BOSTON — A grieving father is calling for legislation at the Massachusetts State House aimed at preventing child drownings.
 
In 2007, 4-year-old Chrisitian Frechette drowned in a lake while attending a town-run day camp in Sturbridge. His body was found in just over 3 feet of water, in an area that was supposed to be off-limits for young and inexperienced swimmers. He was not wearing a life jacket.
 
Christian's father, Derek Frechette, and town officials disagree over the details of what exactly happened that day. But Frechette is sure of one thing: Life jackets should be available for kids at summer camp.
 
"You know, I can’t have other kids drown. My son’s memory has to be for something else. He put me here to do this. I have to make sure I save other children," he said.
 
Frechette is pushing for a bill known as "Christian’s Law" that would require state- and town-run camps to test kids for their swimming ability and have life jackets on hand for all minors. Sen. Steven Brewer of Barre is co-sponsoring the bill. He says Frechette’s tragedy hit close to home.
 
 
“I had a brother who was 4 years old when he drowned as well, so the loss of a family member is something that's very visceral," Brewer said. "There’s a lot of activity in swimming areas. To make sure that we can actually be helpful to people is very important. When you save the life of a child, you save the world.”
 
Christian’s bill has passed in the Massachusetts Senate, and supporters say they’re hopeful it will pass in the House too and become law.
 

 
BOSTON — There's been a hopeful development in the fight against one form of cancer. Sarcoma is rare in adults but rather prevalent in children. For the first time in 30 years, a drug to treat soft-tissue sarcoma has been approved by the FDA. The news coincides with a fundraiser this Saturday in Hudson to raise money for the Jennifer Hunter Yates Sarcoma Foundation. WGBH News' Jordan Weinstein talked with Dr. Edwin Choy from Massachusetts General Hospital to see how fundraisers like these generate awareness and money. Choy said the foundation led the way.

BOSTON — This week, a second Newton public employee was arrested for possessing child porn. Peter Buchanan, who has worked for the city's public library, pleaded not guilty Wednesday in Newton District Court to possession of child pornography and distribution of materials depicting a child in a sexual act. A library official said that Buchanan rarely had contact with children.
 
However, adding to parents' concerns is the news that David Ettlinger, 34 — the Newton second-grade teacher arrested on Jan. 27 on charges of possessing child pornography — advertised his babysitting services on national website Sittercity.
 
Newton superintendent of schools David Fleishman said there’s no policy against a teacher babysitting and said Ettlinger did in fact babysit for some Newton Public School children. He defended the policy:
 
"I employ babysitters myself and I actually look for people who have worked with children. To ban our teachers from babysitting, we would be taking a pool of people away," Fleishman said. "And, remember this is such an isolated case — that’s what I’ve been telling parents … most people can be trusted and are really good with children." 
 
Fleishman said Ettlinger underwent a CORI check last year and nothing alarming was found. Ettlinger's babysitting profile has been removed from the site and anyone who may have had contact with him has been notified. Fleishman also stated that the charges against Ettlinger are unrelated to other recent allegations that have surfaced in Newton.
 
Material from The Associated Press was used in this report.

Dr. Ilan Stavans is founding academic host professor at Amherst College, and co-founder of the Great Books Summer Program.

Related Putting The Breaks On The Summer Slide What's So Super About Super Why Reading Camps

Download the 2011 Great Books brochure.

A conversation with Great Books Summer Program co-founder, Dr. Ilan Stavans

Dr. Ilan Stavans is Founding Academic Host Professor at Amherst College, and co-founder of the Great Books Summer Program. Dr. Stavans holds an endowed chair as Lewis-Sebring Professor of Latino Studies at Amherst College. Dr. Stavans is a prolific author and editor and is well known for his books, such as Spanglish, as well as his definitive collection of Pablo Neruda’s poetry. In 2010, he created the Great Films movie based on a session at Great Books.

Dr. Stavans, please give us some background on the Great Books Summer Program.

The GBSP is a terrific way to spend the summer immersed in ideas and with people who love them. Designed for middle- and high-school students, Great Books Summer Program invites young people to engage with the literary classics (Plato, Shakespeare, Cervantes, Whitman, Tolstoy, Kafka, et al): to open them up, to debate them, to re-imagine them, to apply their message to our time. During the session, campers may enact plays, write stories, recite poetry, and perhaps even make movies, with the guidance of thought-provoking adults who themselves are teachers, writers, and actors.

I co-founded the program a decade ago. My dream was to open a space where teenagers would thrive in, through, and around ideas, to inspire them to have the passion I feel toward books. I combined that vision with Peter Temes who was then the President of the Great Books Foundation and we created the program to employ the love of ideas with the “Shared Inquiry” method, always looking to foster the camper’s critical thinking skills. That’s what we need in this complex universe: critical thinking.

