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AmeriCorps Montgomery

"locals serving locals for 23 years."

Posts by Paul Costello1

Don’t mention the pandemic!

August 12, 2022 Paul Costello1 Uncategorized
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Fawlty Arts Towers - Don't Mention The War!" Poster by KrystinGloria9 | Redbubble

One of the nation’s largest therapy conferences happens annually in Washington DC. This year, the first in person for two years, the theme was “Meeting the Moment.” At first sight, I thought, “Yes” that is a great theme. How are we meeting this moment recovering from the pandemic and racial strife and four years of dysfunctional leadership on so many levels?

When I viewed the four day program, I was stunned to discover only one session focused on the pandemic. It was called “Rethinking Anxiety in Light of the Pandemic” and that was it. Of course, there were sessions on Trauma and so perhaps the pandemic was folded into that, but ‘Meeting the Moment’ without even naming the Moment seemed odd. Is there a different moment we are meeting? These are therapists. Have they been on holidays these last two years?

Fast forward two months and we are attending the ASC East Coast training conference for AmeriCorps, one of three repeated across the year. It’s title was “Shaping the Future.” Again, an apt theme given that every AmeriCorps program has had to maintain service when the world shut down. How do we build a future out of that experience?

Meeting the Moment: May 16, 2022 | Inside Princeton

Once again, there were great seminars on climate change and sustainability but only 2-3 that mentioned Covid explicitly. I went to all of them and discovered that they were not addressing the impact in any direct or personal way. There was one exception and that was the seminar Project CHANGE ran based on our new book “Our Stories Rise Up”

When I proposed that AmeriCorps before the pandemic and AmeriCorps after the pandemic were two different beasts, the attendees embraced the chance to pour forth their struggles and grief, and allow their peers to validate their commitment against the odds. It felt like such a cathartic moment.

The world feels different. We have lived through a national catastrophe that has affected everyone. Even the leaders of AmeriCorps have advocated for increased resources to help with the recovery. But there was no room on the conference agenda to speak about it. Busyness is one way to bury the pain, I guess.

Creating the 21st Century Leader | Five Degrees Consulting

Fast forward to this month and another conference, this time on leadership education, by a prestigious research body. The four days were packed, interactive, fast paced, more an intensive training than a conference with 9 amazing facilitators. And amongst all the theories and approaches, not a word, not a session, not a formal invitation to share what the pandemic has done to leadership and leadership education. And these are leaders and those who teach future leaders.

I was reminded of the old British style “Carry On” comedies. This was “Carry On Leading,” as AmeriCorps was “Carry on Serving,” as the Washington DC Conference was “Carry on Therapizing.”

Carry on Laughing Vol.3 DVD Volume Classic British TV Comedy - Four Episodes | eBay


The more I think about it, the more alarming it is to me that we are not allowing ourselves to address the post pandemic world. We are not even willing to name it. These conferences were probably planned in 2020 and delayed two years, and so, they just rolled out what they had already prepared. But what a lost opportunity. Are they symptoms of our clinging to an illusion? Or is the fact that we are not hosting sessions on the trauma of the pandemic because we are still in the trauma of the pandemic? Denial is a classic delaying or diversion strategy.

The book “Our Stories Rise Up- Remembering as Resilience” is a simple and practical guide for people who want to talk about the elephant in the room without being overwhelmed. Every educator and parent, every leader and therapist should have a copy.

In our work serving students in our local county, we see every day the continuing impact of the pandemic. Kids are coming back to school to be with their friends. They are not coming back to learn. 70% of our sample tell us that they are NOT excited about learning, in the least. The ones that thrived during the shutdown have learned to teach themselves and so the classroom style feels restrictive. If I can ace algebra in my pyjamas, why do I have to go back to this daily torture of 8 hours, 8 classes, 25 to a room, with exhausted and angry teachers?

The school system has made the same assumption that the conferences made, determined to “Carry On and Catch up.” Let’s act as if nothing has happened and then deal with the behavior that is driving teachers in droves to other careers. Something has happened and we can see it all around. Something has happened to us. To pretend the opposite is a classic case of denial. It is only going to make it worse.

