On October 24, 2025, room A207 in South Brunswick High School was bustling with students learning and participating in a multitude of parenting tasks. Walking into the classroom, you can see students clustered in groups of four to five, all having conversations and discussing the stations at hand. A majority of them are feeding or swaddling babies, but a closer look reveals that the babies are made out of plastic.
This year, South Brunswick High School introduced a new Child Psychology and Development course after the departure of the long-term “Kids Kids Kids” class and the retirement of its longtime instructor, Mrs. Meryl Orlando. The new class is taught by Mrs. Cristina Janis, the resident psychology teacher, who has great passion for the subject. “It’s a class I’ve always wanted to teach,” she says. “I’ve been advocating for it for many years.”
The class focuses on a multitude of childhood development phases, ranging from contraception to adolescence. The range of material is very broad, from textbook readings to hands-on simulations. The goal is to provide students with an engaging and effective learning environment that closely represents real-life experiences in handling children.
Jaya Rijsinghani (2028) talks about how the class has already broadened her knowledge on pregnancy and childcare. “I was pretty uneducated about pregnancy, and all the trimesters. The class helps prepare you to take better care of your child”.
For Mrs. Janis, the class has been both challenging and rewarding for her. “I’m the resident psychology teacher, and so they approached me, because you need a special certification for psychology classes.” She put a tremendous amount of work into this course, building the curriculum single-handedly over the course of the summer and taking charge of a brand new class. She wants to provide hands-on experience that resembles reality in the best way possible. “This was something I’d always loved,” she pointed out.
The committed teacher continued on about her thoughts on the organizational aspect of the class. She believes that the most effective way for students to retain knowledge in this class is for it to go chronologically.
Mrs. Janis explained, “We’re in the infant unit, and from there, we’re gonna move on to early childhood, and then we’ll end at adolescence.” A step-by-step approach to this class is the most reasonable, as it helps expand on each stage of a child thoroughly. In addition to the organization, she builds the experience through various tools. Plastic life-sized babies are used to mimic reality, and students learn how to physically swaddle or hold a baby through this method. Mrs. Janis highlighted a project that will present itself later in the year, “…for a little over a week, you’ll be seeing students walking around the building caring for their infant.” Students will get a full experience of what it is like to hold, care for, and attend to a baby full-time in the most real way possible at the moment. “Simulations are an important part of the class to make it a real-life experience.” The simulations provide an interactive experience for the high school students, and what Mrs. Janis works to achieve within her class.
Mrs. Janis and her students are all loving the new course at SBHS, and the learning and growth that is present in the class is obvious. She hopes to see more students enroll in the future as the course gets more attention, and the students are just as excited to learn and experience a new side of life.
