Mussa Qawasma/Reuters

A Palestinian passes an anti-Trump mural painted on a section of the Israeli security barrier, in Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank, Nov. 2, 2020. While Palestinians were mainly pleased the president lost the election, they want more from Joe Biden than just turning back the clock.

It’s not uncommon to hear American accents here. Many West Bank residents have lived in the United States or have family there. In U.S. election years, the accents are impossible to avoid.

In the days leading up to and following the November election, with TV sets and Facebook feeds dominated by coverage of the U.S. race and the vote-counting dramas, everyone seemed to be weighing in on the results and their impact on the occupied Palestinian territories.

A widely heard refrain in the West Bank has long been: “Democrats or Republicans, they are all the same” in their Mideast policies and approach to the Palestinians.

But this year many were desperate to see the back of a president who had pressured and boycotted Palestinian leadership, cut off U.S. aid and development projects, withdrawn funding from the United Nations’ Palestinian refugee agency, recognized Israeli sovereignty over occupied territories, moved the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, and was seen as a close ally and enabler of Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli right-wing prime minister.

Yet widespread relief among Palestinians in the West Bank over President Donald Trump’s defeat is giving way to rising skepticism over whether President-elect Joe Biden will have the ability or political will to reset bilateral relations dramatically altered by his predecessor.

While many Palestinians are eager to see the end of the current administration’s pressure campaign and a resumption of economic aid, they say more is needed than simply a repudiation of Mr. Trump’s policies or a return to the pre-2017 status quo.

Instead, they are calling for a deep recalibration of U.S.-Palestinian ties to unlock change in the region – a change many doubt a Biden administration can deliver.

Nevertheless, for the past few weeks, the relief on Ramallah’s streets has been palpable. Many see Mr. Biden’s win, for instance, as a decisive blow to Mr. Netanyahu’s threats to annex the Jordan Valley.

“The gray skies have cleared,” declares Ahmed Zayed, a former Fatah member who peppers his remarks with English words delivered in a distinctly California accent.

“This is finally the end of Trump’s ‘ultimate deal,’” he says, referring to the president’s much-touted Israeli-Palestinian peace plan. The deal pledged economic benefits for Palestinians in return for a pathway to a state, but on less land than provided for by pre-1967 borders – a formula widely rejected by the Palestinian public.

What can Biden change?

Yet with the rush of relief over Mr. Trump’s defeat beginning to fade, few are certain as to what exactly a President Biden can or will change in U.S.-Palestinian relations.

“Everyone in the world is happy that Trump lost the election, but Biden will not undo the political achievements that Trump did for Netanyahu, especially on the recognition of Jerusalem [as Israel’s capital] or the embassy move,” says Samir Idris, a former unionist and avowed leftist, who believes Palestinians’ U.S. election euphoria will be short-lived.

“The way I see it, Biden’s win has helped both the Palestinians and the Israelis; the return of [security] coordination between the Palestinian Authority and Israel will lead to economic relief for the PA and will relieve some pressure on Israel.”

Fatima Abdulkarim

Palestinian taxi driver Ahmed Zayed, a former member of Fatah, at a taxi station in the West Bank town of Al Bireh, near Ramallah, Nov. 23, 2020. The election of Joe Biden, he says, means "the gray skies have cleared" for Palestinians.

Yet Palestinians say the prospect of a return to a pre-Trump status-quo – one in which Palestinians and Israelis maintain a fraught security relationship amid settlement-building and cycles of promises for talks initiated by the U.S. that get no closer to a solution – is not the breakthrough needed.

“Politically, there is a clear difference between Biden and Trump, but for the Palestinians, they both favor Israel over us,” says Mr. Zayed, who in his Fatah days was director-general of a Palestinian ministry, but today drives a taxi. 

Sarah Abu Suraya, a 26-year-old schoolteacher from East Jerusalem, believes President Trump and Mr. Netanyahu created a new reality on the ground and established de facto Israeli sovereignty over the contested city and areas in the West Bank.

“I don’t think that changes on the ground will come anytime soon, especially not in Jerusalem,” says Ms. Abu Suraya, who expects a Biden administration to return to a status quo of “managing the conflict” between Palestinians and Israel rather than concrete diplomatic steps toward a solution. 

