After 18 months of unsatisfying, fully remote work, Isabella finally landed an office job at the end of last year as a production coordinator at a New York advertising agency. 

“I was so excited,” she recalls. She wore her smartest business-casual outfit and took the subway from Brooklyn to Manhattan for the very first work commute of her young career. On the seventh floor, she opened the door and was greeted with ... quiet.

No phones ringing, no office buzz. Fewer than a dozen people sat in an open workspace that could easily accommodate 80.

“I wore heels, which was stupid because there was nobody around,” she says. Those who were there all looked up when she walked by. “The floors are concrete, so all you could hear was me clacking around.”

When she went back the next day, she opted for jeans, a T-shirt, and a pair of banged-up Nikes.

Like Isabella, who asked that her last name not be used because she was not authorized to speak by her company, many of America’s youngest workers have started their careers not with a bang but with a barely audible whimper. Employers have pushed them into near-empty offices or kept them at home to collaborate with older colleagues they’ve never met in person. Instead of workmates across the desk, they have Zoom. Instead of chance encounters in a hallway, they have pre-scheduled remote meetings with supervisors who may – or may not – have mastered the art of managing or mentoring online.

Of course, not all employees – including those 25 or under, known as Generation Z – have office jobs. According to a PwC global survey, 45% of respondents hold positions that require full-time attendance in workplaces, like hotels and restaurants. 

The rest have entered the labor equivalent of “The Twilight Zone.” This is particularly significant for Gen Z, whose well-being matters immensely for the American economy. 

Nearly as big as the record-setting millennials, they are the nation’s most diverse generation and will hold a projected one-third of jobs by 2030. Their weird introduction to the workplace could hurt their careers – or, in a surprising twist, could give them the insights to create better working lives that have balance as the bedrock.

“What’s very fascinating about this younger generation coming in in a way that no other generation has come into the workforce is that it could have these lingering, changing attitudes,” says Charlie Warzel, co-author with Anne Helen Petersen of “Out of Office: The Big Problem and Bigger Promise of Working From Home.” “They’ve watched millennials graduate with these really unhealthy attitudes towards work,” he says. This generation also doesn’t want to work the same way its parents have, he adds. 

“What could happen,” he asks, “if Gen Z sees all of this as proof that maybe work-life balance as millennials and Gen Xers or boomers know it is unattainable, simply because our attitudes towards work are unsustainable, and ... they want to build their own?”

Courtesy of Edgar Rosales

Edgar Rosales poses in front of a map of District 1 of Contra Costa County at Supervisor John Gioia's district office in El Cerrito, California, in 2022. Mr. Rosales says having been able to form professional relationships in person before the pandemic has helped in his work since graduating from college.

“No fast track” for remote workers 

America’s youngest workers are ready for change. 

“This Mondays-through-Fridays, 9-to-5 thing, it’s old,” says Edgar Rosales, district coordinator for Supervisor John Gioia of Contra Costa County, California. “It works, but it’s not optimal. ... I need my space where I can close out all the excess noise [and] have some self-care,” he says, like jogging in the middle of the day or a picnic lunch in the sun. His version of balance means making room for things “that bring me joy.”

Mr. Rosales considers himself one of the more fortunate young staffers at his workplace. Politics, he says, comes down to relationship-building. Having interned in local government during community college, before the pandemic, he had already established some of the relationships he now relies on in virtual meetings as liaison between the district supervisor and the county’s many city and community advisory councils. That’s not so easy for his Gen Z peers who came in cold, he adds. Meetings fall flat without the personal touch.

“They give their update and that’s it. There’s no connection, there’s no relationship with folks,” he says. “And you can tell: It’s not because they don’t want those relationships – it’s just hard to establish that when you’re always virtual. ... There’s no shared experiences you can draw from.”

That lack of connection may well stunt the careers of Gen Zers – in two ways.

With little to no in-person face time with their managers, it’s hard to stand out. Second, it’s harder to learn from colleagues how things are done in the company and the shortcuts to accomplishing work. The result: “a very stagnant career time and not gaining a lot of experience with others who have done the job,” says Rebecca Croucher, head of North America marketing for ManpowerGroup, a recruitment and workforce management company. “So, no fast track,” she adds.

This may help explain the paradox that Gen Z, the generation most comfortable with technology, is the least enamored with the remote office. Only 23% said remote working was very or extremely important to them, according to a 2022 survey by the National Society of High School Scholars. Similarly, only about a third of Gen Zers found remote work “extremely desirable,” compared with half of millennials and 62% of boomers, in a survey by Apartment List, an online rental housing locator.

Then again, the office isn’t always as great as Gen Z might envision.

