We all have heard stories about teachers going “above and beyond” for their students… but two teachers at Frisco Middle School have really taken it to the next level.

Last week seventh grader Kylee Shea collapsed while she was walking to physical education class.  “I sat down, then I fell over, and I don’t remember anything after that..."

Her doctors have diagnosed her with a heart arrhythmia, meaning her heart was quivering rapidly but wasn’t pumping blood… eventually her heart stopped.  Kylee’s classmates rushed to get help, and teachers Brent Reese and Kristen Goodgion responded.  They calmly performed CPR and used a portable AED machine to restart Kylee’s
heart.

Survival for a child whose heart stops outside a hospital setting is less than 3%!!!  Thanks to her teachers, Kylee was one of the lucky ones.

Pilgrim has AED machines located in several places around the building, there is one outside the Mr. Miller’s office, one outside the Gym, and one located outside the Social Studies Department.

The Occupy Wall Street Movement, which began in New York City, has inspired similar protests in over 100 cities around the country and has reached the international community as well. According the their website, The Occupy Wall Street Movement is, " a leaderless resistance movement with people of many colors, genders and political persuasions. The one thing we all have in common is that We Are The 99% that will no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the 1%."

The movement claims that it has taken its motivation from the "Arab Spring" movement of the past year in order to
encourage people to join their nonviolent revolution.

This past week, Providence became the latest city to organize protests. Occupy Providence has drawn hundreds of protestors to Burnside Park, many who say they will stay as long as it takes for their voices to be heard. Dozens of tents have gone up, and thus far the protestors have remained peaceful and no arrests have been made. 

Like the Occupy Wall Street protestors, Occupy Providence does not have a clear agenda or goal in mind, they operate under the vague principle that that will continue to perform acts of peaceful civil disobedience until there is a society built, "for, by, and of the people."




 

Reigniting the abortion debate in America, yesterday the House of Representatives passed the Protect Life Act by a vote of 251 in favor and 170 against.  According to the provisions of the bill, federal funding will be bared for health plans that provide abortion services. 

The Protect Life Act, was sponsored by Pennsylvania Republican Joe Pitts, had overwhelming support from House Republicans as only two of the 242 Republican members voted against it, while only fifteen of the 192 Democrats
voted in favor of the bill.

According to Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, “women can die on the floor and health care providers do not have to intervene.”  Democrats also accused Republican leaders on spending time on this bitterly divisive issue while ignoring the nation’s top priorities.  California Democrat Barbara Lee claims that “Instead of focusing on jobs,
Republicans are continuing to wage their war on women.”

Republicans leaders claim that Pelosi's comments are both  irresponsible and misleading.  Republicans further argue that they also passed three bills aimed at job creation this week and the abortion bill is part of their "Pledge to America" platform they ran under in last year’s elections.  Republican Representative Virginia Foxx
from North Carolina said the nation’s leaders have a moral responsibility to stop the “killing of unborn babies.”

President Obama said that if the bill passes through the Senate (which is not likely as the Democrats hold a majority) he will veto the bill.

We all know that bullying in America's schools has been a major topic of discussion for the five years or so. There have been television specials, magazine articles, and assemblies aimed at educating us on the dangers of bullying. Pilgrim has tried to end bullying largely with the "Challenge Day" and "Project RESPECT" programs.

In their most recent issue, "Teaching Tolerance" has argued that sometimes the most dangerous bullies are not the kid teasing you in gym class or in the lunch line, but the person in front of the classroom. A recent incident in Tennessee has created a controversy concerning teacher bullies... below is an excerpt from the "Teaching Tolerance" article...

His teacher had urged him all year to be more organized, but he still had trouble keeping his work area neat. The boy’s papers and other materials were often scattered around, and when his classmates were ready to move on to the next activity, he lagged behind—trying to corral the clutter.

On this particular day, the teacher had lost her patience. According to a district report, she chastised her student:“Your area looks like a pig sty. Piggy, piggy! Oink, oink!”Exactly what happened next has been difficult to pin down. But by the time another teacher entered the classroom, the boy had been surrounded by his classmates, who taunted him with“oinks” and other pig sounds. Alone in the center, the boy was sobbing.

This was a Kindergarten class. I'm curious as to your thoughts on this... do students truly feel bullied by their teachers?

U.S. federal agents have apparently thwarted a terror plan in Washington D.C. targeted against the Saudi Arabian ambassador to the United States.  The two would be assassins, face charges of conspiracy and attempt to use a weapon of mass destruction.  One man has been captured and has admitted his role in the plot; the other man is still at large. What is more disturbing is that the terror plan appears to be officially sanctioned and supported by factions within the Iranian government itself.

Iran categorically denies claims that its government is in any way associated with terrorists, releasing the following
statement,

“The Iranian nation seeks a world free from terrorism and considers the current U.S. warmongering and
propaganda machine against Iran as a threat not just against itself but to the peace and stability in the Persian Gulf region.”

