Category: CNN Regional

By Noel Brennan

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    CHICAGO (WBBM) — Middle school can be a tough time for kids, just ask anyone who’s been through it.

But some Chicago grandmothers are stepping up to give young girls support when they need it most.

When you mix generations in one classroom, they end up teaching each other a thing or two.

“They taught me a lot of things about my phone that I didn’t know,” Esther Siver said jokingly.

Esther Siver and Carol Anne Been are retirees reliving their middle school days by choice.

“If you don’t learn from the young, you get old real quick,” Siver said.

They volunteer each week at Goethe Elementary School in Logan Square to work with kids like 13-year-old Ahkira White.

“They’re caring, and they’re thoughtful,” she said. “I learned how to do a lot of stuff. I learned to listen. I learned how to talk about my feelings. I learned to express myself.”

It’s part of the Grandmothers Circle program. The Juvenile Protective Association brought the program to Chicago Public Schools.

“We call it structured but unscripted. We provide the activities. We provide the materials, but it’s unscripted because it’s organic,” said program coordinator Erinn Boone.

Besides the subject of boys, Been also shared what the middle schoolers talk about.

“They talk about things that are on their minds, and sometimes what’s on their mind is what happened an hour earlier during recess or this morning at school,” she said.

“If you don’t talk about it, then you’re not going to get it out, and then you’re just going to think about it,” White said.

Those seventh graders are in their second year of the program—and their assistant principal, Crystal Andrews, can tell.

“They’re totally different kids than the ones I had last year. They’re not in my office as much as they were last year,” she said jokingly. “They’ve learned how to kind of navigate things a little better.”

A little guidance from a couple of grandmas goes a long way.

“It’s really nice to see. It’s like watching my own grandkids. How they grew and became adults,” Siver said.

Please note: This story was provided to CNN Wire by an affiliate and does not contain original CNN reporting. This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.

By Asal Rezaei, Shardaa Gray

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    CHICAGO (WBBM) — The Canvas outage has stretched into a second day, leaving students and teachers in the Chicago and Illinois university systems scrambling amid the end of the spring semester.

The digital learning platform that is heavily relied upon by students and staff alike abruptly went offline Thursday afternoon amid a cyberattack and ransom demands.

Thursday, the University of Illinois sent out an email to faculty, staff and students, writing in part, “Canvas, our learning management system, is offline due to an ongoing cybersecurity incident.” Later that night, U of I Urbana-Champaign announced they would postpone all final exams and assignments scheduled for Friday, Saturday or Sunday, including for classes that don’t use Canvas.

The cloudy-based digital classroom system is used at more than 98,000 institutions and has nearly 275 million users. Students and faculty use it for notes, study guides and even actual final exams.

Instructure released a statement Friday morning saying an “unauthorized actor” in the incident made changes to pages that appeared to students and teachers when they were logged into their Canvas platforms. The company said they took Canvas down “out of an abundance of caution,” and said the hacker used an issue related to their Free-For-Teacher accounts to conduct the cyberattack.

“As a result, we have made the difficult decision to temporarily shut down our Free-For-Teacher accounts,” the company said in their statement. “This gives us the confidence to restore access to Canvas, which is now fully back online and available for use. We regret the inconvenience and concern this may have caused.”

Canvas is now back in service at UIC, Northwestern, the University of Chicago and most other area schools. But the issue could not have come at a worse time for students and faculty, as they are approaching or have already started final exams to close out the spring semester.

“Just today I had a quiz, but it was hard to study for that because Canvas was not up,” said Northwestern student David Kim.

Kim said he uses the canvas system to access his grades, but it holds a lot of course material that he relies on to study.

“There’s really no other effective resource to study with,” he said.

When Kim and others logged onto Canvas Thursday, the either were met with a message reading “Canvas is currently undergoing scheduled maintenance” or a message from hacking group Shinyhunters.

“It says Shinyhunters has breached Instructure,” NU student Rahmah Malik said. “) Instead of contacting us to resolve they ignored us and did some ‘security patches.’ You have until the end of by 12th May before everything is leaked.”

Claroty Field Chief Technology Officer Sean Tufts said there are multiple reasons Canvas was hacked.

“I think we are exiting a phase of cyber where China hacked for secrets, North Korea hacked for money, and Russia hacked to destabilize. Now all of those actors are looking to make impact on America’s day to day lives,” he said.

