The photos of Frederick Douglass that helped him fight to end slavery

July 10, 2023 Paul Costello1 Uncategorized

In a rare, salted-paper photograph, Frederick Douglass wears a sophisticated high collar, an elegant three-piece suit and a short salt-and-pepper Afro, coifed with a part down the middle of his scalp. Douglass, who would become one of the most photographed people of the 19th century and one of the country’s most powerful orators, appears in the faded photo with a righteous gaze, in a pose that the writer and activist Elizabeth Cady Stanton described as “majestic in his wrath.”

This photograph, taken in 1860 and unique in style among the dozens of images often seen of Douglass, is showcased in the exhibit “One Life: Frederick Douglass,” which opened last month at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery.

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The exhibit traces Douglass’s trajectory, in photographs, records and writings, from enslaved man to fugitive, fierce abolitionist and presidential adviser, highlighting how he carefully constructed his enduring image using every available medium of his time.

Douglass, seen around 1845. “He wanted to create a dialogue with his photograph,” curator John Stauffer said. (Onondaga Historical Association Museum & Research Center)

“Douglass, in the larger sense, cultivated an immensely powerful voice in different registers. One was as speaker, one was based on his photographs and prints, one was through his activism and one was through his writing,” said Smithsonian guest curator John Stauffer, a professor of English and African and African American Studies at Harvard University.

“He believed a photograph was an accurate representation of the figure,” Stauffer said. “He always dressed up for his photography, much like he did for his speeches. He wanted to create a dialogue with his photograph that he provided with his speeches. It was a form of representation he hoped would convince people to follow him in advocating for equality.”

Frederick Douglass had nothing but scorn for July Fourth

Douglass was born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey in 1818, on a Maryland plantation owned by Edward Lloyd V, a former governor of Maryland and U.S. senator. The Smithsonian exhibit includes the original leather-bound ledger containing the names of babies born on that planation. On the left displayed page, in black ink and large script, overseer Aaron Anthony wrote: “Frederick August son of Harriett Feby 1818.” No father was mentioned; some historians suspect it was Anthony.

In September 1838, Frederick Bailey escaped enslavement, changing his name to Frederick Douglass. A 19th-century flier in the exhibit depicts a painting of a young Frederick escaping barefoot — though in the real-life escape he wore shoes. The illustration is headlined: “The Fugitive’s Song,” which was composed and dedicated to Douglass. The caption reads: “Frederick Douglass, A Graduate from the ‘Peculiar Institution.’ For his fearless advocacy, signal ability and wonderful success in behalf of HIS BROTHERS Ind. BONDS. And to the FUGITIVES FROM SLAVERY in the UNITED STATES & CANADA.”

On Sept. 15, 1838, Frederick married Anna Murray, a free Black woman who had lived in Baltimore and helped him escape enslavement, financing his escape by selling a bed made of feathers. The couple went on to have five children together.

Douglass in a daguerreotype circa 1841, the year he was hired as a speaker for the American Anti-Slavery Society. (Collection of Greg French)

The Smithsonian exhibit, which runs through April, includes one of the first known photographs of Douglass, taken in 1841. The image, tucked inside a worn frame encased with a red silk lining, shows a young Douglass with his thick black curls piled high, his jaw square and an intense stare. It was captured a year after the first commercial daguerreotype studio opened in the country, the National Portrait Gallery says, when the exposure time for such a machine “could run up to 15 seconds.”

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Douglass was hired that year as a speaker for the American Anti-Slavery Society, moving with his young family to Lynn, Mass., near Boston. For the next 60 years, Douglass would make his mark on the world, becoming one of the most powerful voices against the cruel institution of chattel enslavement. He wrote hundreds of essays, a novela, three autobiographies and thousands of speeches.

“When he escaped from slavery, he dated his birth to the day he escaped from slavery,” Stauffer said. “So, he felt like, ‘I’m playing catch up. I have to make up for all these lost years.’ He was a workaholic. He read voraciously. He got caught up on this kind of canon of what any educated person needs to read. He was passionate about it.”

An oil painting of Douglass, circa 1845, when he published his first autobiography. (Mark Gulezian/National Portrait Gallery)

Douglass knew one of his greatest tools was public speaking. For those who could not attend his speeches, he published them in his newspaper or in pamphlets. William Lloyd Garrison, the editor of the Liberator newspaper, advertised and published Douglass’s 1845 autobiography, “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass.”

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The autobiography was a hit, making Douglass so famous that he had to flee to Great Britain to avoid being enslaved again as a fugitive. Abolitionists helped buy his “freedom,” and Douglass returned to the states two years later, in 1847, as a free man. He moved to Rochester, N.Y., where he founded the North Star, an anti-slavery newspaper whose name referred to the light “that helped guide those escaping slavery to the North,” according to the Library of Congress. Douglass, in the initial issue, called it “the STAR OF HOPE.”

In 1855, Douglass published his second autobiography, “My Bondage and My Freedom: Part I. — Life as a Slave. Part II. — Life as a Freeman.” An original copy of that book, published during the period when violence had erupted between pro-slavery and anti-slavery factions vying for control of the new territory of Kansas, lies beneath a glass case in the Portrait Gallery.

John White Hurn took the most photographs of Douglass — and also helped him flee after the Harpers Ferry raid. (Collection of Greg French)

One of the most striking photos in the exhibit shows Douglass with a shock of white hair, growing like a painted line in his black Afro. The photograph was taken by John White Hurn, most likely on Jan. 14, 1862, according to curators. Douglass had given a speech at the National Hall in Philadelphia, located a block from Hurn’s studio.

Hurn, a telegraph operator who had helped Douglass flee again in 1859, after his abolitionist ally John Brown’s raid at Harpers Ferry, went on to photograph Douglass again in 1866 and 1873. Hurn took as many as nine photographs in all, the most of any Douglass photographers.

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After the Civil War began in 1861, Douglass wrote to President Abraham Lincoln advocating that he free all enslaved Black people in America and provide them with arms to fight against the Confederacy. The two met, at the White House, on several occasions.

The Smithsonian exhibit contains an original copy of a letter dated Aug. 29, 1864, in which Douglass asked the president to send a Black agent to conduct “squads of enslaved people northward.” Douglass demanded that the Union Army provide food and shelter for the Black freedmen. Lincoln listened. Days later, the Union army marched to victory in Atlanta.

Frederick Douglass needed to see Lincoln. Would the president meet with a former enslaved person?

“He said in his speeches this is a golden opportunity to destroy slavery and remake the United States as a true democracy,” Stauffer said. “He charged Lincoln: ‘End slavery right now. Free them and arm them. They know the South far better than anyone else.’ Had Lincoln and his administration heeded that advice, I actually think the war would have lasted far less than four years. Lincoln and his generals — some of them had been racist — realized the only way they could win this war was with the support of Blacks.”

Douglass wrote many of his powerful speeches at his home, Cedar Hill, in Southeast Washington, which he bought in 1877, defying laws that prohibited African Americans from buying property in the area. The home, now part of the Frederick Douglass National Historic Site, will reopen to the public Tuesday, the National Park Service announced, after closing in 2020 for the pandemic and renovations.

The reopening ceremony will include a dramatic performance of Douglass’s 1852 speech “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?”

Douglass, in an engraving from 1883. (Jen Harris/National Portrait Gallery)

Stauffer said one of his objectives in collecting the photographs in one exhibit was to help people feel the weight of Douglass’s legacy.

“He was the preeminent writer and widely known in his day as the greatest orator in the 19th century,” Stauffer said. “It captures Douglass’s significance as a leader. He had an unmatched orator style. He was blessed with musicality; he had a musical voice. He could adjust the range. He was a wordsmith. He was dedicated to giving speeches that would keep audiences on their seats, wanting to follow every word.”

Frederick Douglass died Feb. 20, 1895, just hours after his public makeup with Susan B. Anthony

Douglass knew, he said, that “words are one of the most potent weapons one could have in trying to achieve equality and the true vision of democracy.”

By DeNeen L. BrownDeNeen L. Brown, who has been an award-winning staff writer in The Washington Post Metro, Magazine and Style sections, has also worked as the Canada bureau chief for The Washington Post. As a foreign correspondent, she wrote dispatches from Greenland, Haiti, Nunavut and an icebreaker in the Northwest Passage. Twitter

https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2023/07/01/frederick-douglass-speech-smithsonian-national-portrait-gallery/

How the fight against LGBTQ+ books in Montgomery County became a national issue

July 10, 2023 Paul Costello1 Uncategorized

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By Nicole AsburyJuly 5, 2023 at 7:00 a.m. EDT

For the past few months, hundreds of Muslim and Ethiopian Orthodoxparents have called on Maryland’s largest school system to restore an opt-out provision for books that feature LGBTQ+ characters.

These new advocacy groups in Montgomery County say they prize inclusion. They align with the school system’s general diversity and equity efforts in their children’s schools and laud Superintendent Monifa B. McKnight for a speech she delivered against hate. They have pushed for underrepresented groups like themselves to be reflected in the school’s curriculum and accommodations for their religious holidays and practices.F

But these groups, which turned out more than 500 people at a rally last week in Rockville, diverge from progressives on this issue.

