Teas By Design

Tony Karumba / AFP/Getty Images

Displaced Somali children queue as they wait for food-aid rations on January 19, 2012 at a distribution centre in Mogadishu. Famine conditions have ended in war-torn Somalia six months after they were declared, but the situation remains dire with a third of the population needing emergency aid, the UN said on February 3, 2012. No more region in Somalia is under famine conditions, Jose Graziano da Silva, the head of the UNs Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), told reporters. However, the good news does not mean the crisis is over. Tens of thousands of people are believed to have died during the famine, but mortality rates remain among the highest in the world, according to the UN.

Among Carrolls prime feats in the social networking sphere was his leadership in the launch of the USCRipsIt blog, PeteCarroll.com and PeteCarrollTV, a YouTube channel designed to give an inside look at the Trojans program. USC fans gravitated to the sites for the in-depth look at USC football, but Carroll knew his product would also make its way to high school recruits. The underlying, core motivation of the sites — especially with USCRipsIt — was as a recruiting tool. Through these sites, USC recruits could experience much of what USC had to offer without ever stepping on campus.

When Carroll left for the Seattle Seahawks, USCRipsIt remained, but under new management with a different goal. Jordan Moore, director of social media for the USC athletic department, runs the blog and said it is now used by the athletic department as a portal for fans to get a look at all of USCs sports and student athletes.

Its very different now, Moore said. Its not really run through the football office in the same way.

Though Lane Kiffin remains one of the youngest head coaches in all of football, the Trojans staff brings with it an old-school mentality, led by Monte Kiffin, Ed Orgeron, John Baxter and Kennedy Polamalu.

I would not say they push for it, Moore said of the coaches attitudes toward the blog, Twitter and technology. They are certainly on board with it and extremely helpful. … But they dont spend any of their time doing it.

Of course, it hasnt always gone as smoothly for everybody involved.

Usually anything that has to do with technology and Monte ends with something pretty funny, Moore said, relating a story where Monte Kiffin was being taught how to use his iPad.

They told him to make sure the button was always on the right-hand side, but one day he called in a panic and said the whole thing was broken, Moore said. The coaches calmed him down and asked him what side the button was on. There was a little pause before Monte said, … And were back in business.

But I actually think he does a better job than most people realize.

Many coaches around college football have taken to Facebook and Twitter to aid in recruiting, and the USC staff is somewhat split in that matter. Linebacker commit Jabari Ruffin (Downey, Calif./Downey) said he spoke with USC coach Joe Barry through Facebook, and the Trojans contacted him about as often as any other school. But on the other side, Orgeron, Polamalu, Baxter and Monte Kiffin do not have Facebook profiles and might be extremely slow converts to this new era.

What will be interesting is to see how these styles progress into the future. There is no doubting the recruiting ability of the entire USC staff, and their resistance to growing their presence on social media sites has hardly dented their efforts in bringing in the nations top athletes. They continue to find ways to relate to student athletes on a personal level, which will always be the biggest selling point in recruiting. But these sites will continue to have more of a presence in the recruiting world going forward, which is something that all college coaches in all sports will need to accept, if not embrace.

Players atwitter over social media

THOUSANDS of pounds of cannabis have been discovered growing in a flat in Edinburgh’s Old Town.

A 50-year-old man has been arrested after police searched a property in Buccleuch Street yesterday.

Officers discovered 35 plants, along with various items used in the cultivation process.

Thousands of pounds of cash was also seized during the search.

The total value of cannabis recovered is around £18,000.

A police spokesman said: This recovery will have undoubtedly made a significant impact in drug operations in the local area and we are delighted to have taken possession of these drugs before they could make their way into our community.

Anyone with information relating to drug crime in their area is asked to contact police, or alternatively report the matter anonymously through the charity Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111.

The man is scheduled to appear in Edinburgh Sheriff Court today.

Short URL: http://www.deadlinenews.co.uk/?p=42166

Doug Grindstaff plans to buy two shirts and chip in for a pre-Super Bowl party before heading to a restaurant for food, drinks and Sundays big game.

And he doesnt even really like sports.