Instructure said names, email addresses, student IDs and peer-to-peer messages were exposed in the data breach. There’s no evidence that passwords, financial information or dates of birth were hacked.

Tufts said universities should prepare for days like this.

“Best preparation is practice and what that means is not waiting for the attack and encouraging attackers. What that means having table talk exercises, practicing when systems go down,” he said.

Other schools, like the University of Chicago, are bouncing back faster. Tufts said each IT system is very complex and will not all recover at the same time.

Please note: This story was provided to CNN Wire by an affiliate and does not contain original CNN reporting. This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.

By Edie Kasten, Joe Donlon

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    CHICAGO (WBBM) — It’s not easy to go through and not easy to talk about, but at some point in our lives, we all have to deal with grief, and a woman who grew up in Chicago’s northwest suburbs is using her experience to help others.

It all began with a mother’s death, a daughter’s sadness, and a mission to create a community for people who are struggling.

Kera Sanchez is editor-in-chief of Get Griefy Magazine, which is dedicated to helping people living with grief find solace, inspiration, and a sense of community.

In June of 2022, Sanchez experienced a traumatic loss.

“I was actually in the NICU with my youngest daughter, and I had received a phone call that my mom had unexpectedly passed away in Italy. She was on vacation with friends and my father,” she said. “My mom was actually there for birth of my daughter. Yeah, I remember joking with her that, ‘Mom, you’re going to have to babysit when you get home.'”

Sanchez says the world hadn’t prepared her for such severe loss.

“I turned to the internet to see the stories of other people that were maybe a few steps ahead of me,” she said. “I felt inspired by the fact they were doing beautiful things with their grief. They were using their grief as a springboard to start something that was almost like a legacy project.”

Sanchez created her own legacy project to honor her mother and to bring comfort to people in the same situation. It’s an online and print publication she named Get Griefy.

“It came pretty quickly to me. I was in the shower, and just ruminating on these things, and I just started that day,” she said. “My husband came downstairs and saw me working at my computer, and he said, ‘What are you doing?’ And I said, ‘I’m writing a letter from the editor,’ and he’s like, ‘What are you talking about?’ I’m like, ‘I’m starting a magazine.'”

Two years since she launched the magazine, Get Griefy now has 10,000 readers online and in print.

It’s not only about death.

“There’s grief of all different types of things. Career loss or change, pet loss,” she said. “Parents divorcing, or family members having to leave the country, break-ups with their boyfriends and girlfriends.

Get Griefy is working on a future issue on women’s issues,

“All of the types of grief women go through,” Sanchez said. “Infertility, child and infant loss, divorce, a loss of identity.”

Get Griefy offers online seminars and virtual support circles. In print, there are articles focusing on everything from support groups to celebrities’ stories, and even advice on how to navigate grief with laughter.

“Some of our most popular most shared content is just kind of poking fun at the trauma that we’re going through,” Sanchez said. “It’s not easy, but bringing light to it I think really makes things a lot easier for people.”

In so many ways, Get Griefy is simply about embracing your truth.

“It’s something that’s extremely beneficial to be able to tell your story in a safe space,” Sanchez said. “Community is everything. Finding other people that have gone through something similar that you have, it just normalizes your experience. It makes you feel less isolated and less alone.”

Sanchez has made many friends in the Get Griefy community.

“We’ve gone on trips together. We’ve met in person,” she said. “We all collaborate on so many pieces of content together.”

Sanchez said her late mom is still her number one collaborator.

“It’s not just my project. It’s our project,” she said. “I’d give it all back to have my mom back, but that’s just not how it works, and so I feel like I am doing the best that I can, personally, to still continue to live a life of full of joy, that’s full of zest and inspiring to others, and I’m leading by example that, just because you go through something traumatic, it doesn’t mean that you have to stay stuck in that loss forever.”

Sanchez said she started her journey by journaling. It was a good way to start exploring her feelings.

Please note: This story was provided to CNN Wire by an affiliate and does not contain original CNN reporting. This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.

By Ricky Sayer

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    BEAVER COUNTY, Pennsylvania (KDKA) — A Beaver County youth baseball organization is asking for help after it says someone broke into a concession stand and stole money.

Strike by strike, Matt Niedbala is working to make their concession stand whole again after Friday’s burglary.