Adventure or community?

After Tova Lenchner graduated from college in December 2020, she got a remote job at a tech startup in Boston. Not only was office culture hard to decipher, but Ms. Lenchner also found it tough to make personal connections. “The onboarding process was difficult,” she says.

Three months after she started, the firm began requiring all employees to spend at least four days a week in the office. At first, this was a good thing. “Being in person allowed us to trust each other,” she says. 

But she quickly became frustrated as burnout wore her down. “I found it hard to create a balance,” she says. And the closer she got to her co-workers, the more Ms. Lenchner could see from her older colleagues’ experiences, in particular, that she would have plenty of time later on to focus on her career. 

“It’s a goal of mine to see as much of the world as possible,” she says. So as COVID-19 restrictions eased, she quit her job earlier this year and took to the skies. And she’s still traveling.

“Gen Z are more discerning, in a way that boomers never were,” says Andrea Vanecko, design principal at architecture, planning, and design firm NBBJ. “If they are unsatisfied, they are going to leave. ... They are not about staying dedicated to the company. They have a completely different approach.”

That is why, in creating future offices, NBBJ aims to make the office so attractive that workers will leave their home offices. For Gen Z, that means focusing on key qualities such as authenticity, continuous learning, mentoring, and community, she says. 

“If it’s not as good as home, they’re not going to come in unless, of course, it’s a mandate,” says Ms. Vanecko. “Companies are trying to not have to mandate it, because it shows they’re flexible.” 

Office innovations and flexibility

Three grape Jolly Ranchers sit in a small basket on Samira Lobby’s desk at online furniture retailer Wayfair in Eugene, Oregon. It was full to the brim not long before, she explains, holding the bowl up to the Zoom camera, but colleagues kept coming by to help themselves and chat. Each co-worker offers a different type of candy at their desk. It’s a simple way to get people talking – corny, maybe, but it works, says Ms. Lobby. 

In 2020, after working during college and graduating with a journalism major, she took a job as a marketing specialist at a property management company. But it didn’t last. 

“After COVID hit, I realized that our values were totally different and the culture didn’t really fit with me,” she says. So, for the first time in her life, she quit, letting her supervisors know via email. A few months later, she started remotely in a customer service position at Wayfair. It could have been a lonely period, but she found that the company made connecting with co-workers easy. 

Two years and a promotion later, she says she’s thriving, in part thanks to a lively online workplace culture. She participates actively on the office’s messaging platform, Slack, in channels ranging from a networking group for people of color to a space for fans of the reality TV show “The Bachelor.” In addition, a companywide program called Mentor Match connects young people like her with more experienced employees. 

For Gen Zers, work-life balance means that autonomy, flexibility, and support go hand in hand. A minority of them highly value remote work, but an even smaller minority – 17% – want to be in the office full time, according to unpublished data from a recent Future Forum survey. 

Courtesy of Samira Lobby

Samira Lobby participates in a recruiting event for her employer at Lane Community College Center Building in Lane Country, Oregon, in March 2022.

Balance and fun

Burnout was the biggest challenge of remote work for Ellyana Maynard, who, at the peak of the pandemic, started her job as a recruiter at Formstack, a workplace productivity software company. “It can be very isolating,” she says in a Zoom interview from Middlebury, Vermont. “Sometimes you just want people” around. 

But now she’s gotten used to the setup and can’t see herself ever going back to an office. Through electronic communication platforms, her workplace has been able to foster community, collaboration, and camaraderie. “We have [a] very strong office culture,” Ms. Maynard says.

Her employer also gives employees a $100 wellness stipend and the option to work for only half the day on Fridays. Such incentives have improved the quality of her life, giving her more time to walk with her dog and work out. “My husband is now considering going remote,” she says.

Erika Page/The Christian Science Monitor

Allison Strang stands on the sidewalk near her company's office in downtown Boston, July 28, 2022. Ms. Strang could work at home if she wanted to, but chooses to come into the office four days a week to be with her colleagues.

By contrast, Allison Strang is sold on working in person.

She started her career at a small company in London three months into the pandemic. The business centered on wellness, but management didn’t seem to care about her own well-being. She had to come into the office whenever her boss requested it; even at the height of COVID-19, there was no flexibility in the schedule. Worse, she had no support from co-workers.

“I had no one to look up to,” she says. “Everything was a guessing game.” 

So she quit early this year, moved back to the United States, and began working for a Boston-based firm that helps property managers and employers create positive workplace experiences. She has regular one-on-ones with her managers and says having them ask, “‘Can I do something for you?’ is bizarre to me and the best thing ever.” 

