TPP Racine Unified School District Case Study
Organization: Racine Unified District, Racine, WI
URL: http://www.rusd.org
Program Name: Teen Parent Program, Partners Educating Parenting Students (PEPS), and RAY Program
Funding: Pregnancy Assistance Fund (PAF) and the INSPIRE grant
Curricula used: Love Notes
Curricula benefits: Love Notes teaches about healthy relationships, an important aspect of the life skills. Love Notes discusses the importance of having a plan for birth control and the risks involved with having unhealthy relationships. Love Notes student journal provide ample opportunity for students to extend their learning and reflect on what they have learned.
Target Audience: Pregnant or Parenting Teens 9th – 12th grade
Audience Demographics: Females and Males (Moms and Dads)
Class size: 15 plus students each semester
Location of Instruction: Washington Park High School in Racine Unified District, Racine, WI
Length of Instruction: Semester long program – some of the work for this program can be done online and some in group sessions.
Utilization of teacher and student materials: Each student gets a workbook.
Outcomes: Requests for more classes
Challenges: Trust is the hardest challenge. The students have to trust the facilitator and others enough to share, answer and participate. This was demonstrated by the students concern about who was going to read their journals. That was a hurdle we had to get over. We didn’t look at them, but it was a power struggle for the first semester. The second semester, with a new group of students, we didn’t see this challenge at all. The students love the journal.
Tips: Teaching a lesson one week, giving them time to digest what they learned and then have them journal the following week has found is effective. This layering technique is a way to slow down and students find it more meaningful and there are better discussions. Showing the Antowne Fisher movie in part allows for more processing and better discussion time. Live interview: How Amy is successfully implementing Love Notes in School-Interview 2016