Mrs. Bazzi is currently teaching her 8th-grade students how hard it is to be a parent, and students are learning the value of family. Mrs. Bazzi enjoys teaching this because “It applies to real-life situations.”

In 8th-grade LME class, students take home a baby doll and a baby carrier for one weekend. The baby will cry, ask to be fed, and will need to be changed through all times of the day. The baby records how well the students took care of it. The students have to take notes about the baby as well and log when the baby cried.

Megan Barbour, West eighth-grader, just finished the Parenting Assignment recently. Barbour found the project to be really fun,“It teaches you that kids aren’t very fun. I think everyone in my class wanted to have kids and now no one wants to.” Megan learned that it is harder than you’d think to be a parent.  Barbour warns, “You constantly have to plan around the baby. You can’t even go shopping, so I had to cancel all my plans. You get little to no sleep.”

These students are learning,  “How hard it is to be a parent, and the value of family,”  Bazzi says.