Billydteacher's Blog
No baked good for Nebraska school kids thanks to Mrs. Obama
Teachers credited with saving students in Okla
FBI Kills Man Connected to Boston Bombing
The Faith of a child ( powerful video )
Reform the immigration bill
Brutal beating documented by human rights group
Eagle Scout urges BSA: Don’t abandon your values
And from yesterday…
Pray, pray , pray…
HAMPTON, Neb. — Blame the broccoli. Blame the mandarin oranges. Blame all their cousins, from apples to yams, for removing Mrs. Penner’s butter bars from the school lunch counter.
Then blame Mrs. Obama for removing Mrs. Penner.
So goes the thinking in this no-stoplight village of 175 people about 20 minutes northwest of York.
When the new federal school nutrition mandates went into effect this year, championed by first lady Michelle Obama, fresh-baked brownies, cookies and other sugary goodies disappeared from the school menu. And Sharon Penner, who has been feeding schoolchildren here for 43 years, decided it was a sign from above to retire.
Friday will be the last school lunch the 70-year-old prepares for the Hampton Hawks.
Mrs. Penner is hanging up her apron.
“She is?” asked an incredulous sixth-grader named Treavar Pekar. He stopped cold from scrubbing some of the six tables in the small cafeteria when I broke the news after lunch.
“NOOOOO!!!!!”
That about sums up the community response.
Superintendent Holly Herzberg halfheartedly put an ad in the local paper saying she wants someone “just like Sharon.”
Marc Peters, a 47-year-old agronomist at the co-op in town, bemoaned Mrs. Penner’s departure, saying he ate her cooking for the 12 years he attended Hampton schools.
“If you had a bad day at school,” he said, “at least you have a decent lunch to go to.”
That remains true, said school secretary Sharon Klute, whose mother was lunch lady before Sharon Penner took over. Klute said Mrs. Penner goes above and beyond the kitchen — helping with catered events, making an extra pan of caramel rolls for the teachers, rooting on the students in all their activities.
“We’re never going to find anybody that’s like Sharon,” Klute said, “unless my mom comes back in. And she’s 85.”
It’s not hard to see why Sharon Penner is popular in Hampton. For starters, she bakes cinnamon rolls for chili day, makes fresh bread several times a week and has made just about every treat you can imagine, including homemade root-beer candy.
( Hampton lunch lady ready to hang up apron )
MOORE, Okla. (AP) — The principal’s voice came on over the intercom at Plaza Towers Elementary School: A severe storm was approaching and students were to go to the cafeteria and wait for their parents to pick them up.
But before all of the youngsters could get there, the tornado alarm sounded.
The plan changed quickly.
“All the teachers started screaming into the room and saying, ‘Get into the hallway! We don’t want you to die!’ and stuff like that,” said sixth-grader Phaedra Dunn. “We just took off running.”
In the moments that followed, some of the children at Plaza Towers Elementary would, in fact, die. At least seven were killed by the twister Monday afternoon. Others would crawl out of the rubble, bloodied and bruised, utterly terrified.
The tornado that devastated this Oklahoma City suburb of 56,000 people destroyed Plaza Towers and also slammed Briarwood Elementary, where all the children appear to have survived. Students and parents recounted stories Tuesday of brave teachers who sheltered their pupils, in some cases by herding them into a closet and a restroom amid the fear and panic.
After the tornado alarm went off, students at Plaza Towers scrambled into the halls. But the halls — some of which were within the view of windows — did not appear safe enough.
Sixth-grader Antonio Clark said a teacher took him and as many other youngsters as possible and shoved them into the three-stall boys’ bathroom.
“We were all piled in on each other,” the 12-year-old said. Another teacher wrapped her arms around two students and held Antonio’s hand.
( Read the rest of this story )
A head of a pro-family organization has joined a coalition of conservative grassroots organizations and tea party groups opposing the “Gang of Eight” immigration bill.
The group calls itself “The Coalition against S.744,” the 844-page immigration bill introduced by the bipartisan Gang of Eight. The Coalition’s members believe the bill – which is currently headed to the full Senate – is problematic to conservatives for several reasons, including the fact that it rewards millions of illegal immigrants with amnesty before securing the borders – “thus ensuring future illegal immigration,” they say.
“Reforming our immigration system is an important priority,” reads an open letter from the Coalition. “But S. 744 is such a defective measure that it would do more harm than good.” The letter goes on to describe the legislation as “bloated and unwieldy,” an unneeded government expansion that creates new bureaucracies, and “shot through with earmarks for politically connected interest groups.”
( Immigration reform bill ‘bloated,’ says Coalition )
Christian human rights organization ChinaAid is reporting the violent attack on a father of three by Chinese family planning officials.
ChinaAid identified the beating victim as Zhang Futao, a farmer from Jiangsu province. He suffered a fractured skull and a brain hemorrhage at the hands of at least 20 family planning officials on May 15.
“More than 20 one-child policy, family-planning officials invaded their home and violently beat him,” says ChinaAid spokesman Mark Shan.
( More )