And it hurts us. It either shows a lack of self-respect for our own pain, or a lack of any empathy for those who are still bearing the brunt, who are mostly the poor and forgotten. What gives us the right to even presume they can get back to our normal when it was never normal for them in the first place?

James Baldwin Quote: “You cannot fix what you will not face.”

Perhaps we therapists, non-profit directors and leadership experts rode the pandemic wave with our middle class surf board and did not drown. But the people we serve are still trying to dig themselves out.

Within 10 miles of the White House, one of our members serves food to over 900 local families every Thursday. Food insecurity has become a crisis like never before here in the Capitol area. Who knew, and who cares? The rise in abuse and domestic violence are things we are only starting to see. Some call it the tip of the iceberg. In 2020 and 2021, the country bought more guns than ever before. Think about what 40 million more guns mean for a minute, and think in how many states, any 18 year old can buy one! Experts who say we are in the middle of a mental health crisis are fast being treated like the boy who cried wolf. We shrug. We are fine. No need to worry. Until the next kid with one of those 40 million guns goes to school to make the world pay for our neglect. We will blame guns, or we will blame mental health, so long as we do not blame ourselves.

It is time to convene a critical conversation about these last two years. Let’s assess the losses and the wounds and identify who most needs healing, who cannot possibly carry on as before. We know in our school system, there were thousands of students falling behind before the pandemic. Asking them to catch up when they feel they are not even in the race anymore is nothing but cruel and inhuman punishment. Even our Constitution that the Judges say allows a kid to buy a gun, is against that.

Our Stories Rise Up– it is time to tell the stories of our pain and our hope. There cannot be any way forward without that.

We offer tutorials, materials, meetings, trainings, and customized zoom sessions that are based on the book. If you would like to buy the book for your class or your group, bulk discounts can be arranged.

For more information, please purchase the book and reach out to us at info@projectchangemaryland.org

We Need Hope to Combat Violence. That Won’t Arrive Without Action.

August 12, 2022 Paul Costello1 Uncategorized
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By Rachel Louise Snyder New York Times June 12th 2022

Ms. Snyder is the author of “No Visible Bruises,” a book on domestic violence.

What might have stopped the gunman from killing 21 people in Uvalde, Texas? In the aftermath of the shootings, familiar details emerged. We know he fought with his mother. We know he has been accused of posting footage of himself seriously abusing one or more cats online. We know he shot his grandmother, who worked at Robb Elementary. We know he harassed girls on social media and when one of those girls reported him to a social media app, nothing was done. And most critically, we know he bought a weapon of war around his 18th birthday from a company that offered buy-now-pay-later-style financing. The process for buying the gun was little more onerous than that for purchasing Sudafed.

These facts and allegations just as easily might speak to many mass shooters of our age. Racism, misogyny, violence, isolation, gun access, social media screeds. In some form or other, the patterns are known. But why is it that when we identify them, we can’t then prevent the carnage that follows? Or why won’t we?

There are many places in the world that share America’s social characteristics. Switzerland has a culture of gun ownership, too. Japan has young, isolated people so common, they have a name: hikikomori. Mental health in Germany and New Zealand is more understaffed than in the United States. And domestic violence is in every country, every community, every village and neighborhood. And yet — you know the end of this sentence — only the United States sees mass shootings so frequent that at least 38 more have occurred since the Uvalde shooting, according to the Gun Violence Archive.

Many believe they know the source of this national tragedy. Liberals say it’s guns. Conservatives cite mental health issues. I’ve heard we need fewer doors and more fathers, less poverty and stronger friendships. When I looked at the faces of those 19 children killed in Uvalde, I had to wonder if our polarized politics, mine included, cloud our ability to see our failing social infrastructure, the complex intersectionality of the immense issues we face. Put simply: We have broken our society. So to what lengths are we willing to go to rebuild it?

