Inspiration 11-27-2015

Teacher Or Predator?

Your child comes home with this picture of her teacher. What do you do?

A 7-year-old Colorado girl came home with a note from the teacher. The note, according to the girl's father, used nicknames and included a photo of the male teacher...........sticking his tongue out.

"As I read over the letter, it was concerning since it had the teacher's face and he was using pet names to refer to her," Cary Reed, the child's father, said.

"We felt it was inappropriate and grooming behaviors," said the dad.

Reed told the news station that his daughter, who is a second-grader at Aurora Academy Charter School, showed him the note from the fourth-grade teacher. The note reportedly included the male teacher calling the 7-year-old nicknames like "stinky butt" and "crazy head" and included the teacher's photo.

The teacher, who is not even Reed's daughter's teacher, gave the girl a second note that reportedly asked for the young girl's friendship. Reed says that he'd seen enough and went to the school to speak with officials. Reed said he was shocked to learn that after he spoke with members of the school, no disciplinary actions were taken against the teacher. According to Reed, school officials spoke with the teacher, who told them he wouldn't do it again.

"Given the concerning nature of the situation, we just wanted [the] school to be a little bit more proactive," Reed said.

The teacher's name has not been released, since he has not been charged with a crime.

Reed received a letter from the school noting that the teacher "understands his behavior was inappropriate. He assures me it will not happen again." 

Parents, pay attention to your children, and pay closer attention to those around your children. Sometimes the people who seem the safest are actually the most dangerous.

PR

Just When You Thought You Heard It All News (11-21-2015)

A driver's ed teacher in.....wait for it,....FLORIDA is accused of drinking and driving after he crashed his truck into a ditch, authorities say.

Police arrested Richard Bull, 51, after he allegedly drove his Dodge Ram into a construction site in the parking lot of a Lee County McDonald's.

Authorities say that Bull's blood alcohol level was 159, nearly twice the legal limit.

During conversations with police, Bull allegedly claimed that he was not behind the wheel at the time of the accident.

In their arrest report, deputies say Bull said it was someone named "Josh" that was driving the truck when it crashed. He said "Josh" ran from the scene before deputies arrived.

Yeah, that's normally what imaginary friends do when you're in trouble.

Bull has taught driver's education at Riverdale High School for 10 years, Amity Chandler, spokeswoman for the school district.

"We can confidently say he won't be teaching driver's education," Chandler said.

Bull is charged with driving under the influence and property damage.

In his Christmas letter to Santa, a little boy named Rory Smith wanted to tell the man at the North Pole he'd like the video game "Grand Theft Auto V" for the upcoming holiday, but made his intentions extremely clear when he explained in his list, "i Just want to play with the cars (not the hookers)."

The highly controversial game features the use of violence and gameplay elements that involve graphic depictions of prostitution. Last year, retailers Target and Kmart stopped selling the game in its Australian stores due to customer complaints about its portrayal of violence toward women. 

This little fella is also apparently pretty classy, adding, "And i want a blue suit with a red pee-wee Herman tie." 

Rory's holiday list went viral when, with his permission, his sister Olivia snapped a picture of it and sent it to the popular radio show in Ireland. The radio show team then posted it on Facebook. That image now has more than 1480 likes and has 570 shares.

An argument over the meaning of all-you-can-eat has led to assault charges for a woman in suburban Chicago.

Police in Oak Lawn, Illinois, said 27-year-old Natasha West flipped out at a Denny's restaurant after the waitress toldher she couldn't share her $4 all you can eat flap jacks with the other people at the table, according to The Smoking Gun.

None of the blows landed on the waitress, according to police, but West and her party allegedly then left the restaurant without paying, only to stop to kick a door several times while on her way out, according to the Chicago Tribune.

The restaurant manager called police, who tracked down West and her dinner crew in a car a short time later. They were taken back to the Denny's where restaurant employees positively identified them.

One of West's friends paid for the food. West was arrested and charged with assault and damage to property.

But that wig was the real crime!!!!!

Jail records at the Cook County Jail show she is no longer in custody.

