The Doula Project Visits ELO Class at SPHS

On Wednesday, November 5th 2025, Mrs. Carlisle and 15 students from her Healthcare ELO class attended a Youth Doula presentation led by a guest speaker Tara Campbell at South Portland High School. Tara is a certified birth doula and birth doula trainer with over 20 years of experience. She also owns a doula agency where she helps place pregnant women with doulas and she also works at Brigham & Women’s Hospital in Boston helping women with high risk pregnancies. During the presentation, students learned how to support women during birth, and they even got to experience what a contraction feels like by holding ice in their hand for a full minute to show what women feel during labor. This experience gave a lot of students insight into what women experience during childbirth and the support doulas provide for them. This was the first year that the program came to South Portland High School. It started after a student in Mrs. Carlisle’s Healthcare ELO class was interested in labor & delivery and met with a midwife. The midwife told her she could work as a doula at 16 years old if she gets a Doula certification. Inspired by this, Mrs. Carlisle wrote a grant, reached out to Tara Campbell and the program was approved. Overall, the Youth Doula presentation was a meaningful experience and left a big impression on everyone who attended. Many students said it helped them better understand the emotional and physical support Doulas provide during childbirth