“I could work from home every day if I really wanted to, but I choose to come in four days a week,” she says, sipping an Americano at a cafe around the corner from her office in downtown Boston. “They’re very good at showing us how much they appreciate us.” Office lunch gatherings and weekly happy hours are the norm, including a recent pride-themed party. And on Mother’s Day, the company brought in someone who makes flower bouquets. “It’s just fun,” she says. “So I’m like, why would I want to sit at home alone?” 

“At one point I thought we were going to work from home forever,” she adds. Now her vision of the future includes a collective workspace that takes active care of employees’ well-being. 

“I think people care about people, because of what happened, and people want to appreciate each other more. Nothing beats being connected with someone face to face. I think we’ll continue getting back to that over time.”

Editor’s note: Samira Lobby’s job history has been clarified. 

Meg Kinnard/AP

Republican National Committeeman Glenn McCall, U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, first lady Peggy McMaster, and South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster stand during the Pledge of Allegiance during a South Carolina GOP fundraising dinner on July 29, 2022, in Columbia, South Carolina.

Democrats face many headwinds going into the midterms. But money may not be one of them. 

Democratic candidates have raised substantial sums for their campaigns and are outpacing Republicans, particularly among small-dollar donors. In June, Democrats raised double the amount in small donations – $200 or less – than they raised in the same period for the 2018 midterms. 

In key Senate matchups, Democrats are well ahead of their GOP rivals in fundraising. Take Ohio, where Sen. Rob Portman, a Republican, is retiring. Rep. Tim Ryan, a Democrat, raised $9.1 million in the second quarter. More than 97% of those contributions were $100 or less, according to his campaign. His overall take was four times that of his opponent, Republican J.D. Vance, though Mr. Vance has since had a cash infusion from a Senate political action committee. 

A similar imbalance is evident in fundraising for Senate races in Georgia and New Hampshire. In Arizona, Republicans have now settled on a nominee, Blake Masters, which makes it easier to raise money to close the gap with incumbent Sen. Mark Kelly, a Democrat. 

In general, Republicans are proving more effective in tapping large donors. National GOP committees are raising large sums for congressional and gubernatorial races. And while small donors have emerged as a powerful counterweight in campaign fundraising, big donors still matter in U.S. election spending. Super PACs, which can raise unlimited amounts for election-related speech, rely on wealthy individuals and corporations.

Jay LaPrete/AP/File

Democratic Rep. Tim Ryan, running for an open U.S. Senate seat in Ohio, waits to go on stage to speak to supporters after the polls closed on primary election day, May 3, 2022, in Columbus, Ohio.

In the 2020 election cycle, candidates for Congress spent a record $3.68 billion running for office, according to Open Secrets, a watchdog group. An additional $5 billion was spent by party committees and outside groups. Many expect the 2022 midterms to cost even more. 

In the past, Democrats led calls for greater limits on campaign finance, particularly after the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling in 2010 that loosened restrictions on spending by corporations and other entities. But those calls have since grown mute as the party has found ways to compete effectively with Republicans by courting wealthy donors as well as regular supporters, to the point where some GOP fundraisers complain of being outgunned. 

“We get outraised on low dollar and on mega money,” says Dave Carney, a veteran Republican consultant in New Hampshire. 

The Democratic advantage in small-dollar fundraising is partly explained by the strength of the party’s online platform, ActBlue, compared to the Republican equivalent, WinRed. Both platforms allow supporters to donate to almost any candidates or to national committees. 

“Democrats have worked very hard to channel small-dollar donors toward candidates that need it,” says Robert Boatright, a political scientist at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, who studies campaign finance. 

SOURCE:

OpenSecrets

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Jacob Turcotte/Staff

Under President Donald Trump, Republicans closed the gap in online fundraising, as the former president built a formidable base of small-dollar donors. After his election defeat in 2020, Mr. Trump continued to rake in contributions and now controls a war chest of more than $120 million that many Republicans would like to see directed to midterm races. So far, Mr. Trump has spent little to support candidates he has endorsed, to the frustration of some GOP fundraisers. 

Karl Rove, a veteran GOP strategist, has argued that such parsimony calls into doubt the effectiveness of Mr. Trump’s PACs. The former president’s fundraising pitches “have apparently produced a flood of contributions that donors think will help defeat Democrats. But it isn’t clear that much of Mr. Trump’s lucre is going to help in the midterms,” he wrote in a Wall Street Journal column. 

Separately, some Republicans have complained that Google’s spam filter is biased against the party’s solicitations for online donations. Ronna McDaniel, who chairs the Republican National Committee, said Google had failed to explain why emails “sent to our most engaged, opt-in supporters” have been marked as spam. The company has pushed back on these claims. And analysts say a more likely explanation is that GOP donors are tuning out constant pleas for money, noting that Trump entities seem unaffected by the alleged bias. 