“At the end of the day, this will take us back to the cycle of evasion and the endless process of relaunching bilateral talks,” says Mr. Idris, the former union activist, waving his hands in the air in frustration.

Lingering disappointment

In a September pre-election survey by the Ramallah-based Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, only 21% of Palestinians said they believed American policy would change for the better under a President Biden, while 34% said a Biden administration would “not change current American policies” toward the Palestinians. And perhaps reflecting what many Palestinians say is lingering disappointment with the Obama administration, a plurality – 35% – even said American policy would be in fact worse under Mr. Biden.

The pessimism is not due to a lack of familiarity.

According to Ghassan Khatib, a pollster and political science professor at Birzeit University outside Ramallah, Palestinians closely follow U.S. political developments due to their direct impact on their daily lives.

The Palestinian public and leadership, he says, are hopeful Mr. Biden will vocally oppose the expansion of Jewish settlements and reverse the block on $230 million in annual aid and projects in the occupied territories, which could ignite a moribund economy in which West Bank joblessness hovers at 25%.

Yet few are optimistic that President-elect Biden can undo Mr. Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital – a historic U.S. shift that deprived the Palestinians of a diplomatic bargaining chip – or even successfully restart peace talks between Israelis and the Palestinians.

“The gap between Israelis and Palestinians is larger than the efforts that could bridge it,” Professor Khatib says, noting the rightward shift in Israeli politics and the political mainstreaming of Israeli settler groups. “Palestinians cannot go back to talks without halting settlement activity, and Israel politically cannot stop its settlement activity.

“We are likely to go back to talking about resuming negotiations and holding meetings about talking – at most,” he notes.

No magic wand

Hanan Ashrawi, a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s executive committee, says she has only modest expectations from Mr. Biden.

“We have a long wish list from the Biden administration because there has been a lot of damage,” she says, “but Biden does not have a magic wand to unscramble the eggs” broken by Mr. Trump’s dramatic altering of U.S. policy.

Leaders in Ramallah expect Mr. Biden to undo some of President Trump’s executive orders, but think he’s likely unwilling to take on more permanent changes that are popular in Congress, such as recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, location of the U.S. Embassy, and the shuttering of the PLO’s office in Washington.

The Palestinian Authority is eyeing economic relief from a resumption of U.S. aid that, along with the recent release of Palestinian tax revenues collected by Israel, could create breathing room for the leadership and perhaps boost public support for resuming bilateral negotiations with Israelis. 

But rather than pushing for a shopping list of gestures from the Biden administration, Ms. Ashrawi and others say they are seeking a deep rethink of U.S.-Palestinian relations.

With Mr. Biden’s unveiling last week of a foreign-policy team full of Obama administration alumni, Palestinians see a return to a mainstream foreign-policy establishment that although not hostile to Palestinians is unlikely to deliver the reset in ties they view as critical.

Leaders say they are prepared to launch a dialogue with a U.S. audience more open to change, such as the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, in order to prod the moderate Biden administration.

“There has to be a candid and clear reassessment to forge a new relationship between us and the U.S. without going through Israel,” Ms. Ashrawi says. “A relationship without being based on what can we do for Israel, or how can we deliver for Israel. It has to be a whole new approach.”

British Iranian artist Sara Shamsavari remembers the blackened windows at her first childhood home in Tehran, Iran. Born in the middle of the 1979 Islamic Revolution, and just 2 years old at the onset of the Iran-Iraq War, Ms. Shamsavari says her first memories are rooted in uncertainty and dislocation. 

Her mother, Farzad Amai Shamsavari, a psychologist, also remembers many sleepless nights in Ahvaz, near the Iraq border, where she taught at the university. She kept her young children, Sara and Sina, inside a closet for safety while her husband hid under a table as warplanes dropped bombs outside. 

“I was going between the two [children] trying to reassure them all,” says Farzad. 

She has lived a life of flux, change, and unpredictability steered by global events well beyond her control. After studying in the United States, she returned to Iran in 1975. The birth of her daughter amid a revolution wasn’t the only complication; Sara was diagnosed with cancer, and the family sought treatment, and asylum, in Britain in 1981. 

