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.
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.”
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.
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!”
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.
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.
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)
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)
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.”
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.
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.”
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.
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.
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.
Ramped up, amped up, ratchet up, gin up, up the ante, double down, jump-start, be behind the curve, swim against the tide, go south, go belly up, level the playing field, open the floodgates, think outside the box, push the edge of the envelope, pull out all the stops, take the foot off the pedal, pump the brakes, grease the wheel, circle the wagons, charge full steam ahead, pass with flying colors, move the goal posts, pour gasoline on, add fuel to the fire, fly under the radar, add insult to injury, grow by leaps and bounds, only time will tell, go to hell in a handbasket, put the genie back in the bottle, throw the baby out with the bathwater, rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic, have your cake and eat it too, a taste of one’s own medicine, stick to one’s guns, above one’s pay grade, punch above one’s weight, lick one’s wounds, pack a punch, roll with the punches, come apart at the seams, throw a wrench into, caught in the cross hairs, cross the Rubicon, tempt fate, go ballistic, on tenterhooks, hit the nail on the head, a nail in the coffin, joined at the hip, welcome with open arms, rub shoulders with, shoot oneself in the foot, dip one’s toes into, have a leg up, dance to the tune of, the next shoe to drop, in the DNA of, the gold standard, a gold mine, land mines,
a run for the money, money to burn, penny-wise and pound-foolish, lap of luxury, off the charts, over a barrel, late to the party, it takes two to tango, behind the eight ball, pride of place, final straw, full throttle, no holds barred, red flag, silver lining, on a silver platter, in the rearview mirror, bargain basement, silos, morph, meme, trope, mind meld, warp speed, inner demons, have skin in the game, game changer, change agent, strong suit, ground game, ground zero, inflection point, tipping point, playbook, page turner, singing from the same hymnal, singing a new tune, straight out of central casting, the devil’s in the details, take the bull by the horns, the canary in the coal mine, chickens coming home to roost, beat a dead horse, pony up, the straw that broke the camel’s back, open a can of worms, buy a pig in a poke, cash cow, rabbit hole, dog days, dog whistle, bells and whistles, tool kit, third rail, the tip of the iceberg, the light at the end of the tunnel, the arc of history, speak truth to power, break the glass ceiling, the writing’s on the wall, between a rock and a hard place, beyond the pale, take the wind out of the sails of, that ship has sailed, sinking ship, tidal wave, roller-coaster ride, gravy train, tanked, cratered, Rubik’s Cube, Rosetta Stone, Rolodex, poster child, problem child,
rock star, pundit, national treasure, charter member, heavy hitter, heavy lifting, political football, throw a Hail Mary, full-court press, hit a home run, play with house money, laser-focused, secret sauce, red meat, piece of cake, bread and butter, cherry-pick, low-hanging fruit, sticker shock, kick-start, kick into overdrive, kick the tires, kick the can down the road, where the rubber meets the road, an albatross around the neck, a feather in the cap, long in the tooth, armed to the teeth, cut one’s teeth, rib tickler, spine tingling, pull the wool over the eyes of, pull the plug on, pull the trigger, loosen the reins, sweep under the carpet, throw under the bus, throw for a loop, read the riot act, lead the pack, the short end of the stick, at the drop of a hat,
the jury is still out, hung out to dry, as if that weren’t enough, it would be an understatement to say, it would be no exaggeration to say, despite or perhaps because of, what goes around comes around, for all intents and purposes, make a long story short, the fact of the matter, to be sure, truth be told, a who’s who, famously, arguably, literally, zeitgeist, mantra, optics, granular, narrative, interrogate, paradigm, venue, robust, compelling, fever pitch, pitch perfect, picture perfect, perfect storm, take by storm, eye of the storm, back burner, petri dish, echo chamber, hot button, hard wire, go viral, bingeable, blockbuster, on steroids, testosterone-laced, metastasize, contextualize, preternaturally, outsize, gobsmacked, turbocharged, weaponized, apocalyptic, existential …
Montgomery Co. schools revise history curriculum in 4th, 5th grades
Montgomery County Public Schools’ new social studies framework will expose fourth- and fifth-graders to more American history — particularly Black history — at a younger age.
The new curriculum will incorporate anti-bias and anti-racist content and local history about Montgomery County, according to Tracy Oliver-Gary, the district’s social studies supervisor. It was presented to the county school board this week andreceived unanimous approval.
“The goal is that students should be able to see themselves in the curriculum,” Oliver-Gary said.