Small donors are more representative of the voting public than large donors, says Laurent Bouton, an economics professor at Georgetown University and co-author of a study of millions of individual contributions between 2005 and 2020. Women and people of color were more likely to contribute small amounts to candidates, the study found. 

Where small donors don’t differ from large donors is location: Most live in coastal states or large cities in the South and Midwest. But they’re more likely to support candidates from their party who live outside their district, which online platforms make it easy to do, says Professor Bouton. 

“Small donors seem particularly attracted by races involving key figures of their party, or party nemeses, independently of where they are located,” he says via email. 

Success in fundraising doesn’t always translate into electoral victory. Democrats outraised Republicans in several high-profile congressional races in 2020, only to see candidates fall well short. In North Carolina, for example, Democrats raised $182 million to challenge Sen. Thom Tillis, who defeated Cal Cunningham after revelations of infidelity clouded his campaign. Similarly, Sen. Susan Collins, a Republican, easily saw off a challenge from Democrat Sara Gideon after polls had showed a closer race. Ms. Gideon, the speaker of the state legislature, raised so much outside money that she ended with nearly $15 million unspent. 

Well-funded Democrats also failed to unseat incumbent Republicans in Senate races in South Carolina, Texas, and Kentucky. This shows the limits of what money can buy for campaigns, says Mr. Carney, a political adviser to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott who will face Beto O’Rourke, a Democrat, in November’s election.  

“All the [Democratic] money went to cause célèbres,” he says, noting that this strategy helps Republicans overall. “Every dollar that goes to a candidate that’s not in the hunt is wasted.” 

July was ablaze in Europe. This summer’s wildfires nearly engulfed a train traveling between Galicia and Madrid in Spain, creating panic among passengers. Rapid, high flames overtook and killed an older couple fleeing in their car in Portugal. On Aug. 7, on the Adriatic island of Hvar, a Croatian man died protecting his house. Forest fires also forced thousands to flee their homes in southern France.

The wildfires the continent has experienced this season are not its deadliest, but the scenes have been dramatic. In all, wildfires larger than 30 hectares (74 acres) have burned more than 2,300 square miles of land in the European Union this year. “This is the second-highest annual total since 2006,” says Daniel Puglisi, press officer of the EU commission for crisis management and humanitarian aid. And the fire season doesn’t end until October.

Just how bad have wildfires been in Europe?

The number of fires and burned areas has been record-breaking in many countries of the EU. Especially in southern Europe, the number of fires in 2022 significantly surpassed the annual average documented since 2006, the starting point for the data set of the European Forest Fire Information System.

As of early August, Romania has been the country with the most dramatic spike, registering more than 700 fires this year. Flames there consumed 580 square miles (0.6% of the country’s area) compared with an average of 55 square miles annually between 2006 and 2011. Spain, Italy, France, and Croatia have also seen an extreme rise in the number of fires, with the total burned area also representing a notable increase for all but Italy.

Portugal’s wildfires have proved severe enough this summer to prompt the declaration of a state of emergency – no doubt also spurred by memories of the devastating 2017 wildfires, which killed more than 100 people.

“What we’re seeing is a lot of large fires occurring simultaneously that are starting outside of what was the traditional fire season,” says Víctor Resco de Dios, professor of forestry engineering at the University of Lleida in Spain. “More than the number of fires, I think what’s remarkable is that a very large number of large fires are occurring simultaneously on a subcontinental scale.”

What is causing the fires?

The immediate triggers for forest and wildland fires have been kaleidoscopic.

Some fires are sparked by human error or negligence, such as the failure of landowners to remove dead or dry leaves and pine needles from their properties. Others – like the one in the Channel island of Alderney – have been attributed to lightning. Firefighters say the natural phenomenon can be the most dangerous as lightning tends to strike in remote areas where it is more difficult to intervene quickly.

In the Mediterranean, most wildfires are ignited by humans. For example, “the main fire cause in Portugal is human activities, either by accident, negligence, or arson,” says Joana Parente, a postdoctoral researcher focused on wildfires in Portugal. “Yes, we have natural wildfires. However, they only represent an average of 0.5% of the wildfires.” And across Europe, arsonists are to blame in an alarming number of cases, among them an adrenaline-seeking French firefighter.

Hot and dry weather is no help. Europe has experienced a spate of heat waves this summer, and globally July was the third hottest on record. It’s not possible at this stage to conclusively say whether the heat waves are due to climate change. But climate scientists are already analyzing the matter, and experts concur that drought conditions and record-breaking high temperatures that kicked off early this year exacerbated the wildfire situation.