What type of young person would enjoy and benefit from the Great Books program the most?
 
An engaged, intellectually curious young person interested in the various aspects of culture.

What’s a typical day like at Great Books? What are some of the books that are read and discussed? Who are some of the guest authors?
 
A typical day starts with breakfast, followed by a morning meeting which features a poetry slam. Then comes a lecture with a distinguished thinker about Homer’s The Odysseyand after a short break there is yet another lecture about Pablo Neruda’s Spain in the Heart. Afterward is a discussion section, in which small groups of campers reflect and share ideas on the content of the lecture. Then comes lunch. A free hour allows campers to take hikes, swim, or stage a play. The afternoon might features electives which include creative writing, visual art, music, theater, and various literature related topics. Each evening features an event—there may be a movie showing (Duck Soup, O Brother Where Art Thou, Citizen Kane) or a guest speaker (Debbie Applegate, Joseph Ellis, John Sayles). In the late evening, campers might read the poetry of Emily Dickinson under the starry sky.

Why do you feel it’s so important for young people to continue learning during the summer?

First, learning shouldn’t be a task. It should be fun and Great Books helps to remind campers that the pursuit of knowledge can be a lively and engaging affair. Second, we all know the importance of maintaining academic progress over the summer, to avoid summer slide. Bright young people should engage in academic pursuits to help enhance what they have learned in the previous school year and to prepare themselves for greater academic challenges in the year to come.

How does Great Books Summer Program help prepare kids for college?

It makes kids intellectually curious, inviting them to reflect in engaging fashion about the political, social, cultural, and moral issues that define us. In addition, campers that attend the Great Books Summer Program are participating in college-level reading and thinking under the tutelage of our experienced staff who make tacking the great philosophical questions of our time both accessible and interesting. The skills that the campers gain in close reading and in expressing their ideas will prove invaluable in their college experience.

Do you offer scholarships or financial aid to cover the Great Books tuition fee?

We do indeed. Limited financial aid is available to help offset the cost of tuition.

For more information on the Great Books Summer Program, visit:

http://www.greatbookssummer.com/
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Great-Books-Summer-Program

South Hadley High School students held a candlelight vigil for Phoebe Prince last January. (AP)

A lot of people feel like South Hadley got a raw deal over the past year. Selectman Bob Judge says the town was misrepresented in media reports. But he also believes that South Hadley is stronger as a result. 
 
“Out of tragedy comes opportunity,” Judge said. “I think people in South Hadley are seizing this opportunity to strengthen our community, form new ties, communicate better, and get groups talking to each other and people talking to each other that before maybe never talked to each other ’cause they didn’t need to.”
 
As evidence, Judge cites a surge in volunteerism, like a new suicide-prevention coalition, and the creation of a new South Hadley code of conduct that stresses the need for more civil interactions.

Moving on too quickly?

 But according to some vocal skeptics, it’s far too early to be talking about beginning the healing process. In the year since Prince’s death, South Hadley parent Luke Gelinas has been sharply critical of the town’s response. In April, Gelinas was ejected from a school-committee meeting while arguing that school administrators should lose their jobs over Prince’s death. Nine months later, he’s still making his case.
 
“There is an environment in that school that led to the problems with Phoebe Prince,” Gelinas said. “That environment has been there a long time.”
 
“Kids are smart,” he adds. “They don’t believe what they hear, but they do believe what they see. And until they get a change of leadership, nothing is going to change here.”
 
Gelinas and Darby O’Brien, another parent and pointed critic of the South Hadley status quo, claim that school officials failed in the run-up to Prince’s suicide. And they claim those same officials haven’t been honest with the public.
 
“Nobody is holding them accountable,” O’Brien said. “And the crazy thing is that you’ve got these six kids who’ve been hit really hard with charges and nobody holds the people who were responsible for running the joint responsible at all.”
 
O’Brien and Gelinas have gone to court to undo the recent re-hiring of South Hadley School Superintendent Gus Sayer. But Sayer says the school system did everything it could to protect Prince, and that it’s wrong to blame educators for her death.
 
“No teacher, okay, was responsible for what happened,” Sayer said. “No teacher failed to report what they should have reported. No administrator failed to take action when they should have taken action. But despite that we had an outcome that everybody feels terribly about.”

South Hadley High School.

In the wake of Prince’s suicide, added Sayer, the schools moved quickly to craft an aggressive newanti-bullying curriculum.
 