The U.S. State Department says that this plot could signal a significant indication of a new, more aggressive policy of Iran against the U.S. and its potential allies.  The U.S. State Department has issued warnings and travel advisories to all U.S. citizens outside the country saying that all Americans should be on guard when not on U.S. soil. 

The advisory expires in January of 2012.

Once again we are reminded how lucky we are to live in a country which values freedom as a top priority...

 An Iranian court has sentenced an actress to 90 lashes for her role in a film portraying social alienation, drug use, and political oppression in Iran.  In the film, Marzieh Vafamehr appears with a shaved head and no headscarf; she also explores issues of cultural oppression in Iran.

The film is called My Tehran for Sale, and its leading actress Marzieh Vafamehr was arrested in July and received her sentence this past weekend.  

This is not the first time Iran’s justice system has provoked controversy.  Last year for example, Iranian courts approved a, “death-by-stoning” sentence for Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani , a woman accused of adultery. 
Her sentence was stayed, but only after a global outcry from international human-rights groups.  In 2005 two gay teenagers were stoned to death after being outed, and two gay men received the same sentence later that same year.

There are movements within Iran to reform its legal system, but these are small, grass route campaigns and are normally met with harsh governmental penalties once identified.

Part of the fun of high school sports is the local rivalries which exist between schools.  It always means a little bit more if you can beat Vets on Thanksgiving than it does to beat Coventry in mid October… however a student from Ohio has taken things a bit too far.

 In one of the most disturbing incidents on record, a 16 year old student from Court House High School is facing potential charges after he stabbed twenty-seven students from McLain High School.

Following a football game in which Court House High was victorious over McLain, the 16 year old, who was ineligible to play, lined up with his teammates on the fifty yard line in order to shake hands with the opposing team.  The student apparently had some sort of small nail or tack in his receiver’s glove, and while he went through the line high-fiving the other team, he punctured the hands of twenty-seven players.

All twenty-seven students were forced to go to the hospital and get tetanus shots. It is unclear what is going to happen to the offending student.  He could be facing twenty-seven counts of assault for his actions, and it is possible that he could be charged as an adult.

This past Sunday, two divers were left behind by RJ Diving Ventures Inc, the diving tour company they hired to take them scuba diving three miles off Key Biscayne in Florida. The divers surfaced after an hour and a half to find that the boat which had brought them out was gone.  The divers floated at sea for more than two hours before a passing boat saw them and brought them to safety shortly before sundown.

The tour company says that they are investing how the operators of the boat did not notice they were short two divers.  According to experienced divers, leaving people behind like this is rare, but it does happen, and they claim that normally it is due to somebody not doing roll call at the end of the dive.  

Matt Stout, owner of Underseas Sports in Fort Lauderdale said that he has been in the business for over 23 years and that he can remember just a couple of occasions of this happening.

A couple of occasions! Is it just me or does just one example of leaving divers behind seem like too many?

Prosecutors in Germany have reopened hundreds of investigations of former Nazi death camp guards.  The decision to reopen the cases has come following the May 2011 conviction of a retired U.S. autoworker John Demjanjuk.  Demjanjuk was a guard at the Sobibor death camp in Nazi occupied Poland.  He was found guilty for
complicity in the murder of almost 28,000 Jews.

Officials in Berlin say that immediately following the war, only the “higher-ups” became the targets for prosecution, however as time passed it became clear that there were thousands of Nazis guilty of Crimes against humanity and just because these people were not  “Mengele or Himmler they shouldn’t be let off the hook.”  

Realistically, there are probably about 80 Nazi era criminals still alive, and they are all in their 80’s.  Probably only 40 of them are well enough to stand trial.  According to officials in Berlin, these people need to be brought to
justice regardless of their age.

The Nazi death camps were guilty of killing upwards of 9 million people during the Holocaust, 6 million of whom were Jews.

We have all heard the argument that violent video games cause kids and teens to become more violent in real life. 
However, a man in Plymouth, England may have proven that adults are not exactly immune to the potential violent repercussions of these addictive video games.

Mark Bradford, a 46-year-old father of three admitted to court officials he went to the home of a nearby 13 year old boy after the boy ‘shot’his “Call of Duty: Black Ops” character. He stormed over to the boy’s house, grabbed the boy’s throat and started to choke him.  According to Bradford,

“It wasn’t malice.  I just grabbed him.  I’ve seen him since and apologized.  The injuries weren’t that bad but I do
regret it.” WHAT!?!?!?  Bradford’s attorney said that he “just lost it” but that he was not a danger to society.

The boy’s mother had this to say,  

“It’s pathetic that a grown man would attack a defenseless child like this.  If you can’t handle losing to a child you shouldn’t be playing games.”

This never happened when we used to play Donkey Kong…