“My main focus ... was all about adapting,” says Farzad. “You either complain about whatever is happening that you don’t like or you think, ‘How can I adjust and make the best of this situation?’” 

That resilience has helped Farzad and her daughter to cope this year during a global coronavirus pandemic that has hit the United Kingdom particularly hard. On Tuesday, the latest monthlong lockdown ended in England, replaced by a tiered system of restrictions on households and businesses. While London is subject to moderate curbs, much of northern England is on higher alert. 

Sara Shamsavari

Farzad Amai Shamsavari, an Iranian-born psychologist, poses in front of artwork made by her daughter Sara Shamsavari. The family moved to the U.K. during the Iran-Iraq War to get medical treatment for Sara.

That same resilience that the Shamsavari family has drawn on during COVID-19 is shared by two of their neighbors whose views are shaped by their own experience of war and social upheaval. Both are older Britons who grew up during World War II and the hardships that followed. What they all have in common is a belief that grit and courage matter, and that adapting to uncertainty and isolation is a skill that can be learned, especially under hardship.

“We’re all war children, albeit very different wars. If you live through these sorts of things, it makes you a lot more resilient,” says Sara, as she pours hot Persian tea on a cold day. 

“Some people have lived through chaos, and they already have a value system in place which is so contrasting to the confusion and lack of foundation many young people have.” 

Chaos certainly describes the events in Tehran in 1979 when the U.S.-backed Shah was ousted. Farzad’s misfortune doubled as Iran’s new religious clerics then persecuted and imprisoned members of her minority Baha’i faith community. Her experiences of revolutionary turmoil have proved fruitful lessons in coping during lockdowns that have exacted a toll on England’s mental and social equilibrium.

At age 79, she still works from her house, and she worries about young people she sees who may have become too risk-averse during the pandemic. 

“If we follow our emotions all the time, it may lead us to avoid any sort of danger. And that’s failure,” she says. “But if we have the courage to say, ‘OK that I am feeling bad, but maybe tomorrow I’ll feel better.’ What I think undermines people is complete avoidance of any tiny bit of risk. But you have to keep yourself safe.” 

A British experience of war 

Just a couple of streets away from Farzad and Sara live two Britons in their 70s with early memories of World War II and its social deprivations. Now they are learning to live with deprivations of a different nature. 

“This year has been the worst in my life because I couldn’t travel anywhere,” says Eileen Horner, a retiree who lives alone in a house filled with sparkling Christmas decorations and framed photos of her extended family members. 

Just like Sara, she too remembers a sense of chaos raging outside when she was age 2, toward the end of World War II.

“I was in a highchair and I can remember sensing an atmosphere, even though I was a tiny child, that something dramatic happened.” 

Despite the war, she describes her early years as “total happiness,” with her mother feeding a family of five on the equivalent of $1 a week. In the 1960s, Mrs. Horner worked in London’s fashion and modeling scene, before going into real estate. 

Then, she lost both her husband and her trusted boss – “all of my emotional and financial stability” – in a single year when she was in her late 40s. Personal grief and adapting to loss, as much as her early war memories, have steeled her for this year’s lockdowns. 

“I’ve always had determination. ... I don’t give in easily,” she says. “Having been on my own for such a long time, you have to talk to the wall to make a decision.” 

Mrs. Horner loves life; small “positive” tasks every day keep her resilient. Living alone has the “occasional” lonely moment, she says, but she never feels alone. The key is to make plans, such as seeing her fellow war-child Sara for a coffee. They met five years ago outside a local cafe where Sara started chatting to her. Generations apart, they are now firm friends. 

A “triumph for science”

Rounding out the group is Alan Speight, another child of World War II. He describes a simple “stoic” working-class upbringing in northern England, which he credits for his resilience, including the five months of COVID-19 symptoms he suffered earlier this year, when testing was still limited. 

Sara Shamsavari

Alan Speight, a retired food scientist, sits in his garden at his London home. During World War II, his mother grew vegetables on a patch of land behind their house in northern England.