PR

Pulled Out of Class For Her Hair.......

Tolerance, understanding and empathy are in short supply these days. People demonize that which they do not understand, criticize that which seems foreign to them, and seek to destroy those who disagree with them. But children should never be subjected to such harsh scrutany. Especially not by those who's job it is to educate them. 

An eighth-grader was reduced to tears and utter embarrassment last week when she was sent to the principal’s office for simply wearing her natural hair.

The Black student who wished to remain unidentified, says she was pulled from class after wearing her hair in a crochet braided style. She was sent to the office of Tracy Barnes, the principal at Amesbury Middle School, in Toronto, Canada. Barnes, who is also Black, told the student her hair was “too poofy” and not professional. She wasn’t allowed to return to class until her hair was pulled back into a ponytail.

The student told her mother Teresa Quansah and aunt Kaysie Quansah.

Her aunt posted a message on Facebook about the incident and explained why her niece should love her natural locks.

“I didn’t see what the big deal was about my hair because it wasn’t bothering anybody,” the young girl told City News. “I was just doing my work, so I didn’t see why I had to be pulled out of the class.”

The family admitted they were shocked when they found out a Black woman would tell a child her hair wasn’t professional looking. But as Thurgood Marshall once said, "All my skin folk ain't my kin folk." The child’s aunt believes European beauty standards were drilled into Barnes, making it difficult for her to allow the student to wear her natural hair. The family also claimed the student was reprimanded in the past over her hair.

Toronto District School Board says that hairstyles aren’t in the school’s dress code and they plan to meet with the child’s family to discuss any of their concerns.

PR

Tragedy In Paris: What About Black People?

Over the past few days I've noticed a slow unraveling on social media. People asking why African-American's are supporting Paris in the wake of Friday's terror attack in which 129 people were murdered in cold blood, when the majority of us don't support our own communities. But the question is. What do they mean by "support"? Have we become so desensitized, dehumanized, and bitter as black people that we cannot feel empathy or sympathy for anyone else?

Hasty comparisons of the terrorist attacks in Paris and the murder rate in black communities across the country are rediculous. First of all, the murders in the black community are not terrorist attacks planned and executed to killed numerous people based on a false principal. The murders in the black community are perpetrated from one to another based on self hatred and ignorance. We have become our own worst enemies having to fear our next door neighbor's, childhood friends, and classmates. The best way that we can support our communities is by raising our children to have self-worth, intelligence, understanding and an appreciation for humanity.

Just because I pray for that people in Paris, it does not mean that I no longer feel anger or no longer care about police brutality. Just because I pray for Paris that does not mean that I am not keenly aware of the devastation that has been and still is happening in the black community. 

All it means is that my mind, my heart, and my soul have the capacity to feel for anyone. Even those who are not a part of my community.

PR

Just When You Thought You Heard It All News (11-14-2015)

Customs officials in Saudi Arabia say they've cracked a case, and then some. They caught smugglers trying to bring illicit cans of beer through the kingdom by disguising them as Pepsi.

In a statement, customs officials say they intercepted 48,000 cans of beer moving through the al-Batha border crossing with the United Arab Emirates.

In video posted Wednesday on Twitter, the customs officials show an officer using a box cutter to open a wrapped 24-pack of the fake Pepsi only to find the green-and-white Heineken cans beneath it.

Drinking or possessing alcohol is a criminal offense in the ultra-conservative Sunni kingdom of Saudi Arabia

Police in Washington, D.C., are asking the public's help to identify two women accused of sexually assaulting a man by twerking against him and fondling his genitalia.......

The incident happened Oct. 7 around 4 p.m. at a store on the 1700 block of New York Avenue.

Surveillance video shows a man talking on the phone while getting money from an ATM. 

In the footage, two African-American women in short dresses come into the store. One of the women, wearing a silver dress, rubs her butt against the front of the man while purchasing something.

When the victim backs away, her friend, in a short red dress makes several attempts to cozy up to the man, including trying to touch his pants inseam.

It appears the man did not know the women and had no interest in getting better acquainted.

The two women left the store, but police are now trying to find them.