They say elementary school students should be able withdraw from lessons featuring books that can lead to conversations about sexual orientation and gender identity— topics they say should be handled by parents at home. Some parents describe the books as “sexual content” and point to “Pride Puppy,” a book for pre-K students that has a scavenger hunt that directs students to look for people like noted LGBTQ+ rights activist Marsha P. Johnson, who parents targeted for her occasional sex work, as well asitems like underwear and leather. Three families have also filed a lawsuit against the school system.

“None of us are anti-LGBT; none of us hold any hatred toward them. We recognize they have a different value system,” said Raef Haggag, a parent of a rising second grader in the school system and former computer science teacher. “We want to be able to introduce our children to these sensitive topics which are intertwined with our faith in a very sensitive way.”

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Montgomery County — a deep blue, culturally diverse suburb of D.C. — has long highlighted its inclusionary efforts. The books are a part of a supplemental curriculum introduced during the 2022-23 school year to diversify its English Language Arts curriculum. Students have repeatedly requested books and curriculum that represent LGBTQ+ identities over the years, according to four former and current student representatives on the county board of education.

The school system put an opt-out provision in place when the books were introduced, schools spokeswoman Jessica Baxter said. But that guidance shifted in March. Montgomery school officials say that Maryland law doesn’t allow students to withdraw from school lessons, except for a portion of the state’s health education curriculum on family life and human sexuality. Because the books are part of the English Language Arts curriculum, no exemptions are allowed. A spokesperson for the Maryland State Board of Education agreed with that analysis.

But the religious and conservative groups say the school system can still provide the allowance, because of a school policy that promises “feasible and reasonable accommodations” to religious beliefs and practices.

Pushback against the books and their lessons began publicly in January when Lindsey Smith — the chair of the Montgomery chapter of Moms for Liberty — spoke against them at a school board meeting,calling the books and their lessons “indoctrination, not education.” When the opt-out provision was revoked in March, she and other parents began hosting silent protests holdingsignsduring school board meetings and eventually speaking on the topic during each meeting.

The school system’s decision also led to some complaints from Muslim parents, who contacted the Maryland office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations and the Montgomery County Muslim Council — both advocacy groups. The two entities began organizing parents to speak at school board meetings, and as opposition grew, outsiders joined the fight, with national conservative groups and media following the issue.ADVERTISING

For Smith, the additional support was a relief.

“For us at Moms for Liberty, we’ve only had 50 to 100 people there,” said Smith, a mother of three in the school system who lives in Damascus. “So it was encouraging to know we were not alone, to be honest.”

But as the movement has grown,there have been divisions. The groups that have organized Muslim parents in the county have distanced themselves from and saythey have no affiliation with Moms for Liberty,a controversial national parental rights advocacy group.

“They’re supporting the Muslim community. They’re supporting parents because they also want the right to restore opt-out,” said Zainab Chaudry, the director of the Maryland Office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. “But their ideology, their views, their positions are antithetical to what our communities stand for.”

The Southern Poverty Law Center recently categorized Moms for Liberty as an extremist group. Smith has deferred comments about that designation to the national organizers behind Moms for Liberty.

Some Montgomery parents want to opt out of new books featuring LGBTQ characters

As the fight in Montgomery has gained national attention, Chaudry and leaders of other local groups have tried to keep the focus on the county’s parents and students and have denounced other groups trying to make their efforts a political cause.

“The message can be undone immediately and it can be completely switched,” said Hisham Garti, the outreach director for the Montgomery County Muslim Council.

Some individuals hope the issue will galvanize more Muslims in the political arena. Sameerah Munshi, 22, a part of Coalition of Virtue, explained that the group was co-founded by a Howard County resident with the Montgomery book issue in mind, but plans to expand to other issues and give Muslim Americans a platform to use their faith as a tool in politics.

Despite the opposition, there is support for the school system’s policy and use of the books in its curriculum from the teacher’s union, some school board members and students. Some parents have similarly formed their own group, called the Coalition for Inclusive Schools and Communities, and launched their own petition to show support.

The school system reinforced its policies in an email to parents last week. “There is no content instruction on gender identity and sexual orientation in elementary school. The books include a diversified representation of people. Inclusive books support a student’s ability to empathize, connect, and collaborate with diverse peers and encourage respect for all,” the message said. Italso repeatedthat no opt-out would be provided to families and giving advance notice before the books are read “will not be possible.”

The incoming student representative on the school board, Sami Saeed, delivered remarks at a May board meeting that spoke of how there is “overwhelming support” for the books and the elimination of an exemption. After he spoke, he said a few parents approached him after and were surprised by his position as the first known Arab student member on the board. “A lot of [the parents] expressed to me that when I went against what they were thinking, it was almost like a shock,” Saeed, a rising senior in the school system, said.

But after hearing from more parents on both sides of the issue, he said he would be supportive of notifying them in advance of the books being read so they can talk about it with their kids at home, but not allow them to skip the lessons.

By Nicole Asbury Nicole Asbury is a local reporter for The Washington Post covering education and K-12 schools in Maryland.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2023/07/05/montgomery-county-lgbtq-book-opt-out/

What Gen Z wants in the workplace Companies adapt to a new generation of employees

June 27, 2023 Paul Costello1 Uncategorized

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By Britt Peterson WP June 16 2023 Magazine

Ayobami Balogun, 23, thought she would work at Microsoft for the rest of her life.

As an immigrant from Nigeria and the oldest of five children, she had chosen a career in software engineering because it would provide financial stability and manageable hours. Growing up, Balogun had watched her parents work multiple jobs as home aides for people living with special needs while she helped take care of her siblings. After several internships while she was a student at Ohio State University, Balogun accepted a full-time job in 2020 upon graduating.

Everything seemed to be falling into place — until March, when she lost her job in companywide layoffs.

Balogun was not too worried, however. Along with her severance package from Microsoft, she already had two side hustles — an Airbnb business and an events company called BeBs that she runs with her best friend. Being laid off also gave her the chance to think about what she really wants in her career — the first time she has had time to do so. “I don’t want to be the only Black person or the only woman on my team,” she said, explaining that she is looking more intently at a company’s values, particularly when it comes to diversity, equity and inclusion, during her job search. “I feel like that’s scary.”

Balogun works from home managing her businesses to supplement her income after being let go from Microsoft. (Megan Jelinger for The Washington Post)

Balogun’s resilient self-confidence and determination are common traits for Gen Z — often defined as people born between 1997-2012 — who have begun entering the workforce. They are more diverse, tolerant, educated and socially committed than past generations, yet they also report higher levels of stress, mental illness and poverty. And as one of the largest generations — they make up one-fourth of the U.S. population — they have tremendous potential to transform not just the job hunt process but also the industries they’re entering.

“I would like to be able to afford some things, but I don’t want to be attached to the material grind,” said Griffon Hooper, a University of San Diego graduate who is working at a dive shop while applying for jobs in his chosen field: nautical archaeology. “I’m not interested in sacrificing 30 years of my life for a handshake and a golden watch. And I don’t think a lot of people are anymore.”

“What Gen Z wants is to do meaningful work with a sense of autonomy and flexibility and work-life balance and work with people who work collaboratively,” said Julie Lee, director of technology and mental health at Harvard Alumni for Mental Health, and an expert on Gen Z health and employment. Gen Z is less afraid to ask for the things that everyone else really wants and needs, which sometimes is stereotyped at work as being entitled and narcissistic.

“During the time I entered the workforce, I didn’t feel empowered,” Lee said. “I didn’t feel that I was able to ask for those things.”

Workplaces seem to be listening. According to several recruiters and hiring managers from companies on the Top Workplaces list, Gen Z is making an impact on the way they conduct their jobs and on their office culture, from the significant to the small-bore.

Griffon Hooper, a University of San Diego graduate, is working at a dive shop while applying for jobs in nautical archaeology. (Sandy Huffaker for The Washington Post)

“We started the Gen Z word of the week,” said Suzanne Hawes, chief human resources officer at the intellectual-property law firm Sterne Kessler, who says 4 of her 14-person team are Gen Z. “Every week they’ll present something to me and see if I already know it, and if I don’t already know it they’ll explain it to me … and they give me huge kudos when I can use it in a sentence.”

So far the words have included the fire emoji and the term “clout.” Hawes said: “I was like, I know what ‘clout’ is! But it’s all these new interpretations.”

Gen Z has been indelibly molded by continuous political and economic upheavals. Many of them grew up in the aftermath of the attack on the World Trade Center in New York City that led to wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, followed by the Great Recession, a global pandemic, demonstrations about racial issues and a governmental insurrection, to name a few. Maintaining trust in authority and the institutions meant to manage society, as a result, can be tough.

“There’s this feeling of betrayal,” admits Kevin Lu, 23, who wants to work in the burgeoning field of climate technology. “I feel like so many times continuously throughout this generation’s life, they are promised a certain thing only to get it detoured or pushed back.”