Many years ago, on my first day as a graduate student, my professor asked us to write him a letter about ourselves. My first line was this: “I feel like I know what it’s like to want to kill someone.” My family life was fueled by rage. I was expelled from Naperville North High School in Illinois. At 16, I was kicked out of my house. I lived in my car and stayed on the couches of co-workers and friends and sometimes in the parking lot of Fox Valley Mall. I did not want to live, but I had neither the means nor imagination to die.

I despised my stepmother so much, I might have envisioned killing her. We fought with our words and occasionally our fists, and yet somehow, years later and reconciled, I sobbed at her bedside as she lost her fight with cancer. Even though I am beyond those years, I can call up the memory of that rage. I can understand feeling that the world has nothing to offer you. That your life is so devoid of meaning, you could take the lives of those who mean the most to someone else. And probably you wouldn’t care how much you’re hated, because no one could hate you more than you already hate yourself.

So how did the 18-year-old hopeless me give way to who I am now? I’ve asked myself this for most of my life. I am a professor, a writer, a mother, surrounded by the love of an intentional family. How did I survive?

For teenagers to survive what are for some of us the worst years of our lives, they need hope. I don’t mean sentimental jargon from a greeting card. I mean hope from the vision of a possible future. Hope does not arrive, feathered, at one’s doorstep. Hope requires action, movement.

Because the opposite of hope is despair. Had I gotten hold of a gun in my teenage years, I believe I would have used one on myself. I know this because of who I was and how I felt, but I also know this because the research backs it. In a study of 172 mass shooters in the United States from 1966 to 2020, only four were women (two of whom acted in partnership with men). Some research suggests that responses to trauma can manifest differently in men and women, though these differences are not universal. Studies have shown a link between past violent or traumatic experiences and externalized aggression among men to varying degrees. Women, meanwhile, engage in deliberate, nonsuicidal self-harming behaviors 50 percent more frequently than men do, according to a 2008 study, which can be a trauma response in some cases. Numerous studies have also shown a link between domestic violence and heightened suicide rates, which are particularly acute among men.

Perhaps we have more tools at our disposal than we know. A full 86 percent of mass shooters under age 20 give warnings, according to Jillian Peterson and James Densley in their book “The Violence Project.” (Note: I provided a blurb for this book.) Dr. Peterson calls these warnings “a cry for help.” The problem comes from how these warnings are interpreted and what people do or can do with the information received.

The threateners — almost always young men — reach out to classmates and to people on social media, and sometimes they are reported to authorities, as in Buffalo; Parkland, Fla.; Sutherland Springs, Texas; and Uvalde. And occasionally these authorities might step in, as they did with the Buffalo shooter, but then they could not hold him for more than a day and a half in a hospital for a mental-health evaluation. In the United States, only a third of primary care physicians’ offices have mental health practitioners, compared with over 90 percent in the Netherlands and Sweden.

Mental health is a convenient lens through which to view mass shootings, but it provides an incomplete picture. The overwhelming majority of those who have mental illness are victims of crimes, not perpetrators. Often more germane to the question of stopping these crimes is domestic violence, which intersects with not only mass shootings but also many of the vast social issues that we face — and their consequences.

Domestic violence is a leading cause of homelessness in this country, especially for women. It speaks to gender inequality and teen dating violence and stalking. When you align it with guns, it becomes not merely another in a cascade of issues but the issue to address, because guns increase the lethality of essentially all domestic-violence-related situations.

Rates of domestic violence homicide increase fivefold with the presence of a gun. The easier a gun is to reach, the easier it becomes to succumb to a moment of desperation; a recent shooting in Tulsa, Okla., for example, happened less than three hours after the gunman legally purchased his weapon. And more than half of mass shootings aredomestic violence: Sandy Hook began with the gunman killing his mother, Uvalde with the gunman shooting his grandmother.

