“Madigan unveils guide for recalled kid products - Chicago Sun-Times” plus 1 more |
| Madigan unveils guide for recalled kid products - Chicago Sun-Times Posted: 22 Nov 2010 11:25 AM PST November 22, 2010 To keep track of the "dizzying" number of potentially dangerous kid-related products, Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan on Monday unveiled a guide listing all of the items recalled to date in 2010. So far this year, the Consumer Product Safety Commission has issued 147 alerts, announcing recalls for a total of 44 million items — including everything from kids' toys, jewelry, cribs and clothing, Madigan said. "It's a dizzying number — very hard for anybody to keep up with that," Madigan said Monday, unveiling the fourth annual "Play It Safe" guide to recalled products. Madigan suggests parents follow a three-step process to keep their kids safe: First, go to http://www.recalls.gov/ to sign up for instant email notifications of the latest recalls. Second, when you buy a piece of children's furniture or other child gear, you'll be given a card to fill out that lists your basic information. If there's a recall of the item you've bought, the manufacturer is required by law to notify you. Third, use the "Play It Safe" guide to make sure you don't have any of the items listed in your home. For more information, call the attorney general's recall hotline at1-888-414-7678. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php |
| Posted: 22 Nov 2010 10:28 AM PST To make it work, the classes had to be offered at night, and there had to be free child care. The district had to have language teachers willing to work at night and get the word out in the community. Four years in, the district is seeing results. Before, only about five to 10 Hispanic parents would show up at parent advisory meetings, Coffman said. Recently, more than 50 parents, many of them involved in the district's English courses, attended an advisory meeting, she said. The courses, Coffman said, make the parents more comfortable visiting school buildings and interacting with administrators. That helps parents feel at ease about getting more involved, she said. According to the 2010 Illinois School Report Cards, 23.6 percent of high school students in District 218 are Hispanic. At Eisenhower, 43.7 percent of the students are Hispanic and about 20 to 25 percent of those families speak Spanish at home almost exclusively. Deep in the Eisenhower basement, about 40 parents sit in the same classrooms their children were in earlier that day. They pile into the rooms, some of them carrying the residue of a long work day — cream-colored paint specks on their fingers and arms and the odor of fried food lingering on their clothes. Their English speaking, reading and writing levels vary. On a recent night, Castillo sat at a desk staring at a worksheet of questions. What is your favorite kind of movie? Who is your favorite baseball player? "It's never late to learn," he said, after discussing the questions with his classmates. "Even if it's only a little, it helps." Castillo taught himself to speak English by conversing with his neighbors and co-workers and is one of the more advanced students in the class. For 24 years he says he earned a solid living unloading trailers at a warehouse in Bedford Park. Still, a persistent whisper in his head told him he needed more schooling. "The English you learn in the streets is different than what you learn in school," he said. He was raising children, and as they got older, he and his wife, Bertha, couldn't help them with their homework. The couple tried to stay involved in their children's academic lives, but the language barrier made it hard to talk to teachers, other parents and school administrators. "When they (were) in kindergarten, it was easy for me," Castillo said. "I knew what they knew. But when they got to high school, they are learning on a different level. I see their homework. I don't understand it. It just looks hard." That nagging whisper in Castillo's head turned into a loud yell when his oldest son dropped out. When Castillo was laid off over the summer he went looking for classes to take and found the program at his son's high school. He persuaded his wife to join him. "I feel good that he is learning more," said Castillo's 16-year-old son Cristian, who is a junior at Eisenhower. "He asks me what words mean, how to spell them. I see him succeeding, and it pushes me." It's not easy after a day of looking for work, running errands and keeping up a household to make time to study, Castillo said. But he does it. And at times, the experience is humbling, he said. "I'm almost 47. Being out of school for so long, I don't know if (there's) a wall, stopping me from learning, going further," he said. Just being at Eisenhower twice a week has motivated Castillo to want to obtain his high school equivalency diploma. And he's hopeful that might motivate his older son. "If I ever get a GED, I won't brag. But I will say, 'If I can do it, why don't you?'" This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php |
| You are subscribed to email updates from kids clothing - Bing News To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
| Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610 | |
0 comments:
Post a Comment