Arts Replace Recess

  A group of 9-year-olds was busily putting the finishing touches on an enormous poster for the fourth-grade play.Its topic: saving the Earth. Down the hall in the music room, beneath portraits of Mozart and Bach. Cheerleaders in the gym were perfecting a victory chant, jumping, twisting and stamping their feet. All of this learning was taking place not after school hours, but during recess break that for some elementary school students is slowly being squeezed out of the day; jump rope, freeze tag and the jungle gym have some new competition. Recess is now being seen by parents and educators as a time to pack in extra learning.   Free time during school hours has become a hot topic among educators across the country, many of who worry that children are not getting enough of it.

Burned Iraqi boy's road to recovery

     Youssif shows off his "certificate of citizenship," an award given to the Iraqi boy by his school in Los Angeles for being exceptionally nice."One kid got hurt, and I helped him," Youssif says.He smiles and proudly holding on the award. He says he likes to help kids who get hurt because he once was.Seeing Youssif now, it's hard to believe he's the same boy in Baghdad four years ago.
      Youssif was grabbed by masked men, doused in gas and set on fire.He was so savagely disfigured it looked as though his face melted and then froze.
      "The way he interacts with people -- everything. It began as soon as he started school and realized that the children don't care about his appearance. It allowed him to have a normal life." Youssif's mother says.
 
       I believe that he is a hero because it's not everyday you see a child saving a life now a days and i'm sure i would be able to something like that 

Motorcycle club helps the needy!

The Ching-a-Ling Nomads motorcycle club, which started from the 1960s street gang in the Bronx, is helping out with a church toy drive this holiday season. For more than 20 years, the Ching-a-Lings lived in a clubhouse on 180th Street and Hughes Avenue in the Bronx. They still spit beer at the graves of fallen colleagues, but despite the group’s history of violence, drug abuse and disregard for traffic laws they still manage to do good. “We are definitely representative of the community we come from, that being New York. But the Bronx is home. The Bronx is mother,” said Willie Ching-a-Ling, a club member, who, following the Ching-a-Ling tradition.