“Of course, the big question is, why do we have that?” says Robert Stefanski of the Geneva-based World Meteorological Organization. “The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is indicating that we will see hotter and drier weather, especially in the Mediterranean areas. So that’s an indication of things to come.”

In Spain and Portugal, economic reasons also play a role, with populations shifting away from rural areas. Wood is no longer collected for energy. The decline of small farmers has transformed the landscape and created conditions conducive to fire spread.

“With climate change, the fuel – the trees, the foliage – dries earlier,” says Mr. Resco de Dios. “So this fuel becomes available earlier than what traditionally is the case. And this climate change is also due to a state of abandonment of forests that are no longer profitable in Europe, especially in southern Europe. Forest management is not profitable, and in many cases, neither is agricultural use.”

“Agriculture is important because [farms] create spatial heterogeneity,” adds Mr. Resco de Dios. “When we have the landscape bisected with agricultural fields, it is more difficult for the fire to become a large forest fire. ... In agricultural areas, fires burn with less intensity and provide a point from where they can be extinguished. But as this spatial heterogeneity is being lost and as everything is becoming more uniform, there are more and more forests with a lot of biomass. And this is a factor that leads to large fires.”

Bernat Armangue/AP

A firefighter works to extinguish a fire as wildfires get close to a house in Tabara, Spain, July 19, 2022. Spain has made great strides in firefighting in the past two decades, including the creation of a special firefighting unit and university-level study of fires and firefighting.

What is Europe doing to address the problem?

While forest fire prevention and response is a national responsibility, the EU budget does carve out €893 million ($920 million) for supplemental support. And within RescEU, the bloc’s disaster emergency response and civil protection resource pool, the EU has assembled a fleet of 12 firefighting airplanes and one helicopter for peak forest fire season. Portugal, France, Slovenia, and the Czech Republic each asked for help from RescEU services once in July. Albania did so in June and July.

The EU also uses satellite data from the Copernicus Earth observation program to analyze wildfires in the bloc and beyond. It evaluates forest fire risk and maps burned areas. This helps preemptive efforts and speeds up firefighting response.

Europe, like the United States, is also opening to the idea that allowing forests to burn naturally – or even setting preemptive burns on purpose – can help prevent mega-fires, especially at a time when models supported by satellite imagery and artificial intelligence provide fairly reliable predictions of fire conduct. But the idea faces pushback from some environmentalists.

Spain in particular shines for the progress it has made fighting fires in recent years. Aerial firefighting has taken off. Firefighters who cut their teeth in the devastating 1994 fires went on to form BRIF, a rapid-deployment specialized brigade akin to the special forces in the army. Spanish universities offer master’s degrees and Ph.D.s focused on forest fires. And in the private sector, companies like Technosylva offer software solutions for wildfire protection planning, operational response, and firefighter and public safety.

“Fire is no longer just something that is burning vegetation, but it’s something that is threatening people, their property, and local economies,” says Raúl Quílez, who has been fighting fires since 1994 and is pursuing a Ph.D. in forest fires in Spain.

Courtesy of Manny Aceves

Manny Aceves, a recently retired teacher of 31 years, poses with a student at Bancroft Elementary School in La Mesa, California, in June 2022. Mr. Aceves saw learning gaps in his students, but he says a full year of in-person learning helped them make academic progress.

Longtime teacher Manny Aceves says students this past school year were like athletes attempting to complete a marathon after not running for two years. Children were winded at the outset after extensive remote learning, yet slowly their endurance for classroom work increased. 

“We’re talking about sixth grade and there’s a lot of rigorous curriculum, but they were pooped out by lunch,” says Mr. Aceves, who retired in June after 31 years teaching third and sixth grade in La Mesa-Spring Valley School District in Southern California. “Part of it was building stamina, their ability to pay attention and to focus.”

But gradually, over the course of the 2021-2022 school year, Mr. Aceves’ students progressed. His district purchased the software i-Ready, which identifies student reading and math levels. Some of his sixth graders were shocked when their results placed them at a second, third, or even kindergarten reading level. But by the time the year ended, a few kids were reading on grade level, and everyone had made progress, according to their teacher. 

“Some kids made tremendous growth. I personally believe it was because we were in person,” says Mr. Aceves. “If they know a teacher truly loves and cares for them, the sky’s the limit for what [students] will do.” 