Jordan McCullar, center, works at a computer at Hager Sharp in D.C. (Tom Brenner for The Washington Post)

Billie Gardner, 24, has already experienced these upheavals personally. During her senior year in college, she won a competitive fellowship to work on Joe Biden’s presidential campaign only for a pandemic to squander all plans and her job. She moved back home to Idaho and worked at a Lululemon while she searched for a new job and socialized with friends via Zoom.

In early 2021, after applying to different positions for months, Gardner got another fellowship and moved to D.C., where she continued to work nights and weekends at a Lululemon outlet to support herself; toward the end, she was hired by a nonprofit organization called Represent Us. The job paid well, and Gardner loved the work, but when donor networks shriveled during the pandemic she lost her job, again. “I had no idea what I was going to do,” she said. “I was calling my parents. … I was like, ‘Mom, do I sell this couch I just bought?’”

And yet, despite all the ups and downs, Gardner remains focused on finding a job that aligned with her values, and where she would feel welcome and supported. “What’s important for me is that not only am I a fit for the job, but is the job a fit for me,” she said. In interviews, she paid attention to who was in the room — how many women, how many people of color — as a clue for the company’s actual commitment to diversity. “The makeup of the organization is important to me almost as much as the work I’m going to be doing,” she said.

Jenny Fernandez, a professor at Columbia Business School and an executive coach who frequently works with Gen Z leaders, described the generation as both realistic and idealistic. “They’re not willing to compromise [on job security], they want to be paid,” she said. “At the same time, they have options, and they know they have options.”

Christopher Barnes works as his dog Leo hangs out in his cubicle at the SCLogic in Annapolis, Md. (Amanda Andrade-Rhoades for The Washington Post)

Despite the severe loss of jobs during the pandemic, Gen Z actually has more opportunities than any group of recent graduates going back to before the Great Recession. Companies are often competing for them, instead of the other way around, and that, combined with the exigencies of the time they were born into, lends a certain empowerment. As Bianca Alvarado, a 23-year-old junior publicist at a marketing firm in Los Angeles who spent months looking for a job after graduation, said: “People my age don’t take any bulls—. … We’re doing our best to rise above all the mistakes of past generations and fix things more urgently.”

During the job-application process, Gen Z has the digital tools to research companies on a level previous generations couldn’t. Alvarado recalled watching a TikTok video on job interviews that instructed her to always have a question ready. Once hired, they are activists. A majority of them view capitalism in a negative light, but they’re actively working to improve the system. More pro-labor than past generations, Gen Zers are leading union drives and making educational TikToks about unfair labor practices.

They are also focused on more collective and holistic notions of stability: How can our jobs and careers help build long-term security for our communities, the world around us and our lives outside the workplace? Several people interviewed for this story emphasized the importance of working for companies invested in environmental sustainability — in other words, contributing to planetary stability. “I’m not going to work for a company that might be harming the climate in a very obvious way,” said Balogun, echoing the 67 percent of Gen Zers who believe that the climate should be a top priority, according to a 2021 Pew Research Center survey.

Forbright Bank, a Chevy Chase-based full-service bank with a stated mission to “accelerate the transition to a sustainable and clean energy economy” and a slew of employee incentives for climate-friendly choices like riding a bike to work and using solar electricity at home, would appear to be the kind of workplace that would draw Gen Z talent — and that does seem to be the case. Out of 180 new employees the bank hired last year, 40 were Gen Z, according to Randi Killen, executive vice president of human resources. “The Gen Zers really get excited about the possibility to work for a company that aligns with their values,” Killen said.

Gen Z also reports new interest in jobs that contribute to one’s personal stability, both mental and physical. Emma Choi, 23, who lost her podcast hosting job in the recent layoffs at NPR only to be quickly rehired as a producer for the NPR show “Wait, Wait … Don’t Tell Me!,” had always wanted to be an English teacher until continuous school shootings dissuaded her. “There’s already so many factors to put into what you want to do and where you want to work — now you have to put in your personal safety, too,” she said.

Emma Choi had wanted to be an English teacher, but school shootings dissuaded her. (Sophie Park for The Washington Post)

Mental safety is also a major priority. Gen Zers have higher reported rates of mental illness than previous generations, and youth suicide rates have shot up over the past decade — and all of that was even before the pandemic, which doubled anxiety and depression symptoms among young people globally, according to a 2021 study published in JAMA.

Young people, aware of the potential consequences of overwork and burnout, are making very different choices than past generations when it comes to work-life balance. Jillian Fan, 22, earned a degree in science, tech and international affairs with a minor in math from Georgetown University in 2022. The isolation of a pandemic and the relentless pressure at school contributed to a burnout so severe she moved back home to Reston, Va., for nine months, visiting family in Taiwan, baking and attending therapy sessions.

Initially, Fan, who felt “incredibly privileged” to be able to take the time off without immediate financial pressure, applied to jobs in her major, but her dream of going to culinary school lingered. “I’ve already spent six months doing nothing and the world hasn’t ended, can I perhaps do the wrong thing? I can make … mistakes,” she realized. She began casting a wider net in her job search and now works three part-time jobs, one at a bakery and two at local food-justice nonprofit groups, all work she loves and can imagine doing for the rest of her life.

Jillian Fan earned a degree in science, tech and international affairs with a minor in math from Georgetown. (Amanda Andrade-Rhoades for The Washington Post)

Although Gen Z has only been in the workplace for a couple of years, work is already changing in response to their new demands. In studies, Gen Z tends to be split when it comes to remote work: Some appreciate the flexibility and lack of a commute, while others, having already spent years at home in tiny apartments and group homes or with their parents, are very ready to return. “For the past three years, my entire life was virtual,” said Gardner who recently started a new job as a government relations associate at the Council on Foundations in D.C. When they offered her the choice between working fully remote or hybrid. “I was like, hybrid, please!”

Jordana Coppola, the chief people officer at OTJ Architects, a D.C.-based firm, said that her office now works to be sensitive both to people who need to stay home and people who want to come in. “You have these students that maybe have recently graduated and they moved to D.C. to take this job, and they’re in their apartment by themselves,” she said. “And they’re lonely. … We really work hard to make them feel connected.”

Gen Z’s need for meaningful work has also required some offices to be more transparent about the purpose of what they’re asking their more junior employees to do, as well as providing clear pathways to advancement. “The other thing that Gen Z is looking for … is what your organization can offer them as far as growth and development. What are the mentorship opportunities going to be, what kind of professional development is going to be available for them,” said Erin Federle, vice president of human resources at Decision Lens, a software company headquartered in Arlington. Because the company is small, it has a harder time creating internal job-training programs — so instead, they’ve begun paying for employees to take courses outside the company, as well as focusing on building internal mentoring relationships.

Suzanne Hawes works at a computer while meeting with some Gen Z members of the team at Sterne Kessler. (Andre Chung for The Washington Post)

Recruiters also described a new need to be direct about a company’s values and even politics — not just in the workplace generally but starting at the interview stage. “[Younger job-interview subjects] will ask about what kind of initiatives the firm is doing to increase representation and inclusion,” said Hawes, of Sterne Kessler. All the companies interviewed for this story insisted that diversity, equity and inclusion, as well as environmental sustainability, had been priorities before Gen Z started demanding them. But it’s clear that at least when it comes to selling their values, companies are held to a higher standard now than ever before.

“I just feel like this generation is going to make huge strides for the workplace,” Hawes added. “They’re not afraid to ask for what they need and want. … They’re pushing for impressive changes, things that, as a Gen Xer, I didn’t think were possible. So I’m absolutely here for it, as they would say.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/06/16/gen-z-employment/

National test scores plunge, with still no sign of pandemic recovery

June 27, 2023 Paul Costello1 Uncategorized

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By Donna St. George June 21, 2023 at 12:05 a.m. EDT WP

National test scores plummeted for 13-year-olds, according to new data that shows the single largest drop in math in 50 years and no signs of academic recovery following the disruptions of the pandemic.

Student scores plunged nine points in math and four points in reading on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), often regarded as the nation’s report card. The release Wednesday reflected testing in fall 2022, comparing it to the same period in 2019, before the pandemic began.

“These results show that there are troubling gaps in the basic skills of these students,” said Peggy G. Carr, commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), which administers the tests. The new data, she said, “reinforces the fact that recovery is going to take some time.”

The average math score is now the same as it was in 1990, while the average reading score is the same as it was in 2004.

Hardest hit were the lowest-performing students. In math, their scores showed declines of 12 to 14 points, while their highest-performing peers fell just six points. The pattern for reading was similar, with lowest performers seeing twice the decline of the highest ones.

Students from all regions of the country and of all races and ethnicities lost ground in math. Reading was more split. Scores dropped for Black, multiracial and White students. But Hispanic, Asian, American Indian and Alaska Native students were described as “not measurably different.”

Most of those tested were 10 years old, in fourth or fifth grade, at the onset of the pandemic. They were in seventh or eighth grade as they took the tests.

“This is more than alarming,” said Carey Wright, former state superintendent of education in Mississippi and a member of the National Assessment Governing Board, which sets policy for the tests. “Thirteen-year-olds are in high schools, and their futures depend on being able to recover from this.”

“We really need to be concerned about what is happening here,” Wright said.

