a day. They would have to bring the child with them to school. It couldn’t be put in their locker. If they had something to do that didn’t include the child, they would have to arrange for child care services.
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2. As an ongoing writing activity students would record in their journals, on a daily basis, for a week their experiences as a parent, difficulties encountered, and their thoughts, in general, about being a teenage parent.
D. I would want my students to realize that premature parenthood has an impact on their lives.
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1. Someone who has experienced teen pregnancy with all of its pressures and implications for the future would be an excellent coordinator for a round-table discussion. This year I met a bus-driver who was in her twenties who told me that if she had her life to live over she would have waited to have her family. Students would most likely relate and listen to someone “who has been there.”
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a. As a follow-up activity I would give my students an assignment of interviewing a teen parent or a former teen parent. They would then share their results with the class.
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2. I would also invite a parenting teacher as a speaker who would talk about the implications of teenage parenthood. Parenting teachers meet with female students who are parents or who are pregnant on a weekly basis in a class in the high school. The girls go through a course that covers such issues as caring for the baby, how babies develop, their needs as a teenage parent, etc.
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3. For the above speakers I would have my students develop a list of appropriate questions to ask after each presentation.
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4. I would use the novel
Mr. and Mrs. Bo Joe Jones
which is the story of a young couple faced with a pregnancy. This novel would be the catalyst for many group discussions, writing and role-playing activities such as:
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a.For the student who is not a parent:
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-How do you think you would feel if you were faced with parenthood at this point in your life?
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-How would you handle the situation? Why would you do it that way?
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-Do you think your decision would have any impact on your future? How?
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-Role-playing the boy and girl involved in the pregnancy: What kinds of things would they say to each other?
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b.For the student who is a parent:
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-How did you feel when you were faced with parenthood? Why?
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-How did you handle the situation? Why did you deal with it that way?
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-How has your decision impacted your future?
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-What kinds of things did you and your partner discuss after you discovered that you were pregnant?
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c. Students who are parents may not want to talk openly about the questions or participate in the role-playing activities. The teacher must be sensitive to the reluctance of some students and plan the lesson accordingly.
E. The final objective of this unit will be to acquaint students with some legal issues surrounding teenage pregnancy.
My intention in this section of the curriculum unit is to make students aware of some legal issues which surround teenage pregnancy such as parental and familial rights and responsibilities. The following three items would be used on a handout.
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1. Rights and Responsibilities of the Pregnant Teenager:
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a. In order to qualify for government aid programs a pregnant minor must identify the putative father and then institute a paternity suit.
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b. Once the paternity of a child is established, the court may order the father to pay reasonable expenses for the birth of the child and to establish a schedule of monthly allowances for the care and support of the child (Barkin, 67).
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2. Rights and Responsibilities of the Putative Father:
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a. Florida law provides that, if paternity can be established the putative father must provide financial support for the unmarried mother and her child.
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b. Recently it was held that a putative father cannot enjoin an unmarried minor from aborting their child. The court found that a woman has a fundamental right to decide to terminate her pregnancy during its first trimester. This right of the mother is not conditioned on the consent of the child’s father (Barkin, 68-69).
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3. Rights of the Pregnant Teenager’s Parents:
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a. An unmarried minor still living with her parents is entitled to the support of her parents. If the minor is unable to support her child, the grandparents are under no legal obligation to support their grandchild (Barkin, 69).
F. Teaching Plans for the section of the curriculum unit dealing with legal issues.
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1. I would have the students look up the definitions of vocabulary words used in a handout that I would distribute listing parental and familial rights and responsibilities under the law.
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2. The class would read the handout of parent and family rights and responsibilities; then they would discuss questions formulated by the teacher.