As a new school year dawns, educators and students are heading back with some good news: For the first time since lockdowns caused schools to shutter, students at both high- and low-poverty schools in the 2021-2022 academic year learned at rates that matched or sometimes exceeded pre-pandemic growth rates, according to a summer report from NWEA, a nonprofit that creates academic assessments for schools. That offers hope that kids are persevering and can rebound from learning disruptions that, by some estimates, could decrease their lifetime earnings by as much as $61,000 or set back the global economy by $1.6 trillion. 

Yet serious concerns remain, education researchers caution. Even though the rate of learning improved to a normal pace, many students still have a big hole to climb out of, and test scores in math and reading continue to lag behind pre-pandemic trends. NWEA projects it will take another three to five years for students to fully catch up. Systems that schools added to respond to the pandemic – like more instructional time, tutoring, and expanded summer programs – need to be sustained, experts say. If they aren’t, gaps between students of different wealth levels and races may broaden, and young people won’t be prepared for future opportunities. 

“We are moving in the right direction, but at the same time there’s going to be a fiscal cliff that schools are going to face in the near future when that federal aid runs out and schools are also facing a tight and difficult labor market for hiring staff,” says Matthew Kraft, an associate professor of education and economics at Brown University. “We cannot assume that the encouraging signs of progress will automatically continue. Increasing this upward positive momentum is going to take even more work.” 

And for some advocates, getting back to pre-pandemic levels of learning isn’t enough. Tequilla Brownie, CEO of TNTP, a nonprofit formerly known as The New Teacher Project, says a return to pre-pandemic status is like a child earning C grades, dropping to D’s during the pandemic, and getting back to C’s. 

“It’s not like the pre-pandemic outcomes were good,” says Dr. Brownie. “If you look at the literacy rates and outcomes before the pandemic, some states were making some small and incremental improvements, which we should applaud, but we can’t be comfortable that getting back to pre-pandemic results is where we ever want or can afford to be.”

Chelsea Sheasley

First lady Jill Biden, Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona, and Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont visit a classroom of young students enrolled in the Horizons summer learning program at Albertus Magnus College in New Haven, Connecticut, on July 20, 2022. The first lady and secretary of education went on a summer learning tour in July to highlight the importance of high-quality programs to pandemic learning recovery.

Recovery underway 

School leaders, teachers, and families have taken varying approaches to tackling the disruption that COVID-19 unleashed on education and are seeing some signs of progress they’ll build on in the new school year. 

A survey released this month by the National Center for Education Statistics found that staff at public schools rated strategies such as remedial instruction, high-dosage tutoring, and teacher professional development about learning recovery as most effective for mitigating pandemic woes. 

Some of those strategies are in use at Steubenville City Schools, a small district in northeastern Ohio that reopened quickly for in-person learning five days a week in fall 2020 with safety measures in place. The district hired additional tutors and had teachers run “solution teams” to address issues like student absenteeism and family engagement in a community with more than one-third of student families living in poverty and half eligible for government food assistance. 

Assessments in spring 2020 showed students had fallen behind normal achievement, says Steubenville Superintendent Melinda Young. By spring 2022, scores were “pretty close to what we’ve always gotten,” she says.

As data becomes available for the 2021-2022 school year, other signs of recovery are evident. Statewide tests this spring in Georgia and Texas showed students had improved from the previous year, although they remained behind where students typically scored pre-pandemic. And in Texas, which released data categorized by income and race, gaps between low-income, Black, and/or Latino students and their white and Asian peers persisted. In Tennessee, which invested heavily in strategies like high-dosage tutoring, students, regardless of race or income, were largely back to pre-pandemic levels in spring 2022 state tests, although achievement gaps between groups persist.  

Nikki Mueller, a mom of two elementary school students in Tigard, Oregon, believes her youngest son, a kindergartner when the pandemic hit, fell behind where he would have been in reading and writing. Returning to school in person after a year learning remotely helped, and she’s hopeful this will be a “bump on the road” for her child and his peers. 

“I think that the longer they are back in school, the better it will get. I’m optimistic that our kids will get there – they might just need a little more time,” Ms. Mueller says. 

Elementary students, who were hit especially hard in reading and math, showed some of the largest gains in learning this past year, according to the NWEA report, which is based on analysis of the MAP Growth assessment that the nonprofit administered to 8.3 million students in grades three through eight. 

Of special concern in the report, however, are students in high-poverty schools, who have more missed learning to make up, and middle schoolers nationally, who backslid on math and didn’t make any gains in reading this year according to the data.

Individually, though, students can show strong determination. Echo He, a rising high school junior in Sammamish, Washington, moved to the United States from China her freshman year. Adjusting to a new country while going to school online and learning English was daunting, but she was motivated to prove that coming to the U.S. was a good decision. 