Mark Miller, a junior high school math teacher in Colorado who also sits on the governing board, similarly called for urgency. Researchers and policy analysts need to help identify the most effective practices for schools and teachers, he said. “It’s like the alarm has gone off,” he said.

Enrollment dropped, education slipped, in the pandemic

The exams tested basic skills — multiplying a three-digit number by a two-digit number, for instance, or identifying a character’s feelings in a short reading passage.

They are designed to capture long-term trends, with the reading test going back to 1971 and the math exam back to 1973. After student progress for many years, their scoresbegan to decline after 2012, with steeper drops after the pandemic’s onset.

“These latest results provide additional evidence of the scale, the pervasiveness and the persistence of the learning loss American students experienced as a result of the pandemic,” said Martin West, a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and member of the governing board.

West pointed out that many students had been attending school entirely in-person for just over a year when the tests were given — and had not yet experienced the full benefit of a second in-person school year.

“One of the things they [the results] tell us is that the period of recovery that we all know is needed hadn’t begun by the start of the 2022-23 school year,” he said.

Many school districts around the country launched academic interventions in 2022-2023, including high-dosage tutoring. But researchers have said that the scale of interventions is far less than the need in many places.

Fewer students show understanding of history and civics

Carr said the data, combined with that from earlier testing, showed “signs of risk for a generation of learners.” The first stunning backslide was reported last September, with results for 9-year-olds nosediving to levels unseen in decades.

She cautioned that the results were national in scope and that various state and local results could be different. Carr and others have said academic decline is part of a broader picture that includes worsening school climate and student mental health.

The national sample of 13-year-olds included 8,700 students from 460 schools in each subject, according to the NCES, part of the Education Department. More than 80 percent of the schools tested in 2019-2020 were tested again in 2022-2023.

The share of students who reported “never” or “hardly ever” reading for fun jumped by 9 points, to 31 percent.

Education Secretary Miguel Cardona weighed in on the results in a statement, saying the administration has long recognized it would take “years of effort and investment” to make up for the toll of the pandemic and “the 11-year decline that preceded it.”

School systems have committed nearly 60 percent of covid relief funds to efforts that advance academic recovery, he said, including teacher hiring, tutoring, and high-quality after-school and summer programs. Several states are returning to pre-pandemic achievement levels on state tests, he said.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2023/06/21/national-student-test-scores-drop-naep/

Work Advice: The unwritten workplace rules we wish someone had told us

June 27, 2023 Paul Costello1 Uncategorized

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Washington Post Karla L Miller June 25th 2023

In response to a recent query about unwritten workplace rules, here are some of the best tips I received from new workers and the people who train them.

“Dress conservatively until you know what is considered suitable. Regulate your language likewise.” — Susan Van Hemel, Fairfax, Va.

After acing the button-down formality of the interview process, don’t get too comfortable too quickly in your attire or your attitude.

After four years of emailing and texting with professors almost as if they were peers, “I found myself being too informal when sending emails or speaking during client calls,” Cristina Sabia, a new employee of New York-based communications agency MikeWorldWide, said in an email. By observing and seeking advice from more experienced colleagues, Sabia has started using “positive neutral language” and a “collective tone of voice” with clients, saying “we,” “our” and “our team” instead of “I” and “my.”

Pay attention to whether your colleagues typically address clients with honorifics and surnames or just first names. And never presume to use a nickname unless your client or colleague uses it first in their signature or self-introduction.

“It’s okay to question management … [but] know that people don’t want criticism from day one.” — Erin Wilson, Lancaster, England

You may be bursting with ideas on better processes or new tools that your employer should adopt to be more efficient and productive. But learn the reason for the current approach before you offer what you assume are new solutions. “Remember, they may have been tried before and not worked out,” said Van Hemel of Fairfax in an email.

Later on, don’t assume prior experience applies to your current situation. “When I changed jobs in midcareer, I was careful to ask my supervisor, ‘In my old job, I would handle [a situation or personnel issue] this way. Is that how it’s handled here?’” said Kathy Larson of Columbia, Md., in an email.

“Build up your professional capital early.” — Lauren Milligan, Chicago

In school, you may have grown accustomed to completing your assignments and collecting grades automatically, with no need to strive for extra credit. In most workplaces, that gets you a C at best.

While you want to avoid being taken advantage of or doing unpaid work, “there will be times when staying late or going beyond the job description can pay off well,” Lauren Milligan, career advancement coach and founder of ResuMAYDAY, said in an email.

And when your assignment is done, “never watch someone else work. Even if you don’t know how to help, ask,” Janet Gannon of Brunswick, Ga., advises her internship-bound students.

“I’d rather answer 10 clarification questions up front than [hear] ‘Oh, I wasn’t sure.’” — Kally Lavoie, Gainesville, Fla.

You might hate seeming as though you don’t know what you’re doing, but according to managers I heard from, even “dumb” questions are better than wrong guesses. Listen to the instructions, give it a shot — but then ask before you reach the point of no return.

“Provide good news fast and bad news faster.” — Tom Wells, Olney, Md.

Smart managers expect new hires to make mistakes, and to come clean when they do.

“I don’t expect perfection,” says Jason O’Toole, a Boston-area poet and risk manager for an acute psychiatric hospital. “I do expect that mistakes will be made. I do expect you to ask questions and to be honest about poor outcomes. You should expect the same honesty from me. I want you to succeed, and it’s my job to give you the tools to do so.”

“Be nice to people at all levels.” — Jody Carlson, Fairfax, Va.

Regardless of rank, titles or seeming niceness, treat everyone you meet as important and deserving of respect.

“Resist getting pulled into office gossip or inside jokes. Not knowing who the main players are, or everyone’s history, you might end up getting on the wrong side of an Important Person,” Milligan said in an email. “A good way to deflect gossip is with a neutral, ‘I’m still getting the lay of the land.’”

D.C. paralegal Jody Carlson’s advice to summer associates and interns: “Word gets around as to who’s a jerk and who’s nice to work with.” That can determine whether they’re invited back full-time.

Annabelle Baugh, a senior content marketing specialist at Exposure Ninja in Britain, wishes someone had given her a heads-up on “avoiding multitasking, like checking your emails or doing other work” during virtual meetings. You may think you look busy; colleagues think you’re tuned out. “By maintaining eye contact with the camera, you are also showing respect and consideration for your colleagues in the meeting,” Baugh said via email.

“‘Always start as you mean to go on.’ That means being intentional early on based on the long game.” — Kamela Lupino, Minn.

Of course you want to make a good impression. Just make sure the expectations you’re setting are ones you’ll be able to fulfill.

“If you’re an introvert, don’t start as if you’re hyper-extroverted when that’s not going to be sustainable. If work/life balance is important to you, don’t work all hours out of the gate and think pulling back later won’t have ramifications,” said Kamela Lupino, director for the HR consulting firm Kincentric in Minneapolis.

All this mindfulness about how you’re dressing, speaking and behaving, not to mention staying vigilant for unwritten rules, can be exhausting. “Anticipate that you’ll be ‘drinking from the fire hose’ for at least three months,” Lupino said in an email. “Plan for self-care (eating well, exercising and plenty of rest) to maintain stamina, even if it means scaling back on some other less essential activities for a while.”

Reader query: Early in your career, what do you wish your established colleagues had done to help you adjust to a new job? What helpful gesture from a senior colleague made the transition easier for you? Let me know at karla.miller@washpost.com.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/06/22/workadvice-workplace-rules/

Medgar Evers battled for civil rights. His home shows what it cost him.

June 27, 2023 Paul Costello1 Uncategorized

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Myrlie Evers-Williams sits in her family’s onetime home in Jackson, Miss., feet from a bullet hole in the wall from June 12, 1963. (Rory Doyle for The Washington Post)

Washington Post June 14th A4 Deneen Brown

JACKSON, Miss. — The violent threats against civil rights leader Medgar Evers from white supremacists in Mississippi were escalating in 1963. The phone at the family’s home in Jackson rang off the hook with hate. Racists had thrown a firebomb through the living room window.

Evers, a fast-rising civil rights leader in Mississippi, had led a successful economic boycott against White businesses in Jackson that refused equal service to Black people. He had gone undercover in overalls to investigate the lynching of Emmett Till.

Evers had just given a televised speech on civil rights. But this was Mississippi, and he knew that his work could get him killed.

So did his wife, Myrlie.

“I knew each and every day when he walked out of these doors, we might not see him again,” Myrlie Evers-Williams, 90, told The Washington Post this month, during an interview at that family home in Jackson.

Medgar Evers in August 1955. Evers challenged segregation at the University of Mississippi, then became a leader with the NAACP. (AP)

On June 12, 1963, a white supremacist assassinated Evers in the driveway. He was 37.

Monday’s 60th anniversary of Evers’s assassination comes as hate crimes have increased in the United States, school districts ban books on racism and state legislatures outlaw the teaching of “critical race theory.” Evers-Williams, who herself became a force for civil rights, wants to preserve her late husband’s legacy — and impress upon the country that his work for justice is not done.

“I truly believe there are still problems in terms of race relations,” she said. “As I move around the country, and I do quite a bit, I see the ugliness of it undercover.”