“Looking back, if you had some warm clothes and you had your health, you were happy. I wasn’t wanting things,” he says, noticing how discussion of such values has surfaced during this year’s lockdowns. 

And like many of today’s children, his early education was interrupted by a virus: He had a year off school when he was 7, for fear that he had contracted polio. Consuming books “out of boredom” seeded artistic talents in food, painting, and horticulture in later life, though his professional career would be in food and science. 

Mr. Speight helped introduce the commercial sandwich to Britain’s supermarkets. He also worked on vaccines against past pandemics, including co-creating a salmonella vaccine that was used to immunize all 26 million U.K. chickens in 1998. 

Vaccines, he says, “are a fundamental right” for mankind. 2020, he adds, “is a triumph for science.”

Food is his form of escapism. He recalls the plot of land his mother kept, behind a multigenerational household of 13 people, to grow vegetables and rear chickens in wartime. Sourcing local foods and families moving back in together – not always enthusiastically – has been another “reset” this year, he says. 

How has he stayed upbeat in lockdown? “I hate to paraphrase Churchill’s words, but find something you love to do and you’ll never work again.”

All four individuals say that their resilience in coping with life in COVID-19 lockdowns is both a practice and instinctive. 

“Prioritizing is the essence of wisdom,” says Farzad. “When we prioritize, there are certain things that are essential, and certain things that are less essential. Part of wisdom is not completely forgetting the nonessential things in life. Take some calculated risks when it’s safe.”

For example: Taking part in social activities that are enjoyable as opposed to necessary, like grocery shopping. 

Mrs. Horner agrees. “You’ve got to have guts. Have courage.”

The long march down fabled Monument Avenue of Richmond, Virginia, may finally be at its end.

For more than a century, enormous bronze statues of Confederate leaders have paraded through the city’s paved artery. And since the summer’s protests against police brutality, they’ve all come tumbling down – except for one.

Towering 60 feet high, Richmond’s monument to Robert E. Lee has remained physically and legally out of reach. Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam’s plans to remove the statue have so far been delayed by a lawsuit. But in late October, a judge sided with the state’s order to take it down. Though there is still time for an appeal and the suit isn’t closed, it increasingly looks like the statue’s time is running out.

But if Lee is to go, he’ll leave the city a changed man.

In the last six months, Monument Avenue’s tallest and oldest statue has become an altar for civic action. Its marble pedestal is coated in graffitied calls for racial equity and rage against injustice. Short memorials to victims of police violence surround its base, arranged like temporary gravestones.

An equestrian Lee still sits above in bronze, but his monument now includes basketball hoops, gardens, tents, lawn chairs, and a grill for spontaneous barbecues. The New York Times calls it the most influential work of American protest art since World War II. The city’s own call it reclaimed territory.

For many Richmonders over the last 130 years, the statue has represented a narrative out of touch with much of its population. Its new life, though, shows that the narrative isn’t set in stone – and has many residents reimagining the city.

“It is an amazing visual of a dramatic turning point in our cultural history as expressed as social outcry, of people unifying in the streets to say this has got to stop,” says Janine Bell, president and artistic director of the Elegba Folklore Society, a local group dedicated to preserving African and African American culture. “I hope that this has been a conscious-raising time for people, so that when we talk about America the Beautiful, it can be true.”

“Live or die for Dixie”

But a beautiful America looks far different today than it did 130 years ago.

The Lee statue’s dedication on May 29, 1890 was a monumental event for Southerners and the Lost Cause narrative of Civil War history, which portrays the Confederacy as a noble defender of states’ rights. Between 75,000 and 100,000 people – including more than 10,000 former Confederate soldiers – held an all-day, 4-mile parade to the statue, then located in a tobacco field just outside the city. Upon arrival, they listened to a prayer of invocation, a speech from the governor, and then a 10,000-word paean to Lee from Archer Anderson, a former Confederate leader. 

Observers were “carried back to 1861,” read an article in the city paper, when “every note, every syllable of the popular air spoke our honest purpose – ‘to live or die for Dixie.’” In the former capital of the Confederacy, the war wasn’t over.

