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By Katrina Margolis
Hometown Weekly Reporter
Middle school is already a complicated time made up of navigating a new set of academics, discovering who you are as a person, and cultivating new friendships. It takes a very special middle schooler to go above and beyond and take on an additional class to learn a new set of skills. The Pollard Middle School Media Lab was filled with nineteen of these over-achieving sixth graders, all of whom were part of Youth Services Babysitter Training.
Meghan Dupuis has been teaching this course for eight years as a consultant for Needham. “I come in and do this class and a couple of other classes, but John Mattleman is the person who has been organizing it for a million years. But I’ve been doing it since 2008… so eight years now? That’s scary!”
The class is offered to kids in fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth grades however all of the students in the class happening now are new to Pollard, and in sixth grade. “We offer it at High Rock and Pollard. Kids from St. Joe’s, the private school, can also come. It’s six hours, three weeks so it’s two hours today, next Tuesday and the following Tuesday,” says Dupuis. Normally there are only 12 to 15 kids in a class, so 19 is a fantastic turnout.
So, what exactly does a course teaching babysitting entail? “We have a curriculum and they have their own little binders, and they learn everything from how to do an interview and what age kids they want to deal with to bathing, feeding, and changing diapers. They have dolls I bring next week and they learn how to change diapers because that’s what most kids are afraid of,” Dupuis explained.
The class is really meant to normalize the process of babysitting and helping them understand what to do in different situations. “They understand if there’s an emergency what to do, what the difference is between 9-1-1 and calling the Needham police because there’s a raccoon in the backyard. They also learn poison control and that kind of thing.”
At the end of the class, “they get a little certificate at the end of the class to show that they’ve graduated.” Dupuis announced to the students that there’s a final exam during the last class. Most of the class whipped their heads around in fear, but she reassured them there’s nothing surprising. In her eight years teaching the course, only one person hasn’t passed. The students settled back in to being their training in becoming expert babysitters.