“I was really eager to adapt to a new community, … and I was trying my best to create a sense of belonging,” says Echo. “I shifted from being not a good student with online learning to [choosing] to engage in the conversation, interact with teachers, and I think that helped a lot.” 

“Extra time and effort” 

Education researchers worry that overemphasizing learning rebounds might take attention away from efforts still needed to reach full recovery. “This is not the moment to take our foot off the gas,” says Karyn Lewis, NWEA report co-author and director of its Center for School and Student Progress. 

“People are desperate to get back to something they perceive as more normal,” says Dr. Kraft. “It’s mentally taxing to be in urgent mode over a sustained period of time.” But if recovery focuses only on short-term patches, it will fail children in the long run, he says. 

Many educators are still feeling urgency about mitigating the pandemic’s effects, and that’s likely contributing to teacher burnout, says Catherine Augustine, a senior policy researcher who studies education at Rand Corp. 

“The majority of teachers want to be there, want to help kids,” Dr. Augustine says. “If they see students are further behind, they are going to be concerned and put extra time and effort in.” 

Jamie Garcia Caycho, a teacher in Gwinnett County Public Schools outside Atlanta, saw her first graders make large growth in their oral language skills this past year, but she worries about statistics showing that if students don’t meet measures like reading proficiency by third grade, they are more likely to fail or drop out of high school.

“I do feel that pressure that we need to make sure they are at a certain level,” says Ms. Caycho. “Being patient, looking at their growth over time, keeps me going. ... Their success is a reflection of our communities and where we’re going.”

Lupe Mendez was a self-described hobby poet when he first met Tony Diaz. Today, Mr. Mendez is the poet laureate of Texas, and he looks back at receiving Mr. Diaz’s business card that day as one of the first turning points in his career.

The name Tony Diaz didn’t mean much to him, nor did the organization, Nuestra Palabra: Latino Writers Having Their Say. What jumped out to him was the picture of the Mayan calendar on the card.

“I thought, ‘This is dope!’” recalls Mr. Mendez. “At the time I hadn’t run into anything that was very pro-Latino.”

Mr. Diaz is, if nothing else, “very pro-Latino.” Over the past two decades, he has grown into one of the most active and exuberant advocates of Latino writing and writers in Texas. He’s a marketer and a spokesman; a writer and a promoter; an activist and, as he’s known around the state, “El Librotraficante.” The book smuggler.

It’s a nod to one of his defining acts: helping organize a 2012 caravan to Arizona with books outlawed as part of a state ban on Mexican American studies. Today, as school boards and state legislatures around the country, particularly in Texas, debate what children can read and learn, this aspect of his work has renewed significance.

But Mr. Diaz has long seen his work as both cultural and political. Highlighting and amplifying Latino writers and stories is a means of empowering their communities. Whether organizing a protest against book bans, or organizing a poetry reading, it’s all to help Latino communities treasure their stories – and themselves.

“We don’t think our stories are important. We feel intimidated. We’re not sure if our English is perfect. We’re not sure if our Spanish is perfect,” says Mr. Diaz. “All those things come together to keep us quiet.”

“We’re connecting with a community that feels overlooked,” he adds. “And we’re also firing each other up.”

Tony Diaz/Courtesy of the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center

Tony Diaz takes a selfie with students at the October 2021 grand opening of the Latino bookstore at the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center in San Antonio. The bookstore is part of the network he’s helped build in Texas.

 A “jaw-dropping” first

After years of picking crops all over Texas, the Diaz family found their first community on the south side of Chicago. And because his father had a full-time job, and his family had a fixed address, Mr. Diaz was able to go to school.

Still, he got his first job in second grade: translating for his parents. It was a lot of pressure for a child, he says, but “it showed me the power of words early on.” The youngest of nine, he was the first in his family to go to college. Then he became the first Mexican American to get a master’s degree in creative writing from the University of Houston, even though it was the mid-90s by then – something Mr. Mendez calls “a jaw-dropping piece of data.”

“For him to have been the first Latino to get an MFA in the fourth-largest city in the country – in Texas – that’s crazy,” he adds.

But it was in breaking that ground that Mr. Diaz says he first started to see how literature and politics intersect. He formed Nuestra Palabra in 1998, and over the next decade the nonprofit hosted showcases of Latino writers, started a weekly radio show, and organized book festivals at Houston’s George R. Brown Convention Center.

The Librotraficante crew formed over those years. Mr. Mendez went to his first showcase in 2000 – featuring actor Edward James Olmos – and became a volunteer organizer for the book festivals. Upwards of 30 activists and writers would socialize before and after radio shows. Connections and networks expanded – facilitated in no small part by Mr. Diaz’s gift of gab – to the point that when news broke of Arizona’s Mexican American studies ban, it felt personal.