But even those that do not begin with shootings of close family members — like the ones at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Fla., and at the Route 91 Harvest Festival in Las Vegas — have domestic violence in the background of the shooter’s life. It’s not always in the public data, but Dr. Peterson told me familial violence is present. “In every case, literally, whether it’s parental, violence against Mom or physical abuse with a kid,” she said, perpetrators’ personal histories directly influence their shootings. “The worse the crime, the worse the story.”

When Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas attributed the Uvalde shooting to a lack of mental health treatment — even after slashing funding for the state’s department that oversees mental health by more than $200 million — he was not wrong. But his answer was incomplete.

The United States is suffering from a full-blown mental health crisis. In a 2020 report of 11 industrialized countries, the United States had the highest suicide rate and among the highest rates of anxiety and depression, coupled with the fourth-fewest mental health practitioners per capita among the countries in the study. Canada, Switzerland and Australia have roughly twice the number of mental health professionals that the United States has per 100,000 inhabitants.

And it’s not merely lack of options; it’s lack of resources. Health care is the No. 1 cause of bankruptcy in America. Children in Norway do not have to pay for mental health services. In France, those ages 3 to 17 can receive 10 free sessions with a psychologist. In their book, Dr. Peterson and Dr. Densley point out that for the United States to reach the recommended ratio of one psychologist per 500 students, 50,000 more psychologists would need to be hired across the country. The current national average is an abysmal one for every 1,500 students.

But mental health explains only so much. In the manifestoes that many of these young men leave behind, the language is eerily similar. The shooters in Buffalo; Charleston, S.C.; Santa Barbara, Calif.; and others wrote racist or misogynistic diatribes. Such screeds point to the need for much more education and socialization.

How do many young people navigate this? They go to the web, of course, and too many young men wind up in the darkest, most hateful corners. Covid — which pushed most students online — gave children the time and capacity to reach those corners more readily while the world sequestered us all, a recipe for disaster. It seems no coincidence that gun violence and gun purchasing records were set in 2020, with 2021 continuing the violence trend and barely slowing purchases.

To suggest the solution does not start with guns — raising the minimum age for purchase; lowering the number of guns allowed per household; keeping guns from convicted abusers; instituting mandatory training, licensing and waiting periods; barring the ownership of assault rifles; enacting safe storage laws; eradicating immunity for manufacturers — is to willfully disregard the life and future of every person in this country. When Second Amendment freedoms mean imprisoning someone else (in a classroom, in a hospital, in a home), then freedom is nothing more than a bully with a pulpit.

Maybe we cannot build a life for every disenfranchised young person out there, but we can certainly do better. We need to have not merely one answer but many. We need to do it all, everything, all at once. And we can. We have the knowledge, the talent, the resources.

We need to address domestic and teen dating violence. We need to address mental illness. We need to address toxic masculinity and allow for open, inclusive conversations about gender identity. We need to regulate social media. We need to heed the warnings from girls online. We need to create crisis intervention teams, say Dr. Peterson and Dr. Densley, and suicide prevention and crisis response coalitions. They also say we need to make sure that all students in this country have at least one person, just one adult, they can talk with.

For me, that person was a social worker named Bob Martin. He had a mustache that curled up at the ends and soft lighting in his office, and when he saw me in his doorway, he dropped whatever he was doing and listened.

So more Bob Martins and fewer guns. More hope and less despair. And then everything all at once, which really comes down to a single priority: a country where all people can see the possibility of their own future. Because the fact is, broken things need not stay broken. They can also be opportunities to rebuild.


https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/09/opinion/shootings-domestic-violence.html

EMPOWERING STUDENTS TO HAVE MORE SAY IN THEIR LIVES

August 4, 2022 Paul Costello1 Uncategorized
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Social Emotional Learning aka (SEL) is more than a fad. It comes from the awareness that what students learn about themselves is just as important as what they learn about any other subject. Why is it that schools rarely have time to teach students how to better know themselves?

COVID has left the curriculum in tatters. Tests show students are behind. Most schools are teaching to “Catch Up.” Teachers have no time to ask students how they are feeling. What if they are overwhelmed? What if they are depressed? What if learning is the last thing on their minds?