For many of the city’s Black residents, it still isn’t today. 

“Growing up in Richmond, I never really looked at Monument Avenue,” says James “JJ” Minor, president of the Richmond branch of the NAACP. “We never really went down that street because we knew ... the symbols of hate on that street. We knew that that wasn’t just a place to go.”

Since the summer, that has changed. 

When the Black Lives Matter protests began in May, Monument Avenue became a civic battlefront, and the Lee statue became a cultural center. It attracted speeches, songs, memorials, protests, collective moments of mourning and community gatherings. Even today, visiting the statue has become something of a local pilgrimage. 

“It’s a lightning rod,” says Ms. Bell. “It’s a place that has been designated as ground zero in Richmond.”

Reclaiming Richmond 

Even if the statue is just a symbol, the movement around it still matters to many in the city.

“It reminds me of the Berlin Wall,” says Lark Washington, eating lunch at the Lee statue with her family. “Before this I never went on Monument Avenue because I didn’t want to be around statues that reminded me of white supremacy. ... I’ve never spent more time on this street until now.”

That sense of reclaimed space, expressed by so many locals, gives Richmonders a greater sense of belonging in their own home. 

Monuments have a way of taking the temperature of the moment, says Gabriel Reich, associate professor at Richmond’s Virginia Commonwealth University and an expert on Confederate statuary. The energy attracted by the Lee statue, he says, may signal a rejection of what it has come to represent. 

In a city where “all roads lead to and from systemic racism,” says Mr. Minor, such moments of change can have impact for generations.

Since Autumn Nazeer moved to Richmond in October, she’s visited the Lee statue each day to pick up litter. The statue has become a memorial, she says, and memorials deserve respect.

But for her it’s also personal. 

“He’s my ancestor,” says Ms. Nazeer, staring at Lee atop his graffitied altar. Still, she hopes the statue will soon come down. The city doesn’t belong to him anymore, and she thinks enough people now realize it. 

“It’s not about Black Lives Matter, although Black lives have to matter for all lives to matter,” she says of the monument’s new life. “But that’s what’s happening: an awakening, I think a spiritual awakening.”

Dr. L. Ranjit Singh

University of Delhi geologist Guntupalli V.R Prasad, pointing to a rock horizon in the Cauvery Basin, which has preserved several ammonite fossils, in 2019.

In 1981, geologists conducting a mineral survey in a cement quarry in Balasinor, Gujarat, in western India, stumbled upon thousands of fossilized dinosaur eggs. Paleontologists believe that at least seven species of dinosaur lived here – perhaps the most famous being the squat, two-legged, carnivorous Rajasaurus narmadensis .

In the neighboring area of Raiyoli, researchers have uncovered fossils of about 10,000 dinosaur eggs, making it one of the world’s largest known dinosaur hatcheries. 

Significant discoveries are still being made across the country. In 2017, the fossil bones of a Shringasaurus, a horned, herbivorous dinosaur, were discovered in red mudstone of the Denwa formation, in Madhya Pradesh. “There’s an incredible wealth out there, an almost parallel India,” says Anupama Chandrasekaran, a journalist who’s been compiling India’s fossil discoveries on her podcast and website Desi Stones and Bones.

But the region’s fossils, like much of India’s paleontological heritage, remain under threat from vandals, opportunists, and indifferent public officials. Dinosaur eggs are sold for as little as $7 in small villages, for instance. Other fossil sites are destroyed through deforestation and mining.

“Paleontology suffers in India from various factors, says Ashok Sahni, a geologist at Panjab University whom the Times of India has called the “father of Indian paleontology.” “Vandalism of fossils is rampant, as there are no laws that protect these precious finds. Lack of access to sites is the main problem, as landowners can arbitrarily shut down mining sites.” 

A rich fossil heritage

The Indian subcontinent, which collided with Eurasia about 10 million years after nonavian dinosaurs went extinct, is home to fossils found nowhere else, including the 80-ton Bruhathkayosaurus and the chicken-sized Alwalkeria.  

The first dinosaur bones in Asia were found in India by a British captain in one of the East India Co.’s armies in 1828, in Jabalpur, thirteen years before the word “dinosaur” was coined. Ever since then many bones, nests, and eggs have been found across the country. 