Grindstaff is one of 173 million people expected to watch Sundays matchup, the largest number since the National Retail Federation began collecting data eight years ago. The average viewer is projected to spend nearly $64, about as much as Grindstaff, on Super Bowl-related purchases. Collectively, such purchases are injecting $11 billion into food, clothing and furniture stores across the nation.

Its a reason to throw a party, the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga freshman said as he browsed NFL T-shirts at Sports Stop on Friday. It should be a good time.

Its certainly a good time for retailers. Don Gilman, manager of the Hamilton Place mall store where Grindstaff was shopping, has sold out of New York Giants jerseys and only had a few New England Patriots ones left Friday.

Hopefully, Sunday well be out of the stuff, he said. This week has been pretty good.

There are enough sports fans wanting to show team support to make this Super Bowl a good one. But Gilman said nothing tops the Pittsburgh Steelers and Green Bay Packers matchup in 2005. Packers gear is consistently a top seller, he said, but hes been doing well with the two teams in the championship this year.

It could have been worse, he said. We could have been sitting here watching the Ravens.

More than half of Super Bowl viewers plan to watch with friends. Many of those viewers will be lucky enough to catch the game on a brand new TV. More than 5 million viewers said they planned to grab one before kickoff.

Its a big time for retailers, and a lot of consumers realize that a lot of companies will be offering TVs at low prices, said Kathy Grannis, spokeswoman for the National Retail Federation. With millions of eyes glued to the TV, retailers years ago recognized this may be a way to attract people.

Football seems to make those millions of people get hungry. Grannis organization projects nearly $9 billion will be spent on food and beverages surrounding the Super Bowl.

Chris Rivero, manager of Market Streets Buffalo Wild Wings, was getting hints early in the week about just how busy his restaurant will be come Sunday. Hes already had a few orders put in for as many as 1,000 wings, and he knows hell get more as kickoff approaches.

Its a big deal for us, he said. On the take-out side, it will probably be our most profitable day.

The restaurant doesnt see as much dine-in business, which holds Super Sunday back from becoming the businesss best day of the year. But one way or another, Rivero expects to be slammed.

Greg Beairsto, co-owner of Crust Pizza, said he faces huge numbers of take-out orders. He estimates take-out and delivery Sunday will be at least 50 percent higher than normal.

We get hammered with take-outs, he said. Its pretty phenomenal.

Rick Santorums life blurs the borders between parenting and politics in an unprecedented way.

There are his seven surviving children, yes, and the story of his son Gabriel who died hours after birth, and the fact that the family has chosen to homeschool. But eclipsing all of that is the tale of Bella, the three-year-old girl who was not expected to see her first birthday. Born with a genetic condition that means her life is measured in days and weeks, Bella fell frighteningly ill with pneumonia this past weekend, causing Santorums life and work to collide in a way that is jarring even in these times when candidates families are assumed to be public fodder.

Never has a presidential candidate lived so searing a parenting tale while he campaigns. In that way, the former Pennsylvania Senators life is both a very singular and personal story, and also a very public window into the kinds of private choices families find themselves making across the country every day.

Whether to induce labor when a pregnancy threatens the health of a mother, as happened to Karen Santorum before her son was delivered at 20 weeks 16 years ago? (Santorum has said that they would have proceeded with what was essentially a termination but which became unnecessary because labor began without intervention.)

Whether to forgo medical intervention for a child like Bella, who was so fragile at birth that doctors advised the Santorums to let nature take its course? (The parents chose, instead, to be very aggressive with medical care, and Bella, who is severely cognitively and physically impaired, defied expectations.)

Whether to practice family planning after their fourth child lived for only two hours after being born at 20 weeks in 1996 and their eighth was severely disabled? (The couple have said that, as practicing Catholics, they reject the use of birth control. Bella was born seven years after her next youngest sibling; until then the Santorums had welcomed a new child at a rate of one every year or two.)

And then there is the question of whether Bellas father should be in the race at all. Christiane Amanpour asked him that question last month, saying As a mother, I just wonder how you can keep going and how you justify this with so much personal tolls at home.

Political types are asking, too. For me, Id want my butt off the campaign trail, New Hampshire-based Republican consultant Patrick Griffin told the Washington Post, when he was asked how voters might view Santorums decision to be away from his family almost full-time under the circumstances. The value of family that is so important in our party . . . I would not be surprised if some voters did not find some hypocrisy in this.