The twerking might seem like fun and games to some, but DC police believe the two women should be charged withthird degree sexual assault.

That charge includes inappropriate touching and “involves actual force, threats putting the person in fear of death, bodily injury or kidnapping, or rendering the person unconscious,” according to WTVR.com.

Anyone who recognizes either of the two persons of interest is asked to contact DC police. 

Yeah......because twerking is the worse thing happening in "chocolate city" right now!

And you thought you were smart?!

Kenwood Academy's valedictorian, Arianna Alexander, wants to go to college to learn about business. As it turns out, she has a number of options.

"It was a lot to take in. I received emails, letters. It was just like, 'Come here, come here!' They were bombarding me with all this information," Arianna said.

Arianna hails from Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. She graduated with a 5.1 grade point average on a 4.0 scale.

She was accepted to 26 universities, including six Ivy League schools. Her scholarship offers total more than $3 million.

"I feel like it means I can afford college and I don't have to worry about it. I feel like that's an issue for a lot of people my age," Arianna said.

Her father encouraged her, after another Kenwood student was offered more than $1 million in scholarships a few years ago.

"I planted the seed in Arianna's mind that you can do the same thing. So when the process got started and a million was achieved, let's go for two. I said let's go for three and she did it," said Pierre Alexander, Arianna's father.

Arianna is the baby of the family. She has three older siblings.

"It was a big blessing, because I've already put three through college. Now I don't have to worry too much about her," Pierre said.

Arianna has also picked a school, thanks to Paul Brush, one of her teachers. She plans to attend University of Pennsylvania.

"He said, 'Do you know about the Wharton School of Business?' I said, 'I have no idea what you're talking about,'" Arianna said.

"As teachers, we have a big moment to play with the lives that we have in our classrooms," Brush said.

Her family has also influenced her. Arianna recounted her dad's words: "Work hard, pray on it, and don't give up. No matter what happens, you did your best."

"My wife and I have always stressed to her, if you do your best, you will be the best. So we try to make sure she upholds to that," Pierre said.

"So as long as you work hard, I feel like there is always a way for you," Arianna said.

After all, there is still more to achieve besides high school.

"When she graduates from Penn, that will be a second goal. We expect bigger and better things for her," he said.

Arianna said she wants to be an entrepreneur and plans to own four restaurants. She's already working on the menus.

PR

Giving His Baby Away....

Christopher Emanuel first met his girlfriend in the fall of 2012, when they were both operating forklifts at a warehouse in Trenton, South Carolina. She was one of a handful of women on the job. She was white and he was black. At first she ignored him, and Emanuel saw it as a challenge. It took multiple attempts to get her phone number. He says he “wasn’t lonely, but everybody wants somebody. Nothing wrong with being friends.”

Their relationship began in February 2013, after months of friendship. When her parents were away for the summer, his girlfriend invited Emanuel to stay at her house for a while. And in May, she took a home pregnancy test, which came out positive.

Emanuel says they were happy. They made a doctor’s appointment and began to plan a life together. But his girlfriend’s parents were still out of town, and she had yet to tell them about the pregnancy or the young man sleeping at their house. They settled into a routine, sharing the cost of doctor’s appointments and attending them together. The baby was due in mid-February of 2014, and when a sonogram revealed that it was going to be a girl, they decided to name her Skylar. Over the summer, Emanuel says he helped his girlfriend apply for Medicaid and for time off under the Family Leave and Medical Act. He still had not met any of her family which should have been a troubling sign. But they continued. 

One evening in August, Emanuel says his girlfriend called him, crying and hysterical. Her mother had finally returned from vacation and a neighbor had told her about the pregnancy. She had confronted her daughter and, according to Emanuel, told her, “You’re pregnant by a nigger. You should be ashamed of yourself.” 

Emanuel’s girlfriend repeatedly promised him that she would never put their child up for adoption. But he couldn’t erase the possibility from his mind. So he posed the question to her, “If you ever had to give your baby up for adoption, you’re going to give it to me, right?” She said she would, but insisted that she had no plans to give the baby away. He says they made plans for her to move in with him permanently at the end of the year.