Yet, ask any struggling teacher. They will know what students are saying, in the only way kids can speak- through bad behavior. “We are not ready to learn”-they are saying- “until you are ready to learn from us and where we are, and what we have been through.” One million plus dead, school suspended for over a year, Internet Interrupt Zoom School, and you presume we are ready to learn? That all is back to normal for us? Why won’t you listen? Don’t we have any say?

Addressing Teacher Burnout: Causes, Symptoms, and Strategies | American University


SERVING WITH AMERICORPS
AmeriCorps Project CHANGE is recruiting a ‘Champions of Student Success’ team of inspired members who sign on for a year to change all this. Through the innovative yet simple SEL instrument MyScore that Project CHANGE has developed, AmeriCorps is striving to bring the students back into the conversation about their lives. That, after all, is the one area in which they are the unrivalled experts.

Standardized tests want to know if you can write and read, (That is TheirScore) but we are interested in ‘How Confident, How Curious, How Collaborative, How Courageous, How Career and Future- focused you are- (That is MyScore.) These 5C’s are just as predictive of becoming a successful Life Learner as any test result.

We know which students are struggling, because they tell us. We can support them to persevere and grow. We know which class is stuck because most students are telling us they are bored or struggling, or feel alone. We know which students are thriving and who to makes into allies to build a positive climate of inquiry in the classroom. They can assist their teacher with those classmates who might be behind. MyScore allows us to build an environment for learning and growing. It lifts up every voice.

State Americorps program searches for new host

This seems so obvious-to ask the kids- but it represents a radically different approach to student welfare. Their voice is given a priority. Project CHANGE wants to democratize education and, using SEL, re-center the curriculum on life, and on the self. These are life lessons worth learning. After the pandemic, it is time to reclaim the student voice as worthy of shaping the dialog of what schools might become. Parents and teachers or experts alone can’t be allowed to drown out the voice of the constituency we are there to serve.


WHO IS PROJECT CHANGE?
Project CHANGE is the original AmeriCorps program that for 21 years, has been serving Montgomery County students. Every year, in partnership with MCPS, we look at emerging student needs and search for ‘Champions of Student Success’ who have a servant’s heart and are ready and able to respond.

Project CHANGE’s unique Social Emotional Learning Approach is based on a narrative theory of change. Focusing on the story that a student is telling themselves about their value, their talents, their chances for success and their future, MyScore gets students to focus on growing in the 5Cs of confidence, curiosity, collaboration, courage and career-future focus. Members are trained to use this tool and shape interventions around the student’s emerging sense of self.

Imagine being the difference between a student passing or failing? Imagine being the difference between a student believing in herself and a student acting out their despair? Imagine helping a teacher or after-school program leader create the safety and the trust where children can thrive and feel the thrill of being alive.

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DO YOU QUALIFY?

Requirements for AmeriCorps members in Project Change:
1. 18 years of age
2. High School Diploma
3. Drivers license/access to a vehicle
4. Able to work in the USA
5. Able to devote 35 hours a week
6. Some experience working with children/youth
7. Willing to have a criminal background check
8. Show Proof of full vaccination status for COVID19
9 Able to serve for a full 12 months Late August 2022 – Mid August 2023

BENEFITS

In return, AmeriCorps members receive:

Professional Development weekly training on Fridays ( 150 hours)
$21,500 living stipend with possible bonus
Student Loan forgiveness for the year served
Child Care allowance for members who are parents
$6,450 educational scholarship upon completion
Health Insurance including vision and dental
Professional mentoring
Peer support network and connection to AmeriCorps alumni
Preference in hiring for many organizations
The positions offer an overall life-changing experience. Most positions are full-time (1700 hours during a 12-month term) beginning end of August 2022- August 2023 and some positions are half-time (900 hours during a 12-month term).
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BACKGROUND
Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) with 160,000 Students closed schools from March 2020- September 2021, leaving kids cut off from their peers, depriving them of normal healthy social outlets. School is back but how do we make up for their losses in Social/Emotional learning, the very skills students need most to succeed in life.