“We’ve strengthened the curriculum in the lower elementary grades, we’ve added a new curriculum at the middle school, and we’ve also adopted a new curriculum at the high school,” he said. “Hopefully we’ll get to things more quickly. Hopefully where we canbe successful we can intervene earlier and prevent some things things from escalating.
 
A Town Divided
 
This back-and-forth between Sayer and his critics has forced South Hadley residents to choose sides.  Carol Constant is one of the adults behind the South Hadley Youth Commission. She says that errors probably weremade prior to Prince’s death, but adds that they may have been unavoidable.
 
“I think mistakes have been made,” Constant said. “Could anybody anticipate it? Can every teacher and every administrator or every principal be in a room to witness something that happens, or out on the street? Absolutely not.”
 
The push to oust Sayer, Constant claims, is counterproductive.
 
“One of the things that’s a real concern is this idea that this can be done through lawsuits,” she says. “That is, in a sense, perpetrating the bullying. It’s not being part of the solution.”
 
Still, O’Brien and Gelinas are determined to press on. They’ve even floated the possibility of running for the South Hadley School Committee later in 2011.
 
“We’re not going to quit now,” O’Brien said. “We both have kids who are younger, who are coming through, and they’re not going to go through that. And neither are the other kids in this town.”
 
Meanwhile, Sayer warns that when it comes to bullying, schools can only do so much.
 
“To believe that as a result of the plan that we have, or any other school district in the state has, that we’re going to stop bullying would be so unrealistic,” he cautions. “That just is not going to happen.
 
By way of example, he cites Phoebe Prince’s tragic case.
 
“The situation with Phoebe Prince – some of the bullying that took place was because of jealously over relationships,” Sayer says. “Believe me, you can’t just sit down with kids who are angry because they like somebody and somebody else likes that person and you try to explain, ‘Well, it’s okay.’ No! It really means a lot to these kids. And so the anger they feel when their relationships are interfered with can run very, very deep.”
 
Those kids and that anger may be back in the headlines soon. The six students charged in Prince’s death have yet to stand trial. When they do -- or if the charges are dropped by David Sullivan, the new Northwestern District Attorney -- the press will certainly pay attention. High school senior Robert Archambault is dreading it.
 
“We all fear the media is going to come back again and say different things about our student body and our school that aren’t true,” Archambault says. “Because when you go up against something like the media it’s really hard to defend yourself. Because once they say something… how are you going to say anything against that? You can’t.”
 
South Hadley will mark the first anniversary of Phoebe Prince’s death with a candlelight vigil on the town common Friday night. 
]]> Tue, 23 Nov 2010 14:47 PM +0000 http://www.wgbh.org//articles/Keeping-Dangerous-Toys-Out-Of-The-Stocking-1058 http://www.wgbh.org//articles/Keeping-Dangerous-Toys-Out-Of-The-Stocking-1058 The Lokmock/Baby's first train was flagged by PIRG as a potential choking hazard.

A consumer watchdog group has put together a list of toys to avoid just in time for holiday shopping.  

The Public Interest Research Group, or PIRG, released its latest report on unsafe toys of the 2010 season. 

Thanks to tougher federal safeguards and new limits on lead content, deaths from dangerous toys are declining. But Micaela Preskill of watchdog group Mass PIRG says that parents still need to watch out.

Preskill said that many toys still contain toxic chemicals and pose choking hazards.   To illustrate her point, she picked up a harmless looking toy called “Baby’s first train set” sold on Amazon.com:

“We have a wooden train set with small pieces that are little wood pegs.  And these wood pegs don’t violate our choking small parts standards, but a Washington, D.C. parent notified us of this toy after she had to perform the Heimlich maneuver on her son to stop him from choking on this piece,” Preskill said.

That wooden train is on U.S. PIRG's list of dangerous toys, which was released today.  Also on the list is a plastic tiara sold in K-mart, which barely meets safe lead standards; and a Dora the Explorer backpack from Claire’s, which contains high levels of pthalene – a toxic chemical found in vinyls that has been linked to developmental problems in children.

Lois Lee, an ER doctor at Boston Children’s Hospital, recommends a couple of steps for keeping the family safe.  First, she says, when choosing a gift for an older child, keep in mind any potential risks to younger siblings.

“I recently took care of a 9-month-old son that the father was concerned may have choked on a Lego, because he saw the 9-month-old crawling towards a pile of Legos that he saw his 4-year-old son playing with earlier that day," Lee saud. "So it’s more than just worrying about the child for whom the toy is but also about the other children in the home.”

Also, Dr. Lee says, read warning labels on toy packaging, ask the toy store owner for any additional information, and use common sense.   For more tips and for the full report on hazardous toys, go to toysafety.net.