More than ugliness:

“It is an evil. Evil has a way of staying around. Evil has a way of disguising itself, which means those of us have to be watchful, in the best way possible, to work with each other to see that evil does not rise again.”

Who killed Martin Luther King Jr.? His family believes James Earl Ray was framed.

She presses the lace tablecloth on the dining room table in the three-bedroom, one-story rambler. The walls here are painted pale green, the living room window framed by family photos, a black piano and white sheer curtains. Behind her, there are velvet blue sofas and props from the film “Ghosts of Mississippi,” based on the events leading to the final trial of her husband’s assassin.

A bullet from outside pierced the kitchen wall and left a dent in the refrigerator. (Rory Doyle for The Washington Post)

Over her left shoulder is a black-and-white photograph taped to the wall. It’s one the police took that night in 1963. It shows the hole from the bullet that pierced the outside wall of the house and the kitchen wall and left a dent in the refrigerator.

The house, once filled with love, still bears witness to what happened.

The fight of Medgar Evers

Medgar Evers was born in 1925 in Decatur, Miss., the third of five children. When he was about 12 years old, Evers witnessed a Black man named Willie Tingle, a friend of his father’s, being dragged behind a wagon for allegedly insulting a White woman, according to an NAACP report. Tingle was then shot and hanged. A young Evers passed the tree where the lynching happened each day.

When Evers was 17, he enlisted in the Army, fighting in France and Germany in World War II, then returned to Mississippi. When he and his brother Charles attempted to vote in Decatur, a White mob blocked them at gunpoint.

The ‘Mississippi Plan’ to keep Blacks from voting in 1890: ‘We came here to exclude the Negro’

In 1948, Evers enrolled in Alcorn Agricultural and Mechanical College, where he majored in business administration, was on the debate team, played football, ran track and became editor of the campus newspaper and yearbook. He met fellow student Myrlie Louise Beasley on her first day.

Medgar and Myrlie met at college, married in 1951 and moved to a historically Black town before settling in Jackson. (The Myrlie Evers-Williams Collection at Pomona College)

They married in 1951 and after graduating moved to Mound Bayou, a historically Black town in Mississippi, where Evers worked as an agent for a Black-owned insurance company, selling policies to sharecroppers. He saw firsthand the poverty and despair of Black people who lived in the Mississippi Delta, and organized a boycott against segregated gas stations. “Don’t buy gas where you can’t use the restroom,” read the bumper stickers he passed out.

Determined to gain equal rights for Black people, Evers launched a campaign to desegregate public institutions in Mississippi. In 1954, he applied for admission to the University of Mississippi law school, which rejected him because of his race.P

More on civil rights history

The NAACP national office noticed Evers’s work. That year, the organization named him its first field secretary in Mississippi. He and his family moved to Jackson, where Evers led protests, sit-ins, read-ins and “direct action” to desegregate libraries, buses, beaches, movie theaters, train stations, the state fair and White-owned business on Jackson’s Capitol Street. He led rallies, economic boycotts and drives to register Black voters. He launched a system of “citizenship schools” across the state to help prepare Black voters for literacy tests, to increase those registered to vote. He worked to bring national attention to injustices Black people suffered in Mississippi.

“He would often bring his ideas and plans, most always home, to me to listen to, knowing full well I was shaking in my shoes for his life,” Evers-Williams recalled. “I was born in Mississippi. I knew the state.”

The Everses had bought their home in Jackson from Black developers who were planning a bold experiment in the Deep South: a neighborhood for middle-class Black people, built in the middle of a White suburb.

Evers had designed the house with safety in mind. The front door did not face the street, tucked instead under the carport — providing cover, as he saw it, from potential snipers. When returning home, he would exit the passenger door directly into the side door of the house.

“It took bravery to purchase here,” Evers-Williams said. “It took bravery to move in.”

“I truly believe there are still problems in terms of race relations,” Myrlie Evers-Williams said. (Rory Doyle for The Washington Post)

On May 20, 1963, Evers gave a 17-minute speech on WLBT, a Mississippi news station known for supporting the views of segregationists. He had demanded fair airtime to respond to then-Jackson Mayor Allen Thompson, who had recently given a speech opposing desegregation.

“The Negro has been here in America since 1619, a total of 344 years. He is not going anywhere else; this country is his home,” Evers said. “He wants to do his part to help make his city, state, and nation a better place for everyone, regardless of color and race. Let me appeal to the consciences of many silent, responsible citizens of the White community who know that a victory for democracy in Jackson will be a victory for democracy everywhere.”P

More on Black history

Viewers called in, demanding the station take him off the air. Eight days later, the family’s house was firebombed after Evers organized a sit-in at the F.W. Woolworth lunch counter in Jackson.

The next week, five days before Evers’s death, a driver tried to run him over as he left the NAACP office.

An assassination, and a long search for justice

It was just after midnight on June 12, 1963, when Evers pulled his Oldsmobile into the house’s driveway, just outside the side door where Evers-Williams was sitting 60 years later. He had with him a stack of sweatshirts declaring “Jim Crow Must Go.”

But Evers broke his routine that night: He parked behind his wife’s vehicle, not under the carport, perhaps tired after attending late meetings. He got out of the car on the driver’s side. A White man, who had hid several yards away in a honeysuckle bush, raised a high-caliber rifle and fired.

Medgar Evers was arriving home late when a White supremacist shot him, the bullet passing through Evers and through a window. (Associated Press)

The shot blasted a hole in Evers’s back, passed through his chest and pierced the outside wall of the house. The bullet shot through a kitchen wall, bounced off a refrigerator and landed in a cabinet.

Evers fell near the steps of the house. Inside, Evers-Williams and their three children had stayed awake to watch President John F. Kennedy deliver a major televised speech on civil rights. She “ran for the door,” she recounted to a newspaper later that month, praying “that he was just wounded, that it would not be fatal.”

She opened the door and found the man she calls “the love of my life” lying facedown. Their two older children pulled their baby brother off the bed and crawled to the bathroom, following the safety rules their father had taught them. When they heard their mother scream, they came running back and screamed, too: “Daddy, get up! Please get up!”

MLK’s famous criticism of Malcolm X was a ‘fraud,’ author finds

Across the street, the force of the shot also had injured the shooter when his rifle recoiled. One of the Everses’ neighbors fired a warning shot in the air in response. The shooter dropped the weapon and fled, according to FBI records.

Medgar Evers was pronounced dead at the hospital 50 minutes later, galvanizing civil rights protests across the country.

Myrlie Evers leans down to kiss her late husband’s forehead before the casket was opened for public viewing at a funeral home in Jackson. With her is her brother-in-law Charles Evers. (AP)

Byron De La Beckwith VI, a fertilizer salesman and member of the Ku Klux Klan and the White Citizens’ Council, an organization developed to support mass resistance to integration of public schools, was arrested 10 days after the murder, connected to fingerprints on the rifle’s scope. According to an FBI report, he “had been asking around to find out the location of Evers’s home for some time before the shooting.

The Ku Klux Klan was dead. The first Hollywood blockbuster revived it.

Twice in 1964, all-White juries deadlocked on the charges against Beckwith.

Men hurl rocks at a line of police blocking an intersection in Jackson on June 15, 1963, as mourners demonstrated following Medgar Evers’s murder. (AP)

In 1989, prosecutors reopened the case, based on evidence published in the Clarion-Ledger newspaper that a secretive, pro-segregation state agency had helped Beckwith’s attorneys screen jurors at trial.

On Feb. 5, 1994, more than 30 years after Evers’s murder, Beckwith was found guilty of it. He was sentenced to life in prison, where he died in 2001.

The rifle he used to kill Medgar Evers went on display at the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum.

A family civil rights legacy

The Evers family home is now a museum, too: the Medgar and Myrlie Evers Home National Monument, run by the National Park Service. So many years later, Evers-Williams can still feel Medgar’s presence inside it.

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is image-9-1024x778.png

Evers’s name is ever-present in Jackson: at the airport, a library, a boulevard and murals that loom larger than life — accomplishments attributed to Myrlie, who continued his work.

President John F. Kennedy, center, visits with Myrlie Evers-Williams, left, widow of civil rights leader Medgar Evers. Also pictured: Reena and Darrell Evers, children of Medgar and Myrlie; Charles Evers, far right, brother of Medgar. (Cecil W. Stoughton/White House Photographs/The Myrlie Evers-Williams Collection at Pomona College)

The determined father who took Linda Brown by the hand and made history

Only hours after Evers’s murder, Evers-Williams had gathered the fortitude to lead a mass meeting at Pearl Street AME Church in Jackson, rallying the crowd to continue the fight. She traveled the country thereafter giving speeches on civil rights. A year after the murder, she moved with her children to California, where she eventually ran for Congress and became a commissioner of public works for Los Angeles.

In 1976, she married another civil rights activist, the late Walter Williams. The next year, she was elected chair of the NAACP.

President Barack Obama embraces Myrlie Evers-Williams during her visit in the Oval Office in 2013. Evers-Williams delivered the invocation at Obama’s second inauguration. (Pete Souza/White House Photograph/Myrlie Evers-Williams Collection, Pomona College)

In 2013, Evers-Williams became the first woman and first person who was not a member of the clergy to give the invocation at a presidential inauguration, speaking at President Barack Obama’s second.