India has passionate amateur fossil collectors like Vishal Verma, a high school physics teacher, who has rescued dozens of fossilized dinosaur nests and eggs and rare extinct sharks in Bagh in the Narmada Valley, and Mohansingh Sodha, who has collected fossils for nearly 50 years.

Dr. Sahni grew up around talk of fossils and dinosaurs with his father, grandfather, and uncle, all eminent paleontologists. “India has the largest number of eggs and dinosaur nests from about 68 million years ago, deposited during a time of volcanic activity. We also have a lot of coprolites – fossilized dinosaur feces – which tells you what they ate and how they lived.”

He also worked alongside teams of German and American scientists at the Vastan Lignite Mine, in Gujarat, western India, since 2005. They found early mammals including horses and primates in these fossil-bearing layers, as well as several insects perfectly preserved in 50-million-year-old amber. “But the mine was closed down by the owner in 2015,” he says.

Such frustrations are common for paleontological sites in India, say experts.  

“Many geologists have come back after several years to the site of a fossil find and found it flattened, or a dump yard,” says University of Delhi geologist Guntupalli V.R. Prasad, who was part of the team that unearthed India’s first Ichthyosaur remains.

“The main problem in India is that the desire for short-term commercial gains wins over the need for preservation of important sites,” Professor Prasad says. “In the Deccan Traps area, there is a spot showing layers of rocks with beautiful formations of lava flows, marine fossils and dinosaur nesting sites, but the site is being quarried, with apathy on the part of the government officials.”

A “grand vision”

Even legal protections aren’t always sufficient to protect these sites. In 1997, some 70 acres that covered the nesting sites were designated as the Balasinor Dinosaur Fossil Park. But with minimal security and policing, vandalism and looting of the fossils abounds.

Without economic incentives and criminal punishments to protect India’s fossil sites, say observers, these paleontological treasure troves could be lost forever.

“Many governments have talked about a well-curated national repository, but unless there is real political will backed by funds, nothing will happen. Strict laws should also be framed for theft, smuggling, procuring, and damaging fossils,” says Dr. Sahni.

Intergenerational continuity is also critical, says Sunil Bajpai, a vertebrate paleontologist at the Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee, who in 2008 helped discover the closest land relative to whales, in Kashmir. 

“The biggest problem before an Indian paleontologist is that when he leaves a university, the person who replaces him is not interested in his specimen collections or if he retires, the problem is, where does he deposit the finds,” Dr. Bajpai says.  

“Young children should be educated on evolution and how long it took for something to come into existence, only then will they understand the need to preserve biodiversity,” he says.

To Dhananjay Mohabey, a paleontologist at RTM Nagpur University who has extensively studied the dinosaur fossils at Balasinor, India’s fossil heritage holds tremendous promise.

“In spite of all the criticism about paleontology in India, the GSI [Geological Survey of India] is a storehouse of meteorites, fossils and bones of prehistoric animals collected over 150 years, and its extensive collections in Kolkata are available to researchers,” he says. 

“All the discoveries and fossil finds are funded by government money and not personal property. One has to coordinate with the local government or museums and make arrangements to showcase it, when they leave a department or retire,” he adds. “Besides fossils, the excavation sites are very significant and should be preserved and showcased to the public.”

“What India needs is a grand vision,” says biochemist Pranay Lal, author of “Indica: A Deep Natural History of the Indian Subcontinent,” “a living, immersive museum or several small museums that harness the best of technology, and showcase its incredible treasures.”

For the past two years, since fifth grade, Aarav Khatri woke up on the weekends excited for more classes.

Separate from his schoolwork, his weekend computer science classes – given for free by the nonprofit CS Remastered (“CS” for computer science) – were taught by local teen volunteers at a few libraries in central New Jersey. With the guidance of tutors and his laptop, Aarav unlocked a limitless world, where lines of code could identify prime numbers, design dictionaries, or spit out a Fibonacci sequence.

“It was quite fun knowing that in class we might be making something cool,” says Aarav, now 13, who studied with the program through the summer.