Montgomery County’s revisions to its history curriculum follow changes made by the state education board. The state board regularly reviews the curriculums it distributes to school districts, like its sex education framework. But Montgomery — Maryland’s largest school district, with roughly 159,000 students — is also changing its curriculum as a part of an anti-racist audit launched earlier this year.
Students in upper grades in the school system have pushed for some of the revisions, arguing that students with underrepresented identities don’t see themselves in lessons they learn in the classroom.
“Ever since I can remember, I’ve always learned about White men,” Sia Badri, a rising senior at Wootton High School, told the board this week. “It always made me feel less than, like my life and my identity weren’t significant enough to be shown to my peers or the world.”
She also highlighted how much of the content she learned in the classroom about the civil rights movement has ignored the role Black women played.
“[Badri] raises an important issue of inclusiveness, which is an issue we are constantly striving to achieve,” Board President Brenda Wolff said. She added that she believed the board should look at its curriculums “in terms of inclusiveness in all areas.”
Nationally, education culture wars have led toparents, educators and school board members sparring over how schools teach history.
Montgomery’s new fourth- and fifth-grade history framework was met with little dissent at the meeting this week. The school system is a part of a liberal and racially diverse county, and has traditionally sought to include more approaches to equity and inclusion in its school policies. Black alumnae from one of the school system’s high schools have also pushed for a curriculum revision that highlights the impact of racism.
Hana O’Looney, the student member of the board and a Japanese American student, pointed to her experience learning about internment camps in Advanced Placement U.S. History — a curriculum developed by the College Board. She said the most that internment camps were discussed were as a bullet point in a slide show, though an entire generation of Japanese Americans were affected.
“That’s a concern, and that has a real effect on how students view their own identity, and then move forward and progress in the world,” O’Looney said.
The school system has also made efforts to train educators who want to teach more about Black history. It has produced a voluntary four-part module for educators to improve their understanding of enslavement in the United States, Oliver-Gary said. Over the summer, the school system is partnering with Montgomery Heritage to create field trips to historically Black sites in the county.
“My goal is to have multiple opportunities for teachers to be able to develop their learning, because this is going to be a big lift,” Oliver-Gary said.
Under the previous framework, students began learning about early American history in the fifth grade. When the new curriculum is implemented in the 2023-2024 school year, it will advance those lessons: Fourth-graders will begin learning about early American history, and fifth-graders will begin learning about the U.S. Constitution, ending the year learning about contemporary times.
Other elementarygrade levels will also see revisions, based on the state board’s changes. Second- and third-graders will see the changes in 2024-2025 school year; kindergartners and first-graders, the year after.
The number of incidents of hate have increased exponentially in Montgomery County Public Schools, leading Superintendent Monifa B. McKnight to roll out several initiatives, from more teacher training to a community advisory group, to combat the problems.r
McKnight highlighted the action plan in front of a crowd of students, parents, teachers and county council members during a wide-ranging speech denouncing the hateful acts, drawing on her mother’s lessons of serving others and requesting help from the community.
The initiatives include training for all staff, beginning next year, on responding to incidents of hate and bias. There will also be better coordination from school staff in responding to incidents, along with equity experts to scrutinize the responses.The school system’s fourth- and fifth-grade curriculum is being revised to include more lessons on social justice, and students will learn more about equity issues during assemblies and other school events.
“We have inherited a system that was designed for White students who lived in Whiteneighborhoods and were taught by White teachers, only later to be open for all other students,” McKnight said, explaining theschool system’s transition from segregated schools to its current diverse enrollment. “History matters, and how we treat students for whom the system was not originally built.”
Montgomery County and its school system — which is Maryland’s largest — have reported a rise in hate-based incidents this school year, officials have said. Data from the Montgomery County Police Department showed that 157 incidents with a bias indicator were reported in 2022, and 29 of those incidents were at a school. That was a roughly 383 percent increase of incidents that targeted a school compared with 2021, when six incidents were reported. Fifty-two percent of the incidents in 2022 were antisemitic.
“We’re called together today because of the unfortunate reality that these sorts of actions have become more and more common,” McKnight said. She added that in this year alone, the county’s schools have reported one hateful incident each day on average, which is triple the rate reported the previous year.
In March, roughly two dozen incidents were reported that involved the county’s schools. The reports included sticky notes that were assembled in a swastika formation in the boys’ bathroom of an unidentified middle school and students directing racial slurs at other students. Northwood High School closed its outdoor facilities to the public last month after fliers containing antisemitic language were posted four times on its athletic fields.
