Hasta La Gadget!

If you just watched Episode 1 of The Parent Pulse Check (www.parentpulsecheck.com), you might be wondering who created it and why. So I’m dedicating this blog post to telling my story.

First of all, I’m not a perfect parent. No one is. I had my son at age 17, while I was still in high school. I know what it means when they say it takes a village to raise a child. I couldn’t have done it without the help and advice of my parents, close friends, and family members there to give me support (and a few extra dollars) along the way.

With a lot of hard work and prayer, I finished high school on time and got my bachelor’s degree at Boston University. From there I landed in Hollywood, as a struggling screenwriter. When my writing career couldn’t pay the bills, I decided to give teaching a try. I loved it, and have never looked back.

I started my teaching career in Compton, California just when N.W.A. was hitting the airwaves, and I taught in the classroom for 11 years – first in Cally and then in my hometown Boston. My teaching career spanned 1st and 2nd grade, then 4th and 5th grade, and I ended with 8th grade. In 11 years I taught elementary school, and middle school social studies, English and drama.

Even though I eventually left the classroom, I couldn’t leave our kids. And never will. I’ve run nonprofit organizations working with middle and high school students for the past 20 years, first with Boston Learning Center and now with BUILD, which is a youth entrepreneurship program. I still live in the same neighborhood of Roxbury, Massachusetts where I was born and raised, and I see our kids and their families in my neighborhood at the supermarket and in church.

I spent this past year working with an amazing team of educators, parents, teachers, school administrators and community activists to write a new Policy for Eliminating Opportunity and Achievement Gaps in the Boston Public Schools. It became a labor of love for me. Actually it became an obsession. Opportunity and achievement gaps have plagued urban school systems for generations. As co-chair for the Task Force, I felt determined to help crack the code for helping students of color, English Language Learners, students with disabilities, and students from low-income families to excel at the highest levels. The Policy we wrote calls attention to the need for more training in culturally and linguistically sustaining and affirming practices, greater accountability at all levels from the district to the classroom, and an increased focus on social emotional learning and restorative justice as opposed to punitive school suspensions. Moreover, the policy also calls for students and parents to play an active role in shaping their educational destiny.

I’ve always admired the strength and grit of our parents who make incredible sacrifices for their children. At the same time, I’ve watched countless parents – who all want the very best for their child – really drop the ball when it comes to education and school.

No one wants to accuse someone of “bad parenting.” But even good parents are guilty of bad parenting sometimes. If it takes a village to raise a child, then WE ARE THE VILLAGE. And when family, friends, neighbors, and teachers stand and watch in silence, who suffers in the end? Children do. Enough. I’m not trying to tell parents how to raise their child, but as an educator who’s been in the trenches for almost 30 years, I feel a responsibility to show parents how to raise a child for school success. When it comes to parenting, there is a bar. It’s time to raise the bar even higher.

If the Parent Pulse Check™ video makes you angry, great. Talk about it. Shout about it. I welcome the dialogue. Government and school districts can’t shape parent behavior. That’s the job of the community – the village. And the more we start to shine a light on good parenting versus bad parenting, the more people will be able to “check themselves” when it comes to raising their kids to thrive in school. The Parent Pulse Check™ is intended to be a wake-up call. Let’s raise the bar together!

Learning expands great souls. ~ Namibian proverb

Shine on,

Ayele Shakur

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Sean Hannity has launched a new attack on conservatives who refuse to support Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.

“Some of you people are acting like sore loser, cry baby, bad sports, pick your toys up and go home, types of people,” he said on his radio show on Tuesday. 

Hannity called rival conservative talk show host Glenn Beck “off the rails,” and said that all of the conservatives who don’t back Trump will “own” the Hillary Clinton presidency, if she wins.

“You own Hillary Clinton. National Review, you own it. Glenn Beck, you own it. Ted Cruz, you own it,” Hannity said. “She wins, I’m blaming all of you.”  

He added: 

“You own it. You own her. You own every dumb thing she’s about to do. I blame you. Got it? I’m going to name names regularly, if she wins. Now, on the flip side of it, if Trump wins and doesn’t keep the promises I mentioned, blame me. I’ll take the blame and responsibility. OK? Gladly. I will proudly pull the lever for Trump.”

The Fox News host and Trump adviser also admitted he goes easier on Republicans. 

“I’m not a journalist,” he said in April. “I’m a talk show host.”