“That [ban] can just [look like] a list of books. But we knew all those writers,” says Mr. Diaz. “We had worked with all of them in Houston over those 12 years.”

“They were like family,” he adds.  

Long-lasting networks

“We always had this in-house joke that we were book smugglers,” recalls Mr. Mendez. “We always had books in our cars.”

But then in 2012, the Librotraficante caravan – literally a bus and a few cars – journeyed across the Southwest with stacks of books from the banned Arizona curriculum. They stopped in cities like San Antonio and El Paso to hold literary events, culminating in an event in Tucson.

The ban ultimately ended, declared unconstitutional by a federal judge in 2017. But the networks the Librotraficantes formed for that caravan remain in place today, and have expanded. 

In San Antonio, when Cristina Ballí became executive director of the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center in 2016, she wanted to revive the center’s Latino bookstore and knew exactly whom to call.

“Tony is such a part of the regional arts world,” she says. “It always feels like he’s right around the corner.”

“I knew Tony wouldn’t just put together a list of authors. He does more than that,” she adds.

The center’s bookstore, which is now part of a Texas network that includes what Mr. Diaz likes to call “underground libraries,” serves as a permanent foundation for literary and political activism in the state. As conservative activists and officials in Texas campaigned this year against certain ways of teaching race, gender, and sexuality in schools – targeting hundreds of books with bans – Mr. Diaz led another banned-books caravan across the state in protest.

Henry Gass/The Christian Science Monitor

La Peña Cultural Center, located a half-mile from the Texas Capitol, is part of a network devoted to promoting and preserving Latino literature and culture in Texas.

“This is not bragging”

Months later, the libraries were hosting a more traditional, but equally important, event: a book tour for Salvadoran American poet Claudia Castro Luna. The book title alone – “Cipota Under the Moon” – thrilled attendees at events in Houston, Austin, and San Antonio because cipota is a Salvadoran word for young girl.

“I never saw cipota on a book title, and I can’t tell you how much that means,” said one woman, a Salvadoran American, at the Austin reading.

Mr. Diaz sees that moment as a product of decades of work using words to bridge linguistic and cultural differences – from translating for his parents, to forming Nuestra Palabra, to helping start the Librotraficante movement.

“This is not bragging, this is a fact: We did that,” he says. “Now what’s going to happen is we’ll do that more, and more often.”

“I really think [the country] needs us,” he adds. “At the end of the day, we [just] want to read and write and share our writing.”

AP

Serena Williams attends a New York City event in 2019.

The announcement this week by tennis great Serena Williams that she will step off the court for the final time after the coming U.S. Open tournament invites commentary about comparison and succession. Who will be the next great player? Will her form measure up? The New Yorker magazine recently described Coco Gauff, a rising American ranked 11th in the world, as having “near Serena-like first serves.”

That is perhaps inevitable. Over the course of a storied professional career that started in 1998, Ms. Williams and her older sister Venus redefined the power, aesthetics, and diversity of the game. The greater measure of her impact, however, may be less in the likeness of a swing than in the mental presence that she modeled: individuality over group identity, forgiveness over resentment, and legitimacy over disadvantage.

“Whatever you become,” Ms. Williams said in her autobiography “On the Line,” recalling what her mother often said, “you become in your head first.”

Only a small club of big-name pro athletes knows the cost of breaking the color barrier. Before the Williams sisters, that club was all-male – Jackie Robinson, Arthur Ashe, Tiger Woods. As young girls from the cracked community courts of Compton, California, they broke through the barriers of club tournaments with their rackets. But a professional tournament in 2001 marked a crucible. The sisters were taunted during the Indian Wells, California, event for their race and physical strength. Serena won, but refused to return for 14 years.

During that long interval, guided by her Christian faith, she wrestled to gain the power of forgiveness. Her return to Indian Wells reflected a recognition of a shared effort at healing. “I have faith that fans at Indian Wells have grown with the game and know me better than they did in 2001,” she said in the biography “Serena Williams: The Inspiring Story of One of Tennis’ Greatest Legends.”

“Indian Wells was a pivotal moment in my story, and I am part of the tournament’s story as well. Together we have a chance to write a different ending.”

There have been more pivotal moments since, like motherhood and the start of a new venture capital firm dedicated to supporting female entrepreneurs of color, that have begun to shift her focus. “I’m evolving away from tennis, toward other things that are important to me,” she wrote in Vogue this week. Yet there remains a continuity in that shift – a fierce determination to grow in the calm confidence that, as her parents taught her, uplifts others.