CS Remastered founder Samvit Agarwal took extra time to explain to Aarav the coding concept of recursion – something even college students are still learning. It took two or three private lessons with exercises that increased in difficulty, but Aarav eventually nailed it. Because, he says, Samvit was “very patient ... very good at explaining stuff.”

Samvit’s brand of patience is the root of the program that brings computer savvy to kids through individualized attention they may not get in school. 

Samvit, a 17-year-old high school senior, is a computer science ace, a programming polyglot who started the volunteer teaching program in 2018. And he has grown it into a service for 300 kids like Aarav, with 250 volunteer tutors.  

As much as Samvit likes challenging himself, he says his program focuses on “helping out some of the kids around me.” 

The impulse to serve others is driven in part by the Hindu community spirit of his upbringing, Samvit says. He plans to focus on creating social impact in college as he studies computer science and business further. He’s already thinking about the possibility of opening up another CS Remastered chapter wherever he moves next.

Sarah Matusek/The Christian Science Monitor

Samvit Agarwal, a 17-year-old tech whiz from New Jersey, juggles his own computer studies with a nonprofit he founded to teach his peers high-tech skills.

Samvit describes a life steeped in technology. Raised between his parents’ Indian homeland and the United States, he has observed their software consulting careers and takes part in dinner conversations about technology’s impact on the world. He describes an “aha” moment in fourth grade when a robot he built over the course of a month from a Lego Mindstorms kit whirred to life on his bedroom floor.

“It was pretty amazing to see it walk,” says Samvit. By the age of 12, he had started a YouTube channel meant to help friends and family with their technical issues. His how-to tech videos, which feature steps for resetting passwords on a range of devices, have attracted more than 14,000 subscribers. 

Sanyukta Agarwal describes her son as very independent. “And like any teenager he does not like mom or dad asking him too many questions,” she wrote, punctuating that with a smiley face emoji, in an email to the Monitor.

During middle school, Samvit taught himself the programming language Python after school. He has since picked up Java, HTML, CSS, and Javascript through school and other training. If others consider the field purely technical, he sees it more in terms of creativity.

Tailor-made lessons

“If I have an idea, I can actually form it in front of me through code,” he says in his rapid-fire way, as if typing out his thoughts. “I think that’s pretty amazing.”

After Samvit started winning hackathons, Ms. Agarwal, his proud mom, began reaching out to friends in the neighborhood and offering Samvit’s help with their kids’ computer science projects. He says the idea for the nonprofit brewed over time as he began teaching younger peers. First he identified a need: tailor-made lessons for the individual. Available online resources and group-lesson formats “weren’t really structured to fit every individual,” he says.

Drawing on his “comp sci” courses at school, he started developing curricula focused on one-on-one tutorials for kids 10 to 16. Students choose whether they want to start studying Python or Java. Though the coding lessons are preplanned, instructors adjust to each learner’s speed.

“The entire idea is to make it as flexible or as adaptable to each student as possible,” Samvit says.

He recruited fellow high schoolers to teach and registered the nonprofit with the state of New Jersey in autumn 2018.

Without a budget, Samvit and his fellow instructors began tutoring at local libraries. An adult had to chaperone and “make sure they put the tables and chairs back,” says Ms. Agarwal. (After countless parent-chauffeured rides to these sessions, the nonprofit president recently earned his driver’s license.)

Classes moved remote during the pandemic on the virtual platform Discord, which allows for breakout rooms. Since the instructors themselves are still in high school, once the school year began, all tutoring moved to weekend sessions. CS Remastered is seeking funding, mainly to buy its most disadvantaged students laptops for lessons. It’s also adding partners, including nonprofits Girls Who Code and HomeFront NJ, which works to curb homelessness and for whom Samvit’s team has offered lessons.

CS Remastered has opened four chapters in the U.S., one in India, and one in China.

“We thought if it’s working here, it definitely does have the prospect to work in a lot of other places across the world,” says the Gen Z founder.

On an October evening, fall leaves cast a golden glow through the windows of the Agarwals’ living room, where they’ve gathered for a socially distanced interview. After virtual work and school days, Samvit and his parents usually convene for dinner, prayer, and recently movies from the ’90s.