This summer may be the last time she visits the house, she said. She pressed the lace tablecloth on the dining room table. She explained how, after what had happened here, she willed herself to go on.

“I certainly didn’t want Medgar to be forgotten overnight,” Evers-Williams said. “I wanted the movement to continue. I didn’t want people to back down, because that would have been a slap in his face. And I felt that is what he would have wanted me to do. For the rest of my life, everything I did was based on what I thought he would have wanted.”

The Evers family home in Jackson, Miss., is now the Medgar and Myrlie Evers Home National Monument, run by the National Park Service. (Rory Doyle for The Washington Post)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2023/06/11/medgar-evers-assassination-civil-rights-myrlie-evers/

Which poems help in hard times? Here’s what readers told us.

June 27, 2023 Paul Costello1 Uncategorized

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In her May 25 Thursday Opinion essay, Josie Glausiusz explained how poems offered her an anchor as she lost her 12-year-old son to brain cancer. “With just a word or a phrase, a poem can reach the hidden places that prayers or well-meaning advice cannot,” Glausiusz wrote. Describing the group she started on WhatsApp, called “Poetry Is Medicine,” she related how finding and sharing a poem with family and friends each day brought comfort and connection to her and others.

Her essay prompted many readers to share the poems that they turn to in difficult times, and particular lines that resonate. Here’s a sampling of what they sent. Comments have been edited for length, clarity and style.

Joe O’Malley, New York. The first few lines of Gerard Manley Hopkins’s “Carrion Comfort” always help kick me out of a funk: “Not, I’ll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee / Not untwist — slack they may be — these last strands of man in me.” After my parents died, I turned to memorizing difficult poems in my mourning and started a YouTube channel devoted to poetry. Now, we’re discussing Shakespeare’s sonnets on there. Hopkins is still No. 1 because the difficulty of memorizing his poems still helps me distract myself from myself.

Lauren E. Persons, Parma, Ohio. I remember feeling the incredible gravity of William Wordsworth’s poem “The World Is Too Much With Us” on 9/11. My mother was very ill, and I was teaching. We were trying to help our students make sense out of something that made no sense. I hurried to the hospital to make sure my mom was okay. When I got to her room, my mother lifted her head from the pillow and said, “The world is too much with us; late and soon …”P

Jennifer Hall Lee, Altadena, Calif. When I read “Theories of Time and Space” by Natasha Trethewey (I read her work almost weekly), I anticipate the last part because I understand how we are always being changed. It helps me see that things pass: “Where you board the boat for Ship Island / Someone will take your picture / the photograph — who you were — / will be waiting when you return.”

Tim Zuellig, Bartlett, Ill. During times of mental duress, in a lifelong struggle with depression, I always read the epic poem “Letters to Yesenin” by Jim Harrison. It is a series of letters from Harrison to the long-dead Russian poet Sergei Yesenin, who hanged himself. I find it to be a call back to Earth, to nature and to love of other humans. In the end, thankfully, Harrison decides against suicide with the line: “My year-old daughter’s red robe hangs from the doorknob shouting stop.” There are so many great lines. I’m going to read it again today.

Sam Kirk, Oaklyn, N.J. “Go Now” by Gary Snyder is a poem I turn to often. It’s an account of Snyder’s wife’s illness and death from cancer, and particularly of the physicality of it. Snyder, known for his connections with Buddhist thought, refers to the concept of attachment, associated with the root of all suffering. The line that always gets me is: “This is the price of attachment / Worth it. Easily worth it.”

Rik Myslewski, San Francisco. I am not a spiritual man. I do not nurture my pain, emotional or otherwise, nor respect it as a teacher or guide. Life simply is. How much pain am I experiencing? How much joy? Just the right amount. So “Beerbottle” by Charles Bukowski speaks to me: “All manner of nudges set us to burning or freezing / What sets the blackbird in the cat’s mouth is not for us to say.” Life is luck, struggle, love, work and wonder. No more, no less, it seems to say. That is immensely comforting.

Nancy Van Der Weide, Aberdeen, S.D. One of the poems that helped me most was “Prayer to Persephone” by Edna St. Vincent Millay. The narrator appeals to the queen of the Greek underworld to help a beloved trapped in hell. My husband came back from Iraq different. In the years after his return, he became angry, scared and uncomfortable with everyday, free life in his country. Within three years, he was unreachable. He saw danger everywhere and could not trust anyone. In a misguided attempt to protect us, he disappeared from our lives. These lines in the poem “She that was so proud and wild, / Flippant, arrogant and free, / She that had no need of me, / Is a little lonely child / Lost in hell …” describe my experience exactly of watching him fall out of the world I am in.

Donald P. Butler, Houston. I belong to the Houston chapter of Death Café, and I love and collect modern religious poetry, especially poetry that deals with impermanence. The late, wonderful Mary Oliver had a poem called “Sometimes” that had these lines: “I don’t know what God is. I don’t know what death is. / But I believe they have between them some fervent and necessary arrangement.”

Ruthann Bates, Chevy Chase, Md. When my husband was in a hospice, I brought him a copy of Edgar Allan Poe’s poems. I read to him “The Raven,” which has wonderful images and language. When one of our kids came in and saw what we were doing, he said there was a “Simpsons” Halloween episode where James Earl Jones narrated the poem. We pulled it up on his television and watched it — hilarious. It was a wonderful respite from a very sad and difficult time.

Lori Anne Gross, Houston. When I have had to say goodbye to my many dogs over the years, I have reached for Rudyard Kipling’s poem “The Power of the Dog.” It helps me connect to my grief, brings up fond memories of happy times and, in a funny way, lessens my sense of loss, the inevitability of it all, and the cyclical nature of loving and losing dogs whose lives are much shorter than ours: “So why in — Heaven (before we are there) / Should we give our hearts to a dog to tear?”

Cassandra K. Conroy, Beaufort, S.C. My sister and I shared a love of trees. When she was diagnosed with terminal cancer, I discovered “Trees” by W.S. Merwin to read to her. Since then, I have sent it to so many others that I keep printed copies on hand to include in notes of encouragement. It ends: “They have stood round my sleep / and when it was forbidden to climb them / they have carried me in their branches.”

Julie Buyon, Egremont, Mass. The poem I share most often with the people I work with as a patient advocate is Wendell Berry’s “The Peace of Wild Things.” Among the lines that remind us not rush to meet bad news are: “I come into the peace of wild things / who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief.” I lost my dad to cancer when I was 2, and my greatest fear with my own three cancer diagnoses was that my kids would grow up without their mom. I reread this poem every year before I have annual medical imaging.

Sheila Finkelstein, Boynton Beach, Fla. When Sam, my beloved husband of 47 years, was in a coma in the hospital, the poem I read many times, over several days, was E.E. Cummings’s “I Carry Your Heart With Me.” I would lie beside him in the hospital bed, hugging him and reading or whispering it in his ear, usually concluding with my own summation, “Your heart is in my heart; my heart is in yours.” The final time was when I gave Sam “permission” to feel free to leave us just before the feeding tubes were disconnected to move him into hospice. Sam died in my arms as I continued to remind him he would always be with us. When I comforted our beloved grandchildren, I reassured them that they were in Poppy’s heart as he was in theirs. I still have the vivid image of my youngest grandson, 8 years old at the time (15-plus years ago), walking around the house during shiva. He kept patting his heart repeating, “Poppy’s right here. Poppy’s right here.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/06/19/readers-poems-help-hard-times/

Multiple victims wounded, two killed, in shootings in Maryland, D.C.

May 23, 2023 Paul Costello1 Uncategorized

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By Dan Morse, Peter Hermann and Salvador Rizzo Updated May 19, 2023 at 12:41 p.m. EDT|Published May 18, 2023 at 8:45 p.m. EDT

An 18-year-old was fatally shot on a rush-hour Metro platform in Montgomery County on Thursday evening as residents and leaders in the area wrestle with the latest spate of gun violence among teenagers and young adults.

“It goes, I think, to the lawlessness of these guys these days,” said Montgomery Police Chief Marcus Jones. “This case and what you see in D.C. and Prince George’s are sad. These guys have no regard for human life.”

Over an 1½-hour stretch, five shootings in the three jurisdictions wounded or killed six people. The victims included a 14-year-old girl who was shot outside an apartment complex in the Riverdale area of Prince George’s. Sheremained hospitalized in critical condition Friday. That county’s police chief, echoing Jones, lamented how quickly people are to resolve disputes with gunfire.

“We’re past the point of things getting out of hand,” Prince George’s County Police Chief Malik Aziz said.

Violent crime totals in Prince George’s are essentially unchanged this year compared with the same period a year ago, according the police department’s statistics. Homicides are down (27 compared with 35), while nonfatal shootings are up (104 compared with 98).

In the District, the fatal shooting of 47-year-old Leonard Carter in the Edgewood community brought the number of homicides in D.C. this year to 85, a 10 percent increase from this time last year.

“I said very plainly I’m not satisfied with it, and I want our whole system to be working urgently to drive those crimes down,” D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) said Friday during an appearance on “The Politics Hour” with Kojo Nnamdi.