Several of the county’s schools have been vandalized with antisemitic remarks and symbols, including several swastikas drawn on desks, in drawers and on tables at schools. An entrance sign at Walt Whitman High School’s entrance sign was defaced with the words, “Jews Not Welcome” in December, and staff at the school reported receiving antisemitic emails a day later.
Students have walked out of classes to protest the hateful acts and lobbiedfor the school system to teach more about the Holocaust and antisemitism.
Hannah Zuck, a junior at Magruder High School, said when the school system first addressed the Holocaust in the seventh grade, several of her peers made jokes and comments that were “misunderstandings sometimes directed at me as a Jewish person.” Many of the comments increased this school year, especially after Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West, made several antisemitic comments that included praising Adolf Hitler and Nazis. Some of her peers implied that West “has a point,” she said.
Earlier this school year, her school reported antisemitic graffiti on a student’s desk. The principal sent a sharp email denouncing hate, Zuck said, but there weren’t any follow-upconversations with students after that.
“I don’t think most of the Magruder community had realized that there had been this shift within the Jewish students at schools in feeling … unsafe, maybe feeling unwelcome,” Zuck, 17, said. “I don’t think they realized it because there wasn’t that broad of a response.”
The county’s schools have also seen hateful incidents aimed at the LGBTQ community. In February, a middle school teacher found plans on a student’s schoollaptop for a “homophobic club.” School board members have reported receivinganti-LGBTQ rhetoric in emails since the system in January added books as a supplemental curriculum that includeLGBTQ characters.
McKnight stood by the district’s curriculum Thursday. Some have asked “Why does MCPS include texts by LGBTQ+ authors and with LGBTQ+ characters in our curriculum?” she asked. “Yet the question should be, ‘Why are we just now including these texts in our curriculum? Why has it taken so long?’”
McKnight — who is the school system’s first Black woman to serve as superintendent — has pledged to do more to combat antisemitic attitudes emerging among the county’s youths. In February, she announced that students who commit hateful acts will have them documented in their student file and theirparents will be brought in for mandatory follow-up conversations. The school system has also partnered with the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington and the Anti-Defamation League to improve its teachingabout antisemitism and its impact throughout history. Those more robust lessons will begin next school year.
McKnight also referenced the school system’s “anti-racist audit,” a report released last year, that found students of color have a less satisfactory experience with the school system compared with their White peers. She announced that a follow-up “anti-racist action plan” in response to the audit would be presented at a May 11 school board meeting.
Schools in the Whitman High cluster are partnering with the JCRC and Anti-Defamation League to train all school staff during the summer on addressing hateful incidents, said Guila Franklin Siegel, the JCRC’s associate director. Siegel recommended McKnight’s action plan — including staff training — be rolled out consistently across all of the county’s 210 schools.
At a cocktail party in a crowded Washington living room some years ago, I met a magazine editor who was working on a high-profile new book. It would transport the reader into the future, he told me, describing in vivid, terrifying prose all the catastrophes that might happen because of climate change: unbreathable air, dying oceans, hunger, drowning.
Would it offer people any hope? I asked.
“It’s not my job to give people hope,” he said, sounding vaguely disgusted. I got the sense that hope was for the weak. And that by asking my question, I was weak, too.
A year later, his book ended up being a bestseller. So, I figured, maybe he was right. Maybe hope is not our job. But then, I couldn’t help but wonder, whose job was it?
Last summer, I wrote a piece in this newspaper admitting that I have been selectively avoiding contact with the news, even though I’m a journalist myself. Traditional news coverage, I had slowly come to realize, was missing half the story, distorting my view of reality. It frequently overlooked and underplayed storylines and dimensions that humans need to thrive in the modern world — with the three most notable elements being hope, agency and dignity.
That column sparked an unexpected response. I heard from thousands of readers caught in the same struggle — wanting to be informed about the world but not bludgeoned into fatalism. Many of you reported that you had taken matters into your own hands. One man, after listening to devastating stories on the radio, does his own Google searches to find examples of people trying to solve the very same problems. Then he shares the links he has found with his friends and family on Facebook, basically doing a job reporters don’t want to do.
Others urged me to check out alternative sources they had found, including the Progress Network newsletter, which curates stories of human cooperation and ingenuity, and the 1440 daily briefing, which attempts to strip bias from the news. Still others said they have sought refuge in sports, hyperlocal news, Wordle and, for one reader, medieval history.
This year, with your help, I’d like to revisit each of the missing elements, starting with the most controversial of the three.
