“Baby Steps Into Statistics: How Infant Care Teaches Students the Power of Data”
Do you remember the days of having babies? Long, sleepless nights, constant crying (from you and the baby), and the endless questions of, “why?” with no apparent reason or response. Well, it’s payback time for the Financial Literacy Class of Hope High School. In this unit, the students are diving deep into Statistics using data collected from the parents of the community. They will be learning the frequency, norm, and likelihood of common stressful factors that occur when parents decide to step into the magical world of parenting. While they learn about the facts, what better way to have them grasp the data than to become a “parent” themselves and have to experience the statistical information in real time. The students have each spent 24 hours with their very own crying, hungry, messy, sleepless bundle of joy. Don’t panic! The babies are artificial in the sense that they are not real but are able to mimic feeding times, crying at all hours, and needing to be burped. The students have a bracelet that is synced with their specific baby. The baby cannot be soothed until the student matches the bracelet to the magnet on its back AND soothes them in the correct way. The baby has three types of cries. They all sound different because each cry is attached to a specific need: hunger, diaper change, or being soothed. The student won’t know the types of cries but, after plenty of experience with their newborn, they will have them all mastered, I’m sure. Having spent time with the newborns the students have learned some invaluable lessons. Mindy Linder says, “I am extremely tired and it’s hard work taking care of babies and unpredictable.” “It was fun until I went to bed and it kept me up all night,” Duncan Reiff exclaims in exasperation. Having requested this unit, here’s what Trinity Williams had to say, “Don’t have kids young.” The hands-on experience has left them all with the same mindset: Look up every ounce of data you can get your hands on before making a life-changing decision. An invaluable takeaway from quality and reliable research we all hope they will hold on to for a lifetime.