The incidents began at 5:20 p.m., when assailants drove into a 7-Eleven parking lot along New Hampshire Avenue, about one mile south of the Capital Beltway, officials said. They fired at two men sitting in the parking lot and drove off. One of the victims was taken to a hospital in serious condition and the other received non-life-threatening injuries, according to a police spokesman.

Some 18 minutes later, gunfire that hit the 14-year-old girl erupted five miles away in Prince George’s County. Aziz said it appears that multiple guns were fired through vehicles parked outside a building.

Back in Montgomery County, at 5:53 p.m., an altercation broke out between two groups on an escalator at the Wheaton Metro station. It intensified, leading to the shooting of 18-year-old Tenneson Vaughn Leslie Jr. on the platform. He was taken to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

Responding police searched surrounding areas for assailants who got away.

“It’s jarring and understandably heightens everyone’s concerns over public safety,” Montgomery County Councilmember Gabe Albornoz (D-At Large) said of the Wheaton shooting. “It was in a very public place. It was during the day. It was so brazen.”

Twelve months ago, Albornoz said that youth violence in Montgomery was increasing to a volume he’d never seen before and called the issue “a massive problem with no easy solution.”

Albornoz said the numbers have since leveled off, citing efforts by the county’s Street Outreach Network, which tries to pull youths from gangs as well as the county’s post-covid restarting of recreation programs. “We continue to double-down on youth harm reduction programs,” he said. “I feel like we have a better handle on things than we did last year.”

Killings of children spark outrage, frustration over violence in D.C.

Thus far this year, Montgomery Police have recorded 79 shootings, an increase from the 66 for the same period last year, Jones said. In 20 of the incidents this year, police confirmed a victim had been hit, Jones added.

Investigators are studying Metro video, Jones said. They have spoken with witnesses, but have yet to hear detailed or solid information, including what the groups were arguing about, the chief added.

Five days ago, gunfire broke out about 10:30 p.m. along Fenwick Lane, leaving 20-year-old Jedidiah Kehiku Ogboi-Gibson dead in a parking lot. Investigators collected 17 shell casings. “It was a big crime scene,” Jones said. “Guys in cars were shooting at each other. Luckily no one else was hit. … To me, that was as alarming as having a shooting in the Metro platform.”

Detectives are working the case hard, he said, but are struggling to get information from witnesses.

“It’s going, but it’s not going very fast,” Jones said. “We haven’t had any cooperation.”

While plenty of attention has been paid to the lasting effects of the pandemic on young people — specifically the suspension of school and youth programs — Jones cited two factors he sees as bigger drivers in gun violence among teenagers and young adults: the growing availability of guns and the continued light penalties for being caught with illegally possessing them.

Jones said black-market gun sellers can purchase ghost guns at shows and sell them on the streets. “It’s a cash business, basically a prolific business,” Jones said. “That market is all around us. These kids know who to go to. And we as a community aren’t talking about it enough.”

Thursday evening’s shootings ended with two just eight minutes apart in the District.

Carter, the 47-year-old, was shot at 6:47 p.m. in the 300 block of Franklin Street NE near a recreation center and south of a college campus. Around 6:55 p.m., police said, a man was shot and critically injured at First and Q streets NW, in Truxton Circle. No other details have been released about either shooting, and no arrests were made.

So far this year, D.C. police have recorded 48 juveniles shot, compared with 24 over the same period a year ago.

The shootings Thursday added to a week thatclaimed six lives in D.C. since Sunday, including a 10-year-old girl riding in a vehicle and a student killed outside his school. The slayings on Mother’s Day of 10-year-old Arianna Davis, a fifth-grader, and of Jefferson Perez, a 17-year-old shot Wednesday afternoon in the parking lot of the school he attended, Roosevelt High in Petworth, shocked a city already contending with growing violence.

Police have said Arianna was in a vehicle with her parents and siblings when a stray bullet from a barrage of gunfire struck her in the Mayfair community. Police said Perez was shot during an altercation and that a firearm was recovered at the scene.

His grandmother, Sonia Ferrufino, said Friday that the family — owing to safety concerns — had migrated from El Salvador to the United States. On Friday, they were making funeral arrangements.

“We’re in a very rough shape,” Ferrufino said.

Ferrufino hoped those responsible will be arrested soon.

“The police have to find them, because they already have clues as to who they are,” she said.

Bowser was asked on the Kojo Nnamdi show Friday to respond to claims from some Republican members of Congress that there’s a state of “lawlessness” in the District. She that gun violence was a national problem that is not specific to D.C. — though she acknowledged a “troubling increase” in some crime categories, including shootings and homicides.

“Nobody can be satisfied with that,” the mayor said.

The mayor said conversations about public safety in the city often get bogged down by finger-pointing blaming certain officials or agencies for rising crime.

“At the end of the day, people in neighborhoods across D.C. aren’t interested in squabbling over who should do what,” Bowser said. “Regardless of who’s directly responsible for prosecution or sentencing, I’m the mayor, and I work hard every day to make sure all the pieces of our system are working to make our city safer.”

Michael Brice-Saddler, Clarence Williams, Jasmine Hilton, Dana Hedgpeth, Magda Jean-Louis and Janay Kingsberry contributed to this report.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2023/05/18/shootings-dmv-crime-teen-prince-georges/

Parents Don’t Understand How Far Behind Their Kids Are in School

May 23, 2023 Paul Costello1 Uncategorized

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By Tom Kane and Sean Reardon

Dr. Kane is a professor of education and economics at Harvard. Dr. Reardon is a professor of education and sociology at Stanford.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Parents have become a lot more optimistic about how well their children are doing in school.

In 2020 and 2021, a majority of parents in the United States reported that the pandemic was hurting their children’s education. But by the fall of 2022, a Pew survey showed that only a quarter of parents thought their children were still behind; another study revealed that more than 90 percent thought their child had already or would soon catch up. To hear parents tell it, the pandemic’s effects on education were transitory.

Are they right to be so sanguine? The latest evidence suggests otherwise. Math, reading and history scores from the past three years show that students learned far less during the pandemic than was typical in previous years. By the spring of 2022, according to our calculations, the average student was half a year behind in math and a third of a year behind in reading.

As part of a team of researchers from Harvard, Stanford, Dartmouth, Johns Hopkins and the testing company NWEA — the Education Recovery Scorecard project — we have been sifting through data from 7,800 communities in 41 states, to understand where test scores declined the most, what caused these patterns and whether they are likely to endure. The school districts in these communities enroll 26 million elementary and middle school students in more than 53,000 public schools, roughly 80 percent of the public K-8 students in the country.

We’ve looked at test scores, the duration of school closures, broadband availability, Covid death rates, employment data, patterns of social activity, voting patterns, measures of how connected people are to others in their communities and Facebook survey data on both family activities and mental health during the pandemic.

And to get a sense of how probable it is that students will make up the ground they lost over the next few years, we looked at earlier test scores to see how students recovered from various disruptions in the decade before the pandemic.

Our detailed geographic data reveals what national tests do not: The pandemic exacerbated economic and racial educational inequality.

In 2019, the typical student in the poorest 10 percent of districts scored one and a half years behind the national average for his or her year – and almost four years behind students in the richest 10 percent of districts – in both math and reading.

By 2022, the typical student in the poorest districts had lost three-quarters of a year in math, more than double the decline of students in the richest districts. The declines in reading scores were half as large as in math and were similarly much larger in poor districts than rich districts. The pandemic left students in low-income and predominantly minority communities even further behind their peers in richer, whiter districts than they were.

But while the effects of the pandemic on learning were quite different across communities, they were, surprisingly, evenly distributed among different types of students within each community. You might expect that the more affluent children in a district would be better protected from the educational consequences of the pandemic than their lower-income classmates. But that’s not what we found.

Instead, within any school district, test scores declined by similar amounts in all groups of students – rich and poor, white, Black, and Hispanic (we didn’t have enough data on Asian and Native American students to measure their learning). And the extent to which schools were closed appears to have affected all students in a community equally, regardless of income or race.

Overall, it mattered a lot more which school district you lived in than how much money your parents earned.

Once we know that there was much more variation between districts than within them, the obvious question is: Which community factors determined how children were affected? One primary suspect is school closures. And indeed, our study — like other studies, one of which members of the team worked on — shows that test scores declined more in districts where schools were closed longer. In districts closed for 90 percent or more of the 2020-21 school year, math scores declined by two-thirds of a year, nearly double the decline in districts that were closed for less than 10 percent of the school year.

But school closures are only part of the story. Students fell behind even in places where schools closed very briefly, at the start of the pandemic in spring 2020, and then re-opened and stayed open for the next few years. Clearly, there were other factors at work.

What were they? We found that test scores declined more in places where the Covid death rate was high, in communities where adults reported feeling more depression and anxiety during the pandemic and where daily routines of children and families were most significantly restricted. In combination, these factors put enormous strain on parents, teachers and kids — making it unlikely that adults could help kids focus on school. Curtailed social activities were particularly harmful: On average, both math and reading scores declined by roughly a tenth of a year more in the 10 percent of districts where social activities were most curtailed than they did in the 10 percent least restricted.