Like the other questions the Santorums have faced, this one is familiar to millions of families. How to rearrange your life when one child needs you more? How to maintain the structure of your own world — which must continue to exist in order to support the needy child and maintain your sense of self and sanity?

Nearly all the choices the Santorums have made over the years are not the ones that I would make (or, more specifically, not the ones I think I would make, since I have covered healthcare, and parenting, long enough to know that you cant predict what you would do until you actually stand in a particular pair of shoes covered with hospital booties.)

But I believe I would have more aggressively terminated a pregnancy that was threatening my own life and my chance to be there for the children I already had; I would have seen aggressive treatment as torturing a fragile child, and nature taking its course as a blessing; I would religiously use birth control — and advocate that others have unencumbered access to to it — after realizing that genetic risks that hide within my particular helix. And I would not leave home for weeks, or even days, if my child was terminally ill.

Each of these would be MY choice, though — that is, by definition, the nature of choice — and I cant judge the Santorums for making a different one.

Ellen Seidman, who appears regularly on Huffington Post Parents, is the mother of a son, Max, with his own share of cognitive and physical disabilities. Like me, Ellen says I dont agree with his politics (the healthcare plan he opposes, she notes, would help children like Bella and Max because insurance companies will no longer be able to impose annual or lifetime limits on coverage.)But on her blog, Love That Max she not only defends this familys right to make different choices from hers, but thanks them for bringing attention to the struggles that families like hers face, much less publicly, every single day. Particularly, she says, Rick Santorum has zoomed the spotlight onto something many of us grapple with: having a work life and caring for a child with special needs.

That push and pull often brings criticism, she wrote, including from her own parents who were blatantly dubious about my decision to return to work when Max was three months old. I think Ill be a better mother if I work, she says she answered, and left it at that.

And that is where we should leave it, too. Feeling compassion for Bella, thinking we might or might not make different choices — all while respecting the right of another family to make this choice.

A Google news search of the word “crisis” results in a page of links leading mostly to economic stories. But some say there’s a crisis just as devastating, but less visible: A crisis in fathering.

“Most guys don’t feel like they have a problem,” said Dave Clark, founder of The Father’s Cry, an Amarillo-based organization that provides support and training for fathers locally and around the world.

The consequences of growing up without a father in the home are well-documented, Clark said. Just about every negative social outcome imaginable — poverty, incarceration, you name it — is more likely without a father in the home, he said.

However, despite the importance of being physically present, fathering involves much more than living in the same place as one’s child. And there are ways in which those fathers who do live apart from their children can still be good fathers, Clark said.

Clark should know. Like many people who abandon a path of acquisition and choose a path of service, Clark had a life event that opened his eyes.

“I was a workaholic. I was a bad father,” Clark said. It took one of his teenaged sons falling into a life of drugs, crime and chaos before he finally realized that his parenting was inadequate, he said.

Clark’s bringing home an
executive paycheck wasn’t, in and of itself, making a happy home life for his children.

Carey Casey, CEO of the National Center for Fathering in Kansas City, Mo., said our cultural emphasis on the father as breadwinner leaves out some important dynamics.

“We don’t have to make tons of money, but we do have to do a few things right,” Casey said.

Those things start with love itself, but turning a feeling into a lifestyle that builds a strong family is complicated. That’s where organizations like The Father’s Cry come in.

Through training sessions and publications, The Father’s Cry provides men with answers to the questions about fathering.

The Father’s Cry uses a curriculum called “The 7 Secrets of Effective Fathers.” It’s the same curriculum used by the National Center for Fathering, which has certified Clark as a “Master Trainer,” one who specializes in training instructors how to present the curriculum to the general public.

The curriculum identifies parenting skills such as active listening, role modeling, building a loving relationship with one’s spouse, consistency of attitude, spiritual practices, financial responsibility and ways to invest one’s self in the daily lives of one’s children.

Begun in 2003, The Father’s Cry has developed organically, taking its work to the places where response has been most enthusiastic. That pattern has resulted in what Clark said was hardly his original plan — an organization that does most of its work in Africa.