This is where YOU come in. Your role in the school will be as a mentor and coach to your peers, and to model for them ways to

-Actively engage and problem-solve physical, psychological, social and disciplinary issues that affect themselves and the community.
-Take responsibility for their actions.
-Set themselves up for success

If you are interested or need more information, please email
americorpsmontgomery@gmail.com

The AmeriCorps Pledge

August 3, 2022 Paul Costello1 Uncategorized
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Americorps at Windsor | Americorps members work with student… | Flickr

I will get things done for America – to make our people safer, smarter, and healthier.
I will bring Americans together to strengthen our communities.
Faced with apathy, I will take action.
Faced with conflict, I will seek common ground.
Faced with adversity, I will persevere.
I will carry this commitment with me this year and beyond.
I am an AmeriCorps member, and I will get things done.

AmeriCorps- The Best of America

August 3, 2022 Paul Costello1 Uncategorized
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About Us – AmeriCorps Montgomery

Being there for the community when they need it is the quintessential act of the citizen leader. He or she does not wait to be appointed, trained, called or ordained. The only qualifications are your need and my time and generosity, not because I want to make you feel needy but because this is the glue of our nation, that we meet each others humans needs in the most human way possible. I serve you knowing that one day, you will probably repay the favor. This is not just what we do, but who we are.

Act to serve

August 3, 2022 Paul Costello1 Uncategorized
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Data and first-hand accounts reveal Reading Partners to be an exceptional AmeriCorps experience - Reading Partners | Reading Partners
Every day, AmeriCorps members and volunteers put their values into action and make a difference. Drive change in your community at AmeriCorps.gov/CoreValues #WhatsAtYourCore

Act out your core values

August 3, 2022 Paul Costello1 Uncategorized
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Every day, AmeriCorps members put their values into action and make a difference. Drive change in your community at AmeriCorps.gov/CoreValues #WhatsAtYourCore #AmeriCorps







What do we owe kids for all they gave up during covid?

July 28, 2022 Paul Costello1 Uncategorized
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By Alyssa Rosenberg Columnist Washington Post July 24th 2022

During the covid-19 pandemic, Americans asked children to make tremendous sacrifices. And while the coronavirus took something from everyone, the thefts have been particularly stark for children. As the magnitude of what we asked them to surrender becomes clearer, it’s time to ask: What does this country owe kids for everything they gave up — and had taken away?

Let’s start with school and the decisions to keep students learning remotely for weeks or months. These policies were motivated by a mix of well-intentioned caution and local politics. But researchers are now quantifying the impact of remote education — and the results are damning.

A typical school year includes 36 weeks of instruction. Students at high-poverty schools in the most cautious states spent almost 25 weeks in 2020-2021 learning remotely, according to a May report from researchers at Harvard University, the National Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research (CALDER) and the student assessment organization NWEA. Low-poverty students in those states spent 16 weeks learning remotely. Contrast that with one week remote for students in low-poverty schools in states that reopened quickly, and three weeks for students in high-poverty schools in those states.

The impact on students who were kept out of the classroom longest is catastrophic. Students in high-poverty districts in cautious states lost the equivalent of 40 percent of a year’s worth of learning. Students in wealthier districts in those states lost the equivalent of 27 percent of a year’s learning.

And that’s for children who stayed in school to be evaluated at all. As many as 1.2 million students left the public school system between 2020 and 2022. Many now attend private or parochial schools, or are home-schooled. But Bellwether Education Partners estimates that 600,000 children, 30 percent of them kindergartners, didn’t enroll in any form of school in the 2020-2021 year.

The implications of closed schools go far beyond education. The Food Research & Action Center surveyed 54 large school districts and found that, in April 2020, those systems served 65.1 million fewer breakfasts and lunches to students than they had in October 2019. By October 2020, the districts were still providing 61.6 million fewer meals than in the previous year.

As parents avoided doctors’ offices and school enrollments dropped, fewer children got vaccinations for measles, HPV and other diseases. There’s much we still don’t know about covid-19 and its long-term outcomes. But in the process of protecting children and their families from the coronavirus, we clearly subjected them to other health risks.

