By Laurel White
On a beautiful, sunny day in May, Hannia Carmona scrunches her small frame, shields one side of her face with a manicured hand, and matches her pace beside a friendly bodyguard of sorts. It’s a pose familiar in gossip magazines: the celebrity hiding from the paparazzi or overly enthusiastic fans.
But Hannia isn’t a celebrity, and she’s not cleverly avoiding the flash of camera lenses. She’s attempting to sneak away from a brief lunchtime playdate with her 18-month-old son, Daniel, who has been momentarily distracted by some friends and a playground toy. Daniel, like most toddlers, isn’t a big fan of being separated from his mom.
Hannia’s eyes well with concern as Daniel starts to cry.
“Oh, no,” she says, shoulders pinching toward her ears.
One of Hannia’s teachers in the Capital High Parenting Program places a caring hand on her shoulder. They walk through the school doors together, away from the playground. A daycare worker distracts Daniel with the promise of lunch and the vow that his mom will be just down the hall, in her class, and will see him again as soon as the school bell rings.
Hannia, 18, enrolled in the Capital High Parenting Program in the Madison Metropolitan School District (MMSD) when she was nine months pregnant with Daniel. She credits the program, which provides pregnant and parenting teens specialized curriculum along with traditional coursework, with making it possible for her to graduate from high school.
“I would have dropped out,” she says, reflecting on life before entering the program. “For sure.”
The Capital High Parenting Program, formerly known as the School Aged Parenting Program (SAPAR), has been offered through MMSD for several decades. Its creation stemmed from inclusion requirements set for pregnant and parenting teens in Title IX, the 1972 federal civil rights law.
For nearly that long, the UW–Madison School of Education’s Occupational Therapy program has supported Capital High Parenting. UW–Madison occupational therapy students provide on-site interactive lessons for students in the program on subjects like developmental milestones, maternal health, and safety at home.
“We’ve had this beautiful relationship over the years,” says Karla Ausderau, an associate professor of occupational therapy in the School of Education’s Department of Kinesiology. Ausderau has overseen the partnership between the program and UW–Madison since 2012.
Ausderau’s latest endeavor with Capital High Parenting staff and students was a research project that identified the best practices for in-school programs that support teen parents. The project was funded by a grant from the UW–Madison Morgridge Center for Public Service.
Ausderau says the project epitomized the goal of the grant program: supporting inquiries that aren’t initiated solely by researchers, but instead by community partners’ needs.
“To me, it felt like a real, true community collaboration because they directed us,” she says.
In this case, Capital High Parenting sought evidence-based guidance from Ausderau and her team of researchers as the program faced a high-stakes transition. In the fall of 2023, Capital High Parenting consolidated with two other, larger school district programs.
Jessie Loeb, the lead educator at Capital High Parenting, says the report from Ausderau and her team provided highly valuable insights and information as the program faced the change.
“I hope the research will continue to help us fight our battle to keep the success of this parenting program going strong into the future,” Loeb says.
The report included an extensive literature review of existing research about parenting programs, interviews with current Capital High Parenting students, alumni, and staff, and an analysis of several similar teen parenting programs across Wisconsin. It highlighted a number of areas for the program to continue to focus on — or to commit to developing.
For example, researchers’ interviews showed social connections with peers and program staff is essential for student success. Vanity, another student in the program, underscored that finding.
Recently, Vanity’s 1-year-old daughter, Ke’aylah, has taken to unloading items from Vanity’s purse, then loading them back up again. Vanity says sharing notes — and laughs — about developmental milestones like this one with her classmates is a big part of what makes the program so special.
“Ten out of 10, I would recommend this program,” she says.
The report also outlined the importance of on-site childcare, access to child-friendly transportation, and mentoring related to students’ future plans.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, only about half of teenage mothers graduate high school by the age of 22, compared to 90 percent of their peers without children.
But, last spring, Hannia, Vanity, and several of their classmates in the Capital High Parenting program put on graduation robes and walked across the stage to receive their high school diplomas. They’ve begun the next phase of their lives as the program that supported them also moves toward big changes and a new era. Luckily for all, they’ve learned there’s
no change that a strong, well-informed community can’t face — together.