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The word hope sounds gauzy and fey, like rainbows and sunsets. It feels like a gateway drug to delusion and denial. “I don’t want your hope,” climate activist Greta Thunberg said at the World Economic Forum in 2019. “I want you to panic.”
But rainbows and sunsets are explicable phenomena, the scattering of sunlight in the distance, and it turns out that hope is, too. For more than 30 years, scientists have been researching hope and deconstructing its building blocks. And it’s surprisingly tangible. “It’s important to say what hope is not,” Rebecca Solnit wrote in her book “Hope in the Dark.” “It is not the belief that everything was, is, or will be fine.”
So what is it? Hope is more like a muscle than an emotion. It’s a cognitive skill, one that helps people reject the status quo and visualize a better way. If it were an equation, it would look something like: hope = goals + road map + willpower. “Hope is the belief that your future can be brighter and better than your past and that you actually have a role to play in making it better,” according to Casey Gwinn and Chan Hellman in their book, “Hope Rising.”
Decades of research have now proved that hope, defined this way, can be reliably measured and taught. Using 12 questions, called the Hope Scale — a version of which you can take yourself here — more than 2,000 studies have demonstrated that people with stronger hope skills perform better in school, sports and work. They manage illness, pain and injury better and score higher on assessments of happiness, purpose and self-esteem. Among victims of domestic violence, child abuse and other forms of trauma, hope appears to be one of the most effective antidotes yet studied.
Still, there is resistance to hope, even among those who know it best. For a long time, Hellman, a psychologist by training, did not think giving people hope was his job, either. At conferences, he would wave people off when they asked him how to build their capacity for hope. “I don’t do hope. I study it,” he’d tell them.
I recognize myself in this story. As a journalist, trying to look smart in story meetings, it always felt safer to remain skeptical. It was easier to pitch stories about buffoonery than about progress. It’s a strange trick of the mind, especially because it’s the news media’s relentless negativity that has led so many people to give up on institutions — or on journalism. Cynicism feels protective, even when it’s not.
About a decade ago, Hellman decided to stop sitting on the sidelines — partly because of his own life story. All through high school, he had been homeless, always on the precipice of catastrophe. And specific people had helped him imagine another life and feel as if he was capable of getting there (remember: goals + road map + willpower). So he decided he had an obligation not just to study hope but to teach it.
So far, he and his colleagues at the Hope Research Center at the University of Oklahoma at Tulsa have trained more than 22,000 government employees in Oklahoma, California and Washington to cultivate hope on purpose — not just among individuals but across entire systems, in welfare programs, school districts and prisons, among other places. They have found that it reduces burnout and improves outcomes for workers and those they serve. “It literally is strategic planning,” Hellman says. “Hope is the process. Well-being is the outcome.”
As it is, when journalists try to do hopeful stories, they often end up insulting our intelligence — with stories about small acts of kindness, often involving animals. There is no goal or road map.
But if this other, more muscular kind of hope is critical to human flourishing, then why can’t journalists make it part of their job? It would mean asking totally different questions, just as doggedly as ever: What are realistic goals, in the face of a wicked problem? What are some of the ways other communities have tried to get there? And how did they manage to press on, even when things didn’t go as planned?
What would it look like if careers were made (and prizes won) based on this kind of inquiry and storytelling? We might see fewer column inches just describing (over and over again) the alarming rise in depression among teens — and more stories such as this one by Anya Kamenetz, investigating a surprising remedy that has been shown to reduce psychological distress. When it comes to crime coverage, we might become as obsessed with declines as we are with spikes. Why are homicides down 31 percent in East St. Louis over the past four years, when they remain high in so many other places?
When it comes to climate change, there is hope, defined this way, at least, and there always was. Humans still have enormous control over what happens to our planet. In the past five years, we have cut expected warming almost in half. The world is on track to add as much renewable energy generation in the next five years as it did in the past 20, according to the International Energy Agency. There’s much more to be done, of course, but getting there requires rigorously reported stories that help us visualize a road map. Why not report out hope, the same way we report out dread?
I know it is difficult for some in my field to make this shift. The more hopeless news you consume, the harder it is to see hope in the wild — and no one consumes more news than journalists. But the research also shows that it is possible. “Hope is malleable,” says Matthew Gallagher, a clinical psychologist who studies hope at the University of Houston. “It’s not a static thing, like how tall you are. It can change.”
For journalists, hope is a defiant way of being in the world: ever on the lookout for what is but always alert to what might be.
Posts by Paul Costello1