Not long after, Emanual introduced his girlfriend to his best friend Chelsea Thomason. After the encounter, Thomason started researching paternity rights on her own because she felt as if Emanuals girlfriend was acting "off" and distant. That’s when she learned about the South Carolina Responsible Father Registry, which, according to the state’s Department of Social Services, “gives a man who has fathered a child with a woman he is not married to the right to be notified when an adoption or a termination of parental rights action occurs.” Without the registry, his girlfriend could put the baby up for adoption without telling Emanuel about it. Registering with the state wouldn’t guarantee him custody of Skylar, but at least he’d be notified and have a say in court.

Even though Emanual was well aware of his girlfriends fear of being cut off by her parents, he was reluctant to add his name to the registry because he could not fathom such a betrayal. But at his friends urging he did.

Until 1972, single men like Emanuel had no rights to children they’d fathered outside of marriage. The Supreme Court’s ruling in Stanley v. Illinois changed that. The case centered on Peter Stanley and his partner, Joan, who had lived intermittently with Peter for 18 years. Stanley had fathered three children with Joan during that time. Upon her death, the state took their three children and gave them to court-appointed guardians. In Illinois, as in other states, the father’s non-marital status was taken as a sign that he was uninterested in his children and lacked the capacity to care for them on his own. Because the law categorically denied due process to unmarried fathers, the Court ruled it unconstitutional. 

In September, Emanuel’s girlfriend told him that her mother wanted to meet him. This seemed like progress to him. It had been a month since her mother had learned about the pregnancy, and Emanuel foolishly believed that  he would finally have a chance to win his girlfriend’s parents over and articulate his intentions toward his girlfriend and the baby. But she kept pushing the introduction back, telling him her parents were “out of town” or “busy,” Emanuel said.

Three weeks passed before they set an actual date. When Emanuel and his mother, Natasha Emanuel, came in the door, his girlfriend’s father wasn’t there. But Emanuel embraced the mother and she didn’t recoil. They all sat down and he explained his plan for supporting his girlfriend and Skylar. Then, as Natasha recalled, the mother interrupted Emanuel: “You may be a nice fella, but [my daughter] knows it’s forbidden to date a nigger.”

As you can probably guess from then on the relationship between Emanual and his girlfriend was doomed from then on. Despite his best efforts to continue going to doctors appointments with her, she stopping communicating with him and her once frequent visits stopped. 

Months later, a private investigator showed up at Emanuel’s home and served him with notice papers. “An adoption proceeding was filed in Greenville County on February 19, 2014, and you are the putative father of a Caucasian/African-American female child born at Aiken Hospital on February 11, 2014,” the papers stated. The notice did not give any specifics about the adoption—he didn’t know who had his daughter, or where they were. Just the day before, his girlfriend had texted, “The baby is still in my belly.”

Emanual filed a notice objecting to the adoption proceedings, and found out that his daughters mother had been meeting with a couple who was interested in adopting his daughter for several months before she was born.

After lengthy court proceedings Emanual was awarded custody of his daughter, provducing a long string of text messages in which her mother did in fact promise him that he could have custody of the child in the event that she decided to put her up for adoption. 

PR

Police Handcuffed a 7 Year Old.

There was a time not long ago when we could send our children to school and rest assured that they would be safe. We knew they would learn and we knew they would grow. Of course there is the occasional bully. But what do we do when those bullies are law enforcement?

A 7 year-old Flint, Mich., boy with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder was at an after-school program Oct. 12 when his mother says she received a call telling her that her son was in handcuffs and that she needed to come pick him up.

When Chrystal McCadden arrived at the Brownell STEM Academy she found him handcuffed, and demanded that the handcuffs be taken off of 7 year old Caden. McCadden said that the officer who placed the handcuffs on her son told her he didn't have the key to remove them.

"'You put my son in handcuffs and you don't have the key?'" McCadden said. "What sense does that make?"

Police say they received an urgent call from the after-school program reporting that there was a student who was not only a threat to other kids but to himself.