We also found that the test score declines were smaller in communities with high voting rates and high census response rates — indicators of what sociologists call “institutional trust.” School closures were also less harmful in such places.

What all this means is that the educational impacts of the pandemic were not driven solely by what was happening (or not happening) in schools. The disruption in children’s lives outside of school also mattered: the constriction of their social lives, the stress their parents were feeling, the death of family members, the signals that the world was not safe and the very real fear that you or someone you love might get very sick and die. The pandemic was a public health and economic disaster that reshaped every area of children’s lives, but it did so to different degrees in different communities, and so its consequences for children depended on where they lived.

Regardless of how exactly the pandemic caused educational harm, the overall effect has been devastating.

So what do we do now?

Schools cannot just “hurry up.” Especially in math, teachers build students’ understanding sequentially — from arithmetic to fractions to exponents to algebra. Schools have curriculums, and teachers have their lesson plans for each topic. In theory, a school district could rethink its curriculum following a disruption — skimming and paring to move more quickly — but that would be difficult to coordinate across hundreds or thousands of teachers. And do we really want students to have an abbreviated understanding of fractions?

When students fall behind, they don’t just catch up naturally. Reviewing data from the decade preceding the pandemic, we identified numerous instances where a school district’s test scores suddenly declined or suddenly rose in a particular grade. Our data does not reveal the causes. But we can see what happened afterward: Students resumed learning at their prior pace, but they did not make up the ground they lost or lose the ground they gained. Years later, the affected cohorts remained behind or ahead.

Over the past two years, many school districts have used the $190 billion in federal pandemic relief money to add tutors and other school staff and to raise summer school enrollment — all in an attempt to accelerate learning. To a limited extent, they succeeded. In one widely used math and reading assessment, the average student in grades three through eight resumed learning at a slightly faster than normal rate — making up about 25 percent of their pandemic loss in math and reading during the 2021-22 school year and the summer of 2022. But even if schools are able to maintain that pace after the federal dollars to pay for tutors and summer school run out, it will take four years or more to return to pre-pandemic achievement levels.

The truth is children are already paying the price. In the coming weeks, 3.5 million high school seniors are set to graduate — less prepared, on average, for college and a career. They will be joining the more than 10 million students who have already graduated since the pandemic began.

In the hardest-hit communities — where students fell behind by more than one and a half years in math — like Richmond, Va.; St. Louis; and New Haven, Conn. — schools would have had to teach 150 percent of a typical year’s worth of material for three years in a row just to catch up. It is magical thinking to expect they will make this happen without a major increase in instructional time.

For those districts that lost more than a year’s worth of learning, state leaders should require districts to resubmit their plans for spending the federal money and work with them and community leaders to add instructional time.

Parents are relieved to see their children learning again. But most parents remain ill informed about how far behind their children are. To help change that, we’ve made our data public and will continue doing so as new data become available.

Public officials could — and should — help get the word out as well. This summer, mayors and governors should be launching public service campaigns to promote summer learning. And school boards should begin negotiating to extend the next school year (and use the federal dollars to pay teachers for the extra time).

Especially given the mental toll of the pandemic, students need more than math and reading this summer. Rather than school districts trying to do it all themselves, they should link with other organizations — museums, summer camps, athletic programs — that already offer engaging summer programming, and add an academic component to those programs. For instance, Boston After School and Beyond provides an average of $1,500 per student in financial incentives and teaching support to add three hours of academic programming per day from a certified teacher at summer camps enrolling Boston students. The incentives are largely paid for by Boston Public Schools. The program is a potential model for other communities.

While summer learning can be part of a solution, it cannot be the sole solution. Research on programs like the one in Boston suggests that participants make up about one-quarter of a year’s worth of learning in math during a six-week summer program. That takes us part of the way, but nowhere near as far as we need to go.

Communities must find other ways to add learning opportunities outside the typical school calendar. Most educational software — like Zearn and Khan Academy — makes it possible to track students’ use and progress. Schools could incentivize organizations working with students after school, on weekends or during school vacation weeks to include time for students to learn online and then reimburse them based on students’ progress. Some districts are even paying tutoring providers based on student outcomes.

Especially in the hardest-hit communities, it is increasingly obvious that many students will not have caught up before the federal money runs out in 2024. School boards and state legislatures should start planning now for longer-term policy changes. One possibility would be to offer an optional fifth year of high school for students to fill holes in academic skills, get help with applying to college or to explore alternative career pathways. Students could split their time among high schools, community colleges and employers. Another option would be to make ninth grade a triage year during which students would receive intensive help in key academic subjects.

As enticing as it might be to get back to normal, doing so will just leave in place the devastating increase in inequality caused by the pandemic. In many communities, students lost months of learning time. Justice demands that we replace it. We must find creative ways to add new learning opportunities in the summer, after school, on weekends or during a 13th year of school.

If we fail to replace what our children lost, we — not the coronavirus — will be responsible for the most inequitable and longest-lasting legacy of the pandemic. But if we succeed, that broader and more responsive system of learning can be our gift to America’s schoolchildren.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/05/11/opinion/pandemic-learning-losses-steep-but-not-permanent.html

What Our Toxic Culture Does to the Young

May 23, 2023 Paul Costello1 Uncategorized

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A photograph of young people’s legs wearing muddy sneakers. They sit in a circle on a grass field.

By David Brooks Opinion Columnist NYT May 7th 2023

In the early 1960s typical Americans were eager to get on with adult life. As soon as they could, they married, launched careers and started popping out kids. In those days, half of all women married before their 20th birthday.

Then the boomers came of age. Typical members of that generation wanted to enjoy their freedom, so many put off marriage and parenting until their late 20s or their 30s. They adopted what some researchers call the “slow life strategy,” postponing the common milestones of adulthood until later in life.

As the psychologist Jean Twenge shows in her lavishly informative new book, “Generations,” the members of Gen Z are now practicing the slow life strategy with a vengeance.

They have already transformed adolescence. Members of Gen Z are, for example, content to get their driver’s licenses later than earlier generations. As high school seniors, they are less likely to do the things associated with adulthood and independence, like drinking alcohol, working for pay or having sex. When members of Gen X were in ninth grade, nearly 40 percent of them had had sex. By 2021, only 15 percent of the Gen Z ninth graders had.

As Twenge puts it: “In many ways, 18-year-olds now look like 14-year-olds in previous generations. For example, only about half of 12th graders date, about the same as eighth graders in the early 1990s.”

Twenge is not rendering a judgment here; she’s not saying that one generation is living the right way or the wrong way. Young people today are simply taking their time.

It makes perfect sense. People are living longer. If it’s now possible to run for president at age 80, then it’s prudent and wise to pace yourself through life, and not try to cram everything into those first unsteady decades.

But something else is going on here. Gen Z-ers grew up with hypercautious parenting that exaggerates the dangers in life. They grew up in a media culture that generates ratings and clicks by generating division and anger. They grew up in a political culture that magnifies a sense of menace — that presumes that other people are toxic — in order to tell simplistic us/them stories and mobilize people’s fears.

This culture of exaggerated distrust and presumed toxicity has influenced us all, but the younger generations most of all. On the one hand it’s made them hypervigilant to danger. Since 2011 the number of kids who have had to go to the emergency room for nonfatal injuries has plummeted. Members of Gen Z are less likely to do drugs or get into fights or car accidents than were teens in previous generations.

On the other hand this culture has induced — in all of us, but especially in the young — an aversion to risk.

In 1991, 48 percent of eighth and 10th graders said they liked to take risks sometimes. By 2021, that number had plunged to 32 percent.

People who grow up in this culture of distrust are bound to adopt self-protective codes of behavior. I’ve been teaching college students on and off for 25 years. Over the last few years, students have become much less willing to argue with one another in class. They don’t want to be viciously judged. It’s not even that they are consciously afraid of being canceled. It’s simply that the norm of non-argumentativeness in public has settled over many (but not all) parts of campus culture.

People who grow up in a culture of distrust are bound to be pessimistic about life. Since around 2012, the share of 12th graders who expect to earn a graduate or professional degree, get a professional job or own more than their parents has plummeted (even though, as Twenge shows, their brothers and sisters in the millennial generation are doing better and better).

People who grow up with this mentality are also less likely to believe they can control their own destinies. In her book, Twenge has a chart showing the share of 12th graders who believe that their lives are blown about by outside forces has been surging since 2006. That matters, she writes, because people who go through life with this defeatist attitude have worse life outcomes.

As a certified middle-aged guy, I’m glad that the members of Gen Z behave so much more responsibly than members of previous generations. Politically, they lean left, but dispositionally they are cautious and conservative.

But the sense of exaggerated menace has its downsides. Twenge describes a moment when she was telling some Gen Z women about a lady who had met her future husband when he hit on her in an elevator in their office building. That would almost never happen today, the young women told Twenge. His behavior would be considered creepy and stalkerish.

It’s always good to be on guard against a dangerous creep, but you may miss out on meeting the person who could be the love of your life.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/04/opinion/gen-z-adulthood.html

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Posts by Paul Costello1

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