“I wasn’t really interested in Africa to begin with,” said Clark, whose first international ministry took him to Belarus, a former Soviet republic. But the response in countries like Kenya and Malawi amazed him.

“Men walked for a day, sometimes two days, just to attend our conferences,” Clark said. “In the hotel lobby, I saw men sleeping on mats on the floor. I wondered, ‘What are all these men doing here?’ Then I figured out that they were here for our event.”

Today, The Father’s Cry has an East Africa initiative, based in Kenya, and a southern Africa initiative, based in the Republic of South Africa. The latter country is also host to an organization called The National Centre for Fathering, an organization that collaborates with The Father’s Cry on local projects.

“So many of us are pulled in so many different directions,” Clark said in reference to the demands that can distract fathers from parenting. “But we have to go back, look at the wounds we carry, and see the way that affects the relationships we have now.”

ChildSharing.com has been approved by the State Court Administrators Office for providing parenting education to court-referred individuals.

Carson City, Nevada (PRWEB) January 31, 2012

ChildSharing.com announces the availability of online co-parenting classes throughout the State of Nebraska. Online classes are designed to aid families raising children between multiple homes ChildSharing.com was approved on November 17, 2011 by the State Court Administrators Office of Nebraska for providing parenting education to court-referred individuals. The 4, 6, 8 and 10-hour programs include videos, quizzes, and life applications which serve as an alternative for parents who are mandated to take a parenting class to obtain a final decree or for those that are seeking to increase positive communication and parenting skills.

The online co-parenting programs are in response to growing county demand for assistance in aiding families as well as providing access to relevant information within their own budget limitations. As a free resource available to the counties, the option for parents to attend online classes has been gaining popularity throughout the country. Many times, parents who are required to attend classes are constrained by factors such as resource limitations, time, scheduling and training costs. In response to these challenges, ChildSharing.com chose to create online co-parenting classes to ensure the transition between families is smooth and successful.

Benefits to County

No cost to county

County can direct parents to additional resources

County-specific content if needed

Customized parenting classes by county

Access to ChildSharing.com staff

Access to parenting classes through admin access

County-offered totally free classes to low or no income parents

Detailed county reporting

Available in Spanish

Benefits to Parents

Interactive learning environment through content, quizzes, videos, and exams

Ability to take classes in a timely manner and in a nonthreatening environment

Instant Access 24/7, completely online, self-paced

State and county approved and accepted

Same-day certificate processing

100 percent money-back guarantee

Extended customer support

Affordable ($39.99 or free to low or no income parents)

Michelle Muncy, ChildSharing, Inc.s Marketing Director, commented, We are proud to offer our programs to the State of Nebraska. Classes are both informative and accessible, a combination that is all too rare in our complex, increasingly technology-driven learning environment. Our hope is that we are able to provide education to parents, at an affordable price who may not have otherwise received it. Muncy adds, We have found that when parents have the ability to control their learning environment, they are more open and their ability to learn and retain information increases. The result is a better equipped co-parent who is less likely to return to court.

ChildSharing.com will appear on the Nebraska Supreme Court website by mid-January. All online programs are available immediately on www.ChildSharing.com.

Founded in 2008, ChildSharing, Inc. is dedicated to advancing the field of child-sharing as a means of better educating families faced with raising children between multiple homes. Guided by a strong development team, ChildSharing works with experts throughout the United States to provide its members with the most comprehensive information and resources for educating and raising children between multiple homes. For more information about ChildSharing, Inc and its team of experts, visit www.ChildSharing.com.

Media interested in setting up an interview with ChildSharing, Inc. representatives regarding the online program should contact Lori Lavigne in the development planning office (866-333-1165 or lori(at)ChildSharing(dot)com).

# # #

For the original version on PRWeb visit: www.prweb.com/releases/prweb2012/1/prweb9156382.htm

When I met Juliana just before the winter holidays, I was impressed. The first in her family to apply to college, Juliana hopes to attend a University of California campus next year. I met Juliana while volunteering at a college outreach program in her neighborhood. She was telling the younger students to make up failed and missing classes through Los Angeles Adult Education.

Adult education saved my life, she said to a rapt audience of 9th and 10th graders, adding, If you had known me two years ago, you would not have recognized me. I was mad at the world. Little did she and I know that the Los Angeles Unified School Superintendent has placed the entire Los Angeles Adult Educations budget on the districts cutting block for next school year.

