You may have seen a few younger kids meandering through the halls the past few weeks. No, they aren’t students. They’re part of a project that Ms. Rich’s Independent Living class is doing. For the Child Development portion of the class, the students were each assigned their own chance to see what parenthood is really like. They were assigned a baby. Not an actual child of course: a fake baby doll that proved to be quite a challenge for some of the students. They kept the babies for four days each, and were assigned to tend to them just like they would a real child. These babies were programmed after real live children: they ate, burped, cried, slept, and even needed a diaper change on a regular basis. They gave the students a hard time, for the most part; one student had such difficulties with getting her baby to fall asleep that she was unable to come to school the following morning. However, one student actually found the experience to be highly rewarding. Nicole Mutschler saw no particular “hard part” in the assignment. She believed the experience “showed exactly what having a real baby is like,” and that “it was a lot of fun.” It made her truly realize the difficulties of having a child in high school. The goal of the assignment was to make students realize the responsibilities of having a real child. It was a true eye-opener for them, and did its part to show the students that having a baby in high school is simply not reasonable. Ms. Rich agrees that the project taught her students that having a baby can be great – at the right time.