“The door was broken, so we have to repair that,” Niedbala said. “It’s pretty devastating.”

But while the door can be replaced, replacing the stolen cash box with roughly $400 to $500 inside is a taller task at West Mayfield Community Park.

Proceeds from the stand support the youth baseball organization, which includes 60 kids. They’ve used it to pay for new batting cages, along with improving the field and paying the umpires.

Now, not only are they down the stolen cash, but they had to spend hundreds on the new door.

“That’s what’s really hurtful with us, is that they came in and, we’re a nonprofit organization, group of small families down here, and they basically stole from kids. And it really stinks,” Niedbala said.

That includes Niedbala’s twin boys. He told them about the robbery.

“They were really angry last night. They weren’t really happy. They just feel really hurt and violated.”

Niedbala said the thief broke off the door handle and drilled a hole above the lock to get inside and reach the cash box.

“Someone must have known we had some in there. Normally, we don’t keep it in there,” he added.

As for identifying who was responsible, there are no security cameras inside the concession stand. Organizers said they plan to install cameras following the incident.

“We would just like to get the money back,” Niedbala said.

Police say the investigation is ongoing.

Please note: This story was provided to CNN Wire by an affiliate and does not contain original CNN reporting. This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.

By Siafa Lewis

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    BOOTHWYN, Pennsylvania (KYW) — Earlier this year, Boothwyn Elementary School physical education teacher Scott Messick was diagnosed with a rare and aggressive type of appendix cancer. Following surgery and innovative treatment, however, Messick is on the mend.

On Friday morning, the Philadelphia Phillies surprised and honored the beloved Delaware County teacher during a special event at the school.

“I was told I was coming in to turn a computer in,” Messick said.

That’s how they got Messick at the school for a pep rally, joined by his wife and their two kids. The phys ed teacher was honored ahead of teacher appreciation night at Citizens Bank Park when the Phillies host Colorado.

“Definitely was shocked by this, but just seeing the kids is absolutely amazing. I miss them so much,” Messick said.

The party continued with an appearance by the Phillie Phanatic. Messick was gifted a personalized jersey and a replica Liberty Bell, and his kids got to throw ceremonial first pitches.

“I’ve been to a lot of assemblies here. I can’t think of one that was this loud before, so the support of the students and the teachers here … It’s just been amazing,” Messick said. “We’re lifelong Phillies fans, like I said, Phille Phanatic came to our wedding. I think my first official date with my wife was a Phillies game, actually, probably the first three were Phillies games.”

Messick and his wife, Jackie Messick, could not express their gratitude for the support of the school community.

“It’s just unbelievable what they do for him, I can’t put into words how thankful my family and I are,” Jackie Messick said.

Scott Messick will be one of nine local all-star teachers honored prior to Friday’s Phillies-Rockies game. He hopes to return to teaching and coaching by Sept. 1.

Please note: This story was provided to CNN Wire by an affiliate and does not contain original CNN reporting. This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.

By Joe Holden

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    CHESTER COUNTY, Pennsylvania (KYW) — Graduation vibes and pomp and circumstance are in the air around West Chester University in Pennsylvania. The university campus is in full bloom. There are the sounds of spring and thoughts of moving along.

This weekend, mother and daughter Jasmine Worrell and Zayla Dutton will be awarded their diplomas together.

This mother-daughter team has been in school together for a while, with mom working at Dutton’s high school while she attended. Then they became a package deal at West Chester, with mom working in admissions.

“I decided to apply for a job here, and then she got accepted,” Worrell said.

Worrell first started working in admissions and then became a student. She will graduate with a degree in interdisciplinary studies, as well as minors in psychology and women and gender studies. Dutton is a double major, having studied biochemistry and chemistry. She hopes to continue her studies and eventually get a doctorate in inorganic chemistry.

This relationship reveals mother and daughter are the best of friends and have a built-in support system.

“There were so many times where I’m like, ‘Oh, I’m going to fail this class, Mom,'” Dutton said. “And she’s like, ‘No, you’re not.'”

“I’m just really proud of you,” Worrell said. “You’re a hard worker.”

While they’ll go different ways from here, these Rams will always have their shared college memories.

“I actually found my family,” Dutton said. “I don’t want to leave, I don’t want to close this door. But unfortunately, we have to grow up.”