Throughout 9th and 10th grade, Juliana went to high school in the Los Angeles Unified High School District (LAUSD) and rarely went to school and when she did she caused trouble. She got Ds and Fs in most of her classes. She got a couple of Bs in a few classes where the material interested her and where teachers let her hand in make-up packets. I wasnt dumb. I just didnt care, explains Juliana.

Juliana was on the road to becoming one of the 20-40 percent of students (depending on who you talk to) to drop out of high school in Los Angeles. Yet at the beginning of the summer between 10th and 11th grade, Juliana says she had a revelation. She realized that she didnt want to wind up like her older sister, a high school drop out with two children under the age of four and who worked the night shift in a sewing factory alongside her parents. Moreover, Juliana decided she wanted to be a lawyer.

So she began 11th grade with the desire to graduate and to go to college. Yet she had the credits of a 9th grader. So she began to search for ways to make up classes.

Limited Options to Make Up Classes
There was no way for her to make up her classes during summer school because LAUSD has eliminated summer school except for juniors who need to make up a few classes. There are a limited number of spaces for these precious slots, and Juliana was only an entering junior at the time. And she couldnt take enough classes to make up what she was missing anyway.

She couldnt go to community colleges, because they too are suffering from the tough economy and most have basically eliminated spots for concurrent high school enrollment. Besides the fact, she would not have qualified for most of the classes they offer.

There are some online programs that LAUSD uses, but school counselors with their huge caseloads rarely know about them and/or can only recommend a limited number of kids, and Juliana wasnt one of those kids. Also there are only a few classes that are covered with these online classes, and they were not all college approved.

She didnt have enough time in her day to take several 9th and 10th grade classes, and she wanted to finish in two years.

That Left Adult School
LAUSDs 30 adult schools serve more than 88,200 high school students each year. These students are attempting to take credit recovery classes and graduate from high school. In addition, last year more than 1,500 students who dropped out of LAUSD schools were able to graduate by enrolling in adult school.

Junior year, Juliana began taking classes at her local adult school in the afternoons and evenings after her regular school day. Other kids can complete classes through adult school packets. She could take one to two semester classes at a time and could finish each within two months. In addition, she was able to retake one 9th grade class each semester during the school year. So by the end of junior year, she had one semester of 10th grade and all of 12th grade to finish. She had straight As in her adult school and a 3.8 in her junior year. She had also passed the CAHSEE, the high school exit exam, and was on the road to graduate high school.

Setting Her Sights on College
But now Juliana had her sights on college. And this year the University of California (UC) campuses made a change. Anyone applying has to have completed 11 out of the 15 mandatory college prep (A-G) courses by the beginning of senior year. Juliana was a few short, so between summer school in LAUSD, because she now qualified to take two classes at summer school and could continue taking classes at adult school, she started 12th grade as a 12th grader with enough classes and the GPA to qualify for a UC.

Without adult school, I wouldnt be here, says Juliana. Adult school isnt for everyone. You have to be able to learn on your own and be focused. But I was ready. That shows my determination because I had to keep up with regular school and adult school.

Juliana and Others Are Now Ready
By Thanksgiving of senior year, Juliana had applied to college, and she has the grades and qualifications to attend a competitive four year college. She is lucky the UCs and other state colleges let kids replace failed grades with the higher grades they receive in re-taken classes.

A Short-Sighted Decision
More and more of the urban freshmen I teach have relied on adult school to help them graduate from high school and matriculate to college. Moreover, as I go out and work with high school juniors and seniors who need to make up courses to graduate from high school and to qualify for college, I have increasingly relied on referring them to LAUSDs adult schools because of all the budget cuts affecting students back in their home schools. The classes are fast paced, and students can make up several classes in a school year.

I am losing more and more of my triage options and worrying that fewer of these students will graduate high school let alone make it to college.

Adult school is the second chance so many kids need. And yet the districts superintendent has placed its entire budget on the chopping block. That makes no sense — fiscally or educationally. President Obama in his State of the Union Address says our goal should be to raise our high school graduation rate to 90 percent. He wants to prevent kids from dropping out until they are 18, and yet in LA, the city with the second highest dropout rate in the nation, the leadership wants to end a program that has helped so many kids get the classes and credits to graduate. The cuts will increase the already high dropout rate for many kids who need the encouragement and support to re-make themselves in high school or just take a couple of needed class for graduation.