At least public schools and doctors’ offices are still standing.

Between 2019 and 2021, almost 9,000 child care centers and nearly 7,000 home-based day cares closed, some permanently, according to an estimate by the trade association and referral network Child Care Aware. That’s a 9 percent decrease in the number of centers, when the system was already under strain. Every lost slot in those facilities stands for a child whose family had to scramble to find care, whether that meant paying more, deciding that a parent (usually a mother) had to leave the workforce, or asking an older child or relative to step in.

Research on the pandemic’s impact on young children’s development and behavior is still in the early stages, but reports so far suggest that these children are slower to walk and talk, more prone to acting out and struggling to socialize with peers.

And this is just a tally of the most measurable impacts. How are we to weigh the effects of a missed prom or an underwhelming virtual graduation, the first dates that never were, the early steps toward independence now delayed?

Too often, debates about school closures and other pandemic interventions that fell heavily on children and their parents dissolve into backward-looking recriminations.

“There was considerable uncertainty, so those arguments about what should have been aren’t that useful,” Dan Goldhaber, director of CALDER and an author of the May learning-loss study, told me. Children need adults to look ahead on their behalf, rather than smugly rehashing who was right or wrong in summer 2020.

The policy solutions aren’t simple — even if we leave out expensive, politically contentious ideas such as huge investments in hiring and training teachers and grief counselors; subsidized child care; extra years of primary school; or universal basic incomes to prevent families from being plunged into poverty.

Intense tutoring, for example, might provide the equivalent of 19 weeks of class time for students who receive it. But for those who don’t, schools might have to try doubling the amount of time students spend studying math and reading, whether at the expense of electives or gym or during a longer school day. That effort might bring a gain of 10 weeks. Then, there’s summer school. But good luck finding instructors to facilitate all this in a white-hot labor market.

Instead, it might make more sense to simply extend the next two school years by six weeks each, according to Thomas Kane, a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and one of Goldhaber’s co-authors. “We already have the schools, we already have the teachers, we already have the bus routes, parents already have their pickup and drop-off procedures worked out,” Kane said in an interview. Such a plan would also give parents back 12 weeks of missed child care, a small down payment on money and time lost trying to find alternate arrangements when schools and day cares closed.

When we spoke in June, Ashish K. Jha, the White House’s covid-19 response coordinator, said a critical aspect of any response to children’s learning loss and other sacrifices would be a long-term commitment rather than a short-term infusion of cash.

And given the magnitude of the challenge, Goldhaber said, educators, parents and politicians will need to be modest: Some initiatives won’t work. But that’s no reason to stop looking for solutions.

Sadly, some children will never receive proper recompense. Students who graduated from high school during the pandemic won’t get to make up for those lost weeks. Young children who might have been evaluated for developmental and speech delays have missed a crucial, unrecoverable window for early intervention.

Then there are the most wrenching losses: A calculator from Imperial College London estimates that, as of this writing, 205,200 young people have lost one or both parents to covid-19.

Given what we have asked children to endure, we have an obligation to be ambitious on their behalf.

“Children have suffered enormously and, in many ways, disproportionately,” Jha said. “The thing I would not be okay with is saying, okay, let’s go back to normal.”

Graduation at AFI Film Festival

July 19, 2022 Paul Costello1 Uncategorized
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Project CHANGE had its first Film Festival Graduation at the storied AFI Silver Spring MD, and featured the premier of 8 short documentaries made by the members finishing their year of service and reflecting on what they had learned and what they wanted to share with the world. Thanks to Juliet at AFI and Salmom from Elegancia for looking after us so well.

Mental Health Crisis in County

June 10, 2022 Paul Costello1 Uncategorized
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Re-Elect County Executive Marc Elrich

Dear Friends,

We were all shocked by the planned attack on Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh at his home in Montgomery County this week, and I want to thank the Montgomery County Police Department, the U.S. Marshals, and the FBI for their work to keep the Justice, his family, and the community safe. Violent behavior, or even the threat of it, is never acceptable regardless of any ideological differences. Violence in any form will not be tolerated in this County.