Ms. Agarwal encourages this togetherness. She acknowledges her son’s work ethic, but wishes he’d slow down. Samvit has been juggling senior year and the nonprofit and a comp sci class at Princeton University, since he exhausted course offerings at his public high school. He keeps other coding-related passion projects spinning on the side.

Ms. Agarwal says her son is committed to whatever he takes on: “I’ve sometimes seen him up till almost 2 in the night ...”

“No, that’s like very rare,” Samvit counters from the couch. He claims his max is midnight.

Samvit says his desire to pay it forward is partly influenced by his Hindu background: “That’s kind of something that I guess I’ve been brought up with – that idea of good karma, of giving back to the community.” Each family member wears red mauli thread around a wrist: a reminder of faith and invitation for blessings.

Tutors receive as much as they give

CS Remastered has benefited students and tutors alike. Amisha Singh, a high school senior who started as one of CS Remastered’s tutors this summer and doubles as the media manager, is part of the nonprofit’s effort to involve more young women.

“I think in general young women aren’t made to feel like they could be good at STEM or computer science,” Amisha says. But imparting her knowledge through tutoring, she adds, “has helped me get over my impostor syndrome. ... It’s made me more confident in my abilities.”  

Parents of the program’s students see that confidence shine through to their own kids. The receptivity generated by the peer-to-peer coaching, says Aarav’s dad Maneesh Khatri, is the program’s strength. “With kids, they’ll listen to others more than their parents,” says the software engineer.

Jyotima Prasad – a life coach whose son and daughter both have studied with Samvit – also heaps praise on the model. “I always feel that giving back and volunteering, it always takes a very good heart, compassionate heart, and going beyond yourself,” she says. “Those kinds of qualities in such a young kid ... it’s a very good thing."

AP

A father brings his daughter to school in Frankfurt, Germany, Nov. 23.

Couples with school-age children don’t have it easy right now. Much or all of a child’s education is likely happening at home. Who’s making sure the internet connection is good – let alone making sure real learning is taking place? In many households in which both parents can work from home, home-based learning during the pandemic has opened up a debate about gender roles in parenting. And in deciding how to divvy up child rearing, mothers and fathers – especially fathers – may be taking on new views of themselves.

Even before the pandemic many fathers had stepped up their parenting game. In 2018 married mothers who worked full time spent 1.2 hours each day caring for their children. But married fathers chipped in 49 minutes per day, reported the American Time Use Survey. The women spent another 2.1 hours each day on other household chores, with husbands contributing about 1.4 hours.

What comes as a pleasant surprise now is how much fathers stuck at home are enjoying more time with their children. In a study released by Harvard University after the pandemic began, 68% of dads said they felt closer or much closer to their children, and 57% said they appreciated their children more.

It’s no longer a professional embarrassment if during Dad’s Zoom meeting a child wanders into the room wanting a glass of water: It’s a chance to proudly lift the child onto his lap and introduce them. One father reports that he found his 6- and 9-year-old sons running around the house didn’t annoy him: just the opposite. “I noticed the total bliss I felt,” he told The Wall Street Journal, “and the feeling that I didn’t want to be anywhere else.”

Another young dad told The Guardian: “I’ll be honest, all my dad friends share the same view, lockdown has been an absolute blessing in terms of spending time with our children, and seeing them grow and develop. I have no hankering to get back to the way it was before.”

Mental and social barriers to male buy-in to parenting responsibilities still remain. The assumption that husbands will be the primary breadwinners has softened, but it hasn’t disappeared. That pressure can push back against fatherly inclinations to spend more time at home.

Men are also less likely to receive paternity leave, paid or unpaid, or feel comfortable taking it, if offered. And a lingering macho mentality may make fathers less comfortable talking about the challenges of parenting with their spouse or male friends.

When the pandemic eases, and the ability to return to the office opens up, like all workers fathers will weigh the advantages of being present in the office against stay-at-home pluses such as no commuting hassles.

But for dads who’ve formed new, closer bonds with their children, that advantage may be the hardest one to give up.