A Huge Contribution to Our Economy
We need to stop thinking in just short-sighted ways. LA Adult Education doesnt just help high school students with credit recovery. It also provides GED classes, adult education for real adults wanting to continue their education, ESL classes for immigrants, and vocational classes for people wanting to learn a trade. During these tough economic times, LA Adult Education is making a huge difference in helping retrain and educate people to contribute to our economy.

More importantly, kids like Juliana will be less likely to have the chance to graduate from high school and go to college.

So on February 14, when the LAUSD School Board meets to decide on the budget cuts, we need to share as many voices as we can about the lives that will be damaged by the flawed decision to cut LAUSDs Adult Education program.

I would not be going to college. I would not be able to graduate high school and would become a statistic, says Juliana. Lets help people like Juliana make their college and life dreams come true.

Gov. Bobby Jindal is right to try to fix our public schools. His proposal to put the best teacher in every classroom by changing the way we hire, fire, promote and pay teachers is critical.

We need a teacher evaluation system that looks like somebody designed it on purpose. Only a handful of public officials are still around who were serving in 1989 when Gov. Buddy Roemer made the last attempt to reform our system. Im one of them, and I remember the venom, the bitterness and the divisiveness of those days. Roemers legislation ended up before the Louisiana Supreme Court (I helped argue the case), which ultimately ruled in his favor, but the causalities were high, and it undermined the programs success.

We learned a few lessons from that experience that might be helpful now as the debate begins over Gov. Jindals attempt.

The first lesson we learned was that teacher quality is one of the few ingredients of good public schools that government can control. Parental involvement is also important, but its hard, if not impossible, for government to involve parents in their kids education if they are unable or dont want to. Data indicates that 49 percent of Louisianas children will be born into a single-parent family this year, leaving them much more at risk to growing up poor, under-educated, underemployed or in jail. Of course, some of these kids can, and will, mature into productive citizens because of the Herculean efforts of their parent, but the odds are against them from birth, and just about everything government has tried to better those odds has failed. The moral of the story is to concentrate on what you can control: teacher quality.

The second lesson we learned was to consult and listen to the teachers and principals in designing a teacher evaluation program. The teachers and principals in every single public school in Louisiana know who among their peers is doing a good job and who is not. Design a system to harness their input and knowledge and it will succeed.

Las Vegas, NV (KTNV)– In a final push to rally voters before Saturdays caucus, Newt Gingrich made speeches in Las Vegas criticizing Mitt Romney and weighing in on food stamps and the economy.

Newt Gingrich began the last day before the Nevada Caucus with an appearance at Stoneys Rockin Country Night Club.

The former speaker of the house started off by telling the crowd that, unlike Mitt Romney, he is the candidate for every day people.

It isnt good enough for the Republican Party to nominate Obama-Lite, he said, prompting the crowd to stand on their feet, and deliver a roaring round of applause.

Gingrich then turned his focus to food stamps, telling the crowd, If you want to have a paycheck instead of food stamps, come join us.

Food stamps are a particularly sensitive issue in Southern Nevada, with more than 330,000 people receiving some assistance through the program.

I dont think food stamps are future for America, theyre a necessary bridge back to getting a job and back to being independent of the government, Gingrich elaborated.

With a son who has been out of work for years, food stamps and unemployment are major issues for valley resident Joyce Lawson. Lawson came unsure of whom she would be voting for at the caucus, but she was impressed with Gingrichs speech.

I think after today I pretty much made up my mind, Lawson said.

Not everyone in attendance was as impressed as Lawson.

Weve got to make sure that Speaker Gingrich does not become president, said Ilan Ben-Meir. Hes a nice guy, hes a smart guy, he shouldnt be president of the United States.

The owner of Stoneys estimates about 500 people came out to Fridays morning rally.

The Gingrich campaign will be holding another event in Las Vegas Friday night. That event starts at 7:30 and will be held at the international church of Las Vegas near Durango and Summerlin Parkway.