Our police arrested the man who was armed and traveled from California before arriving in the neighborhood and calling for help. We’re all grateful that this didn’t end with bloodshed or the loss of life, and it’s an opportunity to highlight the great need we have for mental health help in our nation. While the man will likely face federal charges of attempted murder and carrying a weapon, the judge will likely order a mental health evaluation as well.

We have a mental health crisis in this nation and the County. We are working to address these issues here in Montgomery County in our schools and elsewhere.

In schools throughout the County, we have student support teams that consist of school counselors, school psychologists, pupil personnel workers, and school nurses to help all children work through issues they come forward with. Following an individual or school-wide crisis, these teams provide the necessary support, care and interventions needed to help students, families and staff feel safe and secure. Our recently approved Fiscal Year 2023 budget expands these programs to give even more Montgomery County families access to this help.

People can reach out for help by calling or texting the hotline 301-738-2255.

Additionally, there is Access to Behavioral Health Services, which is a mental health screening and referral program that provides assessment and helps low-income adults living in Montgomery County who have no insurance. The program also helps people who abuse drugs as an attempt to cope. Infomontgomery.org is a wonderful resource to explore online that covers topics like mental health.

We believe in the hope and promise of science and research

Since taking office, I have been focused on building on our strengths in biosciences. The sector is booming I’m proud of the fact that we have 3 million square feet in lab space under development in Montgomery County right now and we are the heart of the fourth largest cluster for biotech companies in our region.

Covid cases decline in County, BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants on the rise

This week’s COVID-19 numbers show a decline in new case rates. For the first time in nearly a month we are once again below 300 cases per 100,000 residents, a more than 20 percent drop from last week. The hospitalization rate has also decreased slightly, and CDC community level status remains at medium.

The B-A 2 strains continue to make up nearly 90 percent of new cases reported in our region; however, the B-A 4 and 5 strains now account for about 10 percent of new cases—a significant jump over the last two weeks. The threat of new variants only emphasizes the need for people to continue to take safety measures seriously like cleaning your hands frequently, wearing a mask in crowded indoor spaces and on public transportation.

Vaccination status matters

Our unvaccinated COVID-19 case rates are four times higher than those that are vaccinated. And if you are vaccinated, you need to be boosted. The efficacy of these vaccines wanes and even if you caught COVID-19 before, you could still catch it again.

And through all of this, long covid remains a real “thing”. Covid can have both long-term and short-term health impacts that can be serious. According to an April report from the Journal of Infectious Diseases, 49 percent of COVID-19 survivors reported persistent symptoms four months after diagnosis. We want to remain vigilant and serious about COVID-19 in this County, and we continue to remind you to follow the guidance and best practices we know that work to help keep you and your family safe this summer.

A summer to learn

We all look forward to the summer, but I want to remind parents that it is also an excellent opportunity to help struggling students catch up with their classmates. Recovering from learning loss due to the pandemic is a priority for all our students.

We are fortunate that we have been able to fund more MCPS summer school programs as well as career and mentorship opportunities to help students make up what they have missed. Most programs will not start until July, but they run the gamut from early college classes to elementary school lessons.

The curriculum is designed to support students who need additional or repeated instruction in the major work of the previous grade level and/or are currently below-grade level in reading or math, with an emphasis on foundational skills. Some students may receive specific outreach from their local school based on need. And most importantly all summer classes are free to families.

Furthermore, our Recreation Department, County municipalities, Montgomery College and community partners, such as recently opened IgniteHub and Kid Museum in Bethesda, are also providing our youth engaging educational offerings throughout the summer.

But the most important educational engagement a child can have over the summer is the encouragement and engagement of parents, grandparents’ guardians, and peers to continue to read, learn, and explore throughout their summer break.

As always my appreciation for all you do,

Marc ElrichCounty Executive