According to a police statement, "An officer was dispatched to Brownell STEM Academy in response to an urgent call for immediate assistance with a child who appeared intent on injuring himself, as well as repeatedly assaulting others," 

Flint Community Schools told the local media that it was working with the police to get to the bottom of exactly what took place at the after-school program.

But schools should never have to collaborate with the police to calm a 7 year old.

While it is unclear how the handcuffs were taken off Caden, McCadden is still furious that her little boy was ever handcuffed in the first place. "He don't deserve to be in no handcuffs," she said "He ain't in here with no knife. He ain't in here with no gun."

PR

Just When You Thought You Heard It All News (11-7-2015)

A nutty Austrian woman shredded her 1.02 million fortune in spite just because she didn't want her family to have it.

According to German-language newspaper Kurier, the 85-year-old woman neatly cut the money and some savings account books before leaving them on a nursing home bed, days before she died.

Authorities theorize she turned her fortune into the world's most expensive confetti to upset her family, though the reason why is unclear.

Prosecutors can be of only limited help to her successors.

"The damage of the money in the woman's property is not a criminal matter, so we have not begun any investigation," Austrian state prosecutor Erich Habitzl said

Luckily for the heirs, Austria's central bank (OeNB) should be able to replace the cash.

Friedrich Hammerschmidt, deputy head of the OeNB cash division, told Kurier, "If the heirs can only find shreds of money and if the origin of the money is assured, then of course it can all be replaced."

"If we didn't pay out the money then we would be punishing the wrong people," he said.

And this weeks crazy Florida person is....

this dad, who let his young daughter leak her creativity beyond the page and give him a permanent tattoo!

Brad "bob-tat" Bellomo is the owner of 3rd Eye Tattoo in Largo. His 4-year-old daughter Chloe often accompanies him to the shop and has been drawing since a young age. 

"I’ve been teaching her about [tattooing]," Bellomo said, "so that was her first try." 

Chloe had been asking her dad if she could give him a tattoo, so they decided she should draw a picture of a strawberry, as a nod to a nickname Chloe has for her dad.

"I thought that would be a good choice," he said "Still kind of cute, and has a lot of meaning."

Bellomo posted this photo to his Facebook page and it instantly went viral, but was met with lots of mixed reviews. 

Hmmm, I wonder if she's also allowed to drive a truck or operate a chainsaw?

This apple didn’t fall far from the tree!

A mind-boggling photograph uploaded to Reddit on Tuesday by user Jschu2711, shows what happened when a dad and son dressed up as each other for Halloween.

"This literally made my brain shut down for a second," wrote one reddit user.

"I don't like this," wrote a netizen on the image sharing site Imgur. "It’s too good."

All the some had to do was wait 10 years and he would have turned into the spitting image of his father anyway.

PR

"We Want Officer Slam Back!"

Last night I read an article about some of the students from Spring Valley High School in South Carolina protesting and staging a walk out to get school resource officer Ben Fields his job back. For those of you who haven't turned your TV, radio, computer, or smart phone on in the past couple of days, Bens Fields is the "man" seen in the infamous viral video knocking a teenage girl on the floor and then dragging her across the floor because she refused to follow his orders. Seems pretty cut and dry to me, another overzealous white officer with a history of violence uses unnecessary force against an African-American child and gets punished for it. Sound simple, seems simple as far as I'm concerned. So then, why do these children want "Officer Slam" back. Oh, I forgot to mention that "officer slam" is Fields nickname. For good reason I assume. 

Do these children know something that we don't? Are they ignorant? Or was there more to the story than what was seen on tape. To be perfectly honest I really don't care. I'm convinced that a white girl would have never been treated that way, and even if she was it would still be absolutely wrong. But I also believe that if she were a white teenage girl there would be little if any discussion at all in reference to her provoking Field's reaction. With that being said, although my opinion has not changed, as I was writing this, I saw some disturbing footage that could quite possibly provoke a violent reaction. Footage that prows that if children are not disciplined they become little monsters who reek havoc in the classroom.

https://www.facebook.com/HollywoodShawtyz/videos/970155869689097/

PR