(h/t Mediaite)

Editor’s note: Donald Trump regularly incites political violence and is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist and birther who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims — 1.6 billion members of an entire religion — from entering the U.S.

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PHOENIX (Reuters) – The Arizona sheriff famous for his tough stance on illegal immigration and keeping jail inmates in tents easily won his Republican primary on Tuesday.

Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who is seeking election to a seventh term as the top lawman for the area around Phoenix, had won about 66 percent of the vote, according to online results showing more than half of the vote counted.

Also on the Republican primary ballot were Wayne Baker, a retired deputy sheriff, and Marsha Ann Hill, an ex-sheriff’s volunteer.

Arpaio will likely face Democrat Paul Penzone, who was unopposed in his party’s primary, in the general election. Penzone, a former Phoenix police officer who is expected to present a tough challenge to Arpaio in November, lost to the longtime sheriff in 2012 by six percentage points.

Arpaio, 84, was expected to win his primary despite a judge’s request that criminal contempt charges be brought against him stemming from a 2007 racial profiling case where he was found to have violated the constitutional rights of Latino motorists.

The investigation and possible prosecution was turned over to the U.S. Justice Department last week. It was not clear when a decision would be made.

Arpaio, who styles himself as America’s toughest sheriff, said his looming legal battles apparently had no effect on the primary race.

”I think the people understand that they should not believe everything they hear,” Arpaio told Reuters in a telephone interview. “They support me as they always have and that feels good.”

Saban has called on Arpaio to resign, saying the sheriff has “soiled his badge” and made himself ineffective as a lawman.

Saban declined comment on the election results through a spokesman, adding that he would issue a statement on Wednesday morning.

Arpaio, along with three others, could face incarceration and fines if convicted of any criminal charges. Arpaio and his second-in-command, Gerard Sheridan, already have been cited and admitted to civil contempt.

The charges center on unlawful traffic stops and detentions by deputies of Latino drivers for 18 months after the judge ordered them to cease.

Opponents also have targeted the profiling lawsuit’s high cost to the county, which will have spent an estimated $54 million on the case by next summer.

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WASHINGTON ― Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) beat back a primary opponent Tuesday and the best efforts of the establishment GOP to take down another hard-line conservative.

Gosar, a member of the House Freedom Caucus, defeated pastor and local city councilman Ray Strauss. The challenger had received last-minute aid from a number of outside super PACs that spent hundreds of thousands of dollars against the incumbent.

In particular, Gosar withstood the campaign of the Right Way Super PAC, which is run by a former Republican House leadership staffer. As of Aug. 26, Right Way had spent $274,000 against Gosar ― and just $23,000 explicitly for Strauss.

Right Way’s biggest contributor was the Western Growers Association, an agribusiness trade group that advocates for immigration reform, in part, to aid farmers trying to bring in foreign laborers.

“Mr. Gosar chose to denigrate our members and dismiss their legitimate concerns. We find that unacceptable,” said Dave Puglia, executive vice president of the growers association. “We don’t expect every member of Congress to agree with us all the time, but we do expect legislators to try to work constructively with us to solve difficult problems affecting the livelihoods of their constituents.”

Super PACs that back the GOP establishment were heartened in early August when Rep. Tim Huelskamp (R-Kan.), another member of the Freedom Caucus, lost his primary after a wave of outside spending. Gosar, who like Huelskamp twice voted to oust then-Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), became the next target of those groups.

But where the attacks against Huelskamp proved successful this year, they seemed not to gain as much traction against Gosar.

Still, even the effort to defeat another incumbent congressman highlights the deteriorating relationship between the establishment GOP and hard-line conservatives.

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Tsukumo Japan has once again expanded its line of gaming PCs by launching the G-GEAR (Seventh Dark). Recommended for playing X-Legend Entertainment’s action RPG ‘Seventh Dark’, this mid-end gaming PC is built with an Intel Core i5-6500 processor, an Intel H110 Express Chipset and an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 graphics card.

Furthermore, the system comes with an 8GB PC4-17000 DDR4 RAM, a 240GB SanDisk SSD and a 500W 80PLUS BRONZE power supply.

For operating system, the G-GEAR (Seventh Dark) runs on Windows 10 Home 64-bit OS. Adopting a mini PC case, the Tsukumo Japan G-GEAR (Seventh Dark) is available now for 99,800 Yen (about $980). [Product Page]

The post Play Seventh Dark On Tsukumo Japan’s Latest Gaming PC appeared first on TechFresh, Consumer Electronics Guide.