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What do at-risk teens do with $1,000? Turns out they help each other.

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When Heather Campbell-Lieberman first applied to teach at Lakota East High School in Ohio, she had one request:

She needed the school to let her students give away a thousand dollars.

In her previous teaching position, Campbell-Lieberman had incorporated the values of Magnified Giving into her curriculum. The Ohio-based organization inspires and engages students around philanthropy by offering them a $1,000 grant to give away to the charity of their choice.Alumni of the program have even gone on to work in the Ohio State House.


But each school only gets one grant per year, which means the students have to work together to decide the best way to spend it. That's where the education part comes in.

[rebelmouse-image 19528205 dam="1" original_size="1200x581" caption="Butler County, Ohio, where Lakota East High School is located. Photo by S&Mj Adventures." expand=1]Butler County, Ohio, where Lakota East High School is located. Photo by S&Mj Adventures.

The celebrated stories of student philanthropy typically come from private schools and honor roll programs. But the students at Lakota East don't fit into those categories.

Cambell-Lieberman was hired to teach a course called English & Connections, which she describes as akind of applied hybrid of life skills and writing, reading, and storytelling that caters to at-risk students — those who come from low-income or undersupported families or who struggle with disabilities or other marginalized identities. (Other Magnified Giving programs have engaged students with autism as well.)

"Many of the population in my classes are students who are typically served by nonprofits, so it's a whole different mindset for them to get in a place to be on the giving end," she explains. "You get to kind of turn it around and say 'You have something to give,' whether that's your time, your talent, or your treasure."

Photo by Heather Campbell-Lieberman.

Magnified Giving allows Campbell-Lieberman's students to apply lessons from English and life skills in one project.

Each student in Campbell-Lieberman's three class sections spends four months working on a research paper about a charity of their choice. Then they pitch their case in a class presentation. In order to succeed, students need to explore things like overhead costs, operating budgets, volunteer arrangements, and more: Where is this money going, and what's it being used for?

Students vote on the best presentation in each class, and representatives from the three winning organizationsare then invited to an assembly to speak directly to the students and explain why, exactly, their charity deserves the funds.

"Whether or not their agency is selected by the classes, the students are informing their peers about the power and impact of that agency. So they take a lot away from that opportunity," Campbell-Lieberman says."It's something personal they can research and ultimately have an impact on."

A student activity involving empathy for people with disabilities. Photo by Heather Campbell-Lieberman.

The most remarkable part? The students almost always end up picking projects that have directly helped their fellow students.

A lot of Campbell-Lieberman's students spend their time at the local teen community center, and technically, they could put that thousand dollars toward a renovated basketball court or a cutting-edge computer lab for everyone to enjoy — you know, something fun and enjoyable and still technically nonprofit.

But that's not what happens, Campbell-Lieberman says. "Almost always, the students have ultimately selected a charity that one of the students has benefitted from."

She lists a cascade of examples: a student who pitched a homeless shelter at the local Ronald McDonald House, without telling the class they had lived there themselves; cancer charities that bonded the class through shared tragedy; mental health care initiatives; and this past year, a nearby support center for victims of domestic violence.

Campbell-Lieberman goes on to explain that, "The at-risk population sometimes has more experience with these things, and so it's a highly personal connection for them, and a huge shift to be able to give back to agencies that have impacted their lives in a significant way."

Photo by Heather Campbell-Lieberman.

The takeaway is clear: Teens really do care about their communities. They just need a chance to make an impact.

That's why, after eight years of success with Magnified Giving, Campbell-Lieberman is stepping out of the classroom and into the role of a teaching coach, helping other educators launch these kinds of interdisciplinary philanthropy curriculums in their own schools and communities.

"I think the real issue in creating new philanthropists is for people to understand that everyone can contribute to the betterment of their community and their society, and you don't have to be wealthy and you don't have to have money in your pocket to make that happen," she says.

"The more we can do that and connect with kids who would not volunteer for the philanthropy club, would not be in national honor society, the more difference we can make."

Interested in Magnified Giving? Learn more (or consider making a donation).

Science

Florida meteorologist applauded for getting emotional in live coverage of Hurricane Milton

People are finding John Morales' genuine empathy refreshing, and very much needed.

Photo credit: NASA (public domain), NBC 6 South Florida/YouTube

“I apologize — this is just horrific,” said John Morales during live coverage of Hurricane Milton.

Venerated meteorologist John Morales couldn’t help but get choked up during his report on the potentially devastating impact of Hurricane Milton closing in on Florida—a mere two weeks after being pummeled by Hurricane Helene.

“It’s just an incredible, incredible, incredible hurricane,” Morales began, the weather forecast map almost completely in red.

Tears welled up in his eyes as Morales tried to notify viewers that “it has dropped 50 millibars in 10 hours.”

To most of us, those wouldn’t mean anything. But the anguish in Morales’s voice says it all.


Trying to gain composure, Morales quickly said, “I apologize — this is just horrific,” and continued with his broadcast offscreen, showing just the water map. His voice was still noticeably shaken.

We live in a 24-hour new cycle, which has made us aware of so many global catastrophes and also desensitized to them. But when moments like this happen, when even our ever-stoic messengers are so moved that it also touches us on an emotional level, we are reminded that what happens to one of us, happens to all of us.

- YouTubewww.youtube.com

That's probably why so many people commented to commend Morales for showing a bit of humanity—which they found particularly refreshing for a news anchor.

"Please don't apologize. Showing some empathy shows you care and aren't fear mongering. <3 We appreciate it."

"No apology is ever needed for being human and showing what we see so little of these days: genuine empathy. Thank you, sir."

"Your kindness and humanity are not a weakness, but the strength that we all need right now. Thank you."

"No apologies needed sir...for someone to show real emotions for other people...is real concern, real caring."

"He showed a vanishingly rare moment of authenticity and actual