Please note: This story was provided to CNN Wire by an affiliate and does not contain original CNN reporting. This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.

By Madeleine Wright

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    DOWNINGTON, Pennsylvania (KYW) — A Chester County, Pennsylvania, man is back home with his family after spending more than eight months in ICE detention.

Supporters of Carlos Della Valle spent months rallying and writing letters to immigration officials, urging them to release him. Now the Downingtown resident is sharing what it feels like to finally be home and why uncertainty still hangs over his future.

“I couldn’t be happier,” Carlos Della Valle said about being home. “You know, it’s so many months and it just didn’t seem like it was going to happen.”

Supporters lined the street outside his Downingtown home on Wednesday, cheering as he returned from a detention center in Louisiana. The 49-year-old said it still feels surreal to be back in Chester County after 258 days in ICE custody.

Della Valle, whose wife and son are U.S. citizens, has lived in Chester County for nearly 30 years. He said he came to the United States from Guerrero, Mexico, at age 20 after fleeing cartel violence.

“I was afraid for my life,” he said.

At age 21, Della Valle said, he was detained and sent back to the Mexican border, but he was never formally deported.

During a trial in August 2025, a jury acquitted him of illegally re-entering the country. Despite the verdict, he was taken into ICE custody because he does not have legal status in the United States.

Carlos Della Valle was released from ICE custody last week but said he still worries about what comes next.

“They tried to deport me twice, so what’s to stop that from happening again?” he said.

Carlos Della Valle said he now has weekly check-ins with ICE and is working with an attorney to get a work permit so he can return to his job as a plant manager at a small adhesive company.

His wife, Angela Della Valle, said the family’s experience pushed her to become more involved in immigration reform efforts.

“The Dignity Act that’s been authored by Congresswoman Maria Salazar is a very, very powerful piece of legislation,” Angela Della Valle said. “It would allow Carlos to stay since he’s linked to a U.S. citizen wife. It would allow him to work.”

For now, Angela Della Valle said she’s focused on appreciating the moments they missed during his time in detention.

“It’s amazing being together again and even more powerful to be able to come back together home,” Angela Della Valle said.

Since returning home, Carlos Della Valle said he has been reconnecting with friends and recently attended a Phillies game with his family.

“We loved being there,” he said.

Central Presbyterian Church in Downingtown is hosting a “Welcome Home Carlos” open house Saturday night to celebrate Carlos Della Valle’s release.

Please note: This story was provided to CNN Wire by an affiliate and does not contain original CNN reporting. This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.

By Ross DiMattei, Jim McHugh

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    PHILADELPHIA (KYW) — Middle school students lit up the Philadelphia skyline Friday night with video games they designed themselves as part of Philly Tech Week and the America 250 celebration.

Drexel University transformed the Cira Centre into what organizers called the world’s largest playable video game display, projecting student-created games onto the building’s 29-story LED wall overlooking Schuylkill Yards in University City.

The games were developed through the Skyscraper Games project, organized by the nonprofit Young Futures. Students learned coding and game design while creating games for a virtual model of the Cira Centre.

“I think it’s going to be really fun to see how the game I made in a studio would be projected up there,” student designer Jake Lee said.

For many students, the project offered their first experience with coding.

“It was confusing, all the coding and stuff,” student designer Jessie Lee said. “It was my first time getting used to it.”

Drexel University’s Entrepreneurial Game Studio helped transform the students’ creations into fully playable games displayed across the skyscraper-sized screen.

“We get to take the creativity of these wonderful young people and put them up on a gigantic canvas,” said Erin Truesdell, an assistant professor of informatics at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. “Today’s really a culmination and a celebration of that. We’ve got four wonderful student games that we’ll be showing tonight, in addition to, of course, the classic skyscraper Tetris.”

Dozens of people gathered in Drexel Square to watch and play the games, including several members of Philadelphia City Council.

Frank Lee, a Drexel University professor of digital media known for creating the original skyscraper-sized Tetris display more than a decade ago, said the project is designed to inspire students to pursue careers in technology and computing.

“This is part motivation for them to become excited to then pursue, hopefully, a computing-related field in college, as well as then move on and go on to a computing field as part of their work,” Lee said.

Please note: This story was provided to CNN Wire by an affiliate and does not contain original CNN reporting. This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.