Tuesday, May 20, 2014

Celebrating Pregnancy in the Yearbook

I'm not suggesting that pregnant students be shamed or ignored, but neither should they have dedicated pages in their high school yearbook, either:
Two Mesa High School yearbook pages devoted to students who have children or who are expectant parents have prompted angry calls from parents to the school principal.

Pages 40 and 41 of the school's 255-page yearbook, Superstition Vol. 105, feature the photos and a description of how difficult it is to raise children and attend high school at the same time. The pages are titled "I'm working a double shift."

Principal Jim Souder spent time Monday fielding calls from parents who questioned the wisdom of including photos of expectant students and student parents along with images of students who had won awards or served in school clubs.

He declined to speak with 12 News and The Republic or share information about how many calls the school received.

Mesa Public Schools spokeswoman Helen Hollands said the photos are not what the school district expects from high school yearbooks.

3 comments:

maxutils said...

Devil's advocate? The pages touted the difficulty of having children while being in high school. Doesn't that serve to discourage people from getting pregnant in high school?

Darren said...

Health class didn't do it, so I don't see how celebrating it in the yearbook would do so.

maxutils said...

It may not. But the sense I got from the article was not that it was a celebration, but a testament to the difficulty. If it were "These awesome women conceived while they were in high school!"... I'm on your side. this is harmless, and MIGHT cause people to think a bit. It's certainly not something to become enraged about.