As Winter Break came to a close, students began settling back into their routines, as new assignments/projects were put into place. Soon after the students of D.O. began roaming the halls and posting on social media with eggs. This sudden appearance caught the other student’s attention. AP psychology teacher Ryan Osse had set this assignment into motion.
Junior Faven Assaye commented, “At first, I found this project humorous, like why am I going to walk around school holding an egg? But as time went on & having to deal with certain instances. I started to realize that this project really is necessary for us to learn about our new unit.”
The egg project was made as a form to teach students about teen pregnancy and the responsibilities of having a child. In order to achieve the best grade possible, students were to keep their egg babies with them at all times or leave them with a trusted adult to “babysit” them. Although an egg is not entirely close to a baby, it helped to deliver the message.
“For me, it really showed how fragile infants can be. It’s common knowledge that babies are sensitive & need gentleness but when you don’t have a child personally I feel like you can forget how fragile & time-consuming they are,“ stated Assaye.
Students were also required to create Instagram accounts dedicated to their egg babies. Each student was expected to publish at least 5 photographs of/with their egg throughout the project. Each picture posted had to include the “#eggbabiesofdo24” in the caption.
Although the D.O. Babies project was a fun assignment and it had its challenges. Students had to take many precautions when it came to their eggs to keep all of their points. These points would be revoked if the egg was harmed or left alone. Noah Lacek,11, shared his experience of dropping his egg.
“I was going to lunch and I had my baby wrapped up in his little bundle which I ended up having to reinvent because obviously it wasn’t working. But It was snug there tight. It was so funny. I was talking to my girlfriend. I was like, imagine if this egg fell right now. I was actually having the conversation about it falling, and something happened where it launched out. I mean, it literally looked like a cartoon where you can see that we were trying not to drop it, and then, it fell. I wasn’t even sad that I dropped it. I was just like…I’m going to get points off the project”.
In order to protect their babies from an early hatching students built carriages to carry their eggs. These carriages contained pieces of cloth, cotton, cardboard, etc. After the incident of dropping his egg, Lacek had to reconstruct his container.
“When I fixed it and made it better, I took two scarves of minus padding. And I took one of those Christmas present gift baskets. Like, those really tiny ones and I just stuck my egg in there and that worked flawlessly. I could shake it around and it would not fall out. I made sure that I tested it,” shared Lacek.
Students also had to worry about undercover teachers keeping tabs on their eggs. Osse told several teachers that he was doing this project with his students.
Assaye added, “If other teachers saw you without an egg, they would report that to Mr.Osse without you even knowing, he didn’t tell us what teachers knew about this so you wouldn’t be able to mess up in any class because you don’t know if they’re reporting to him.”
Teachers often heard the phrase, “Can you watch my egg?” whenever lunch came around. A majority of students would leave their babies in their classrooms when going to lunch in order to prevent any injuries to their eggs.
Overall, the egg baby project was a successful method to teach students about the basic responsibilities of having a baby while also being entertaining.
“I think it was the most fun project that we’ve done in his class, I think it’s the funniest one we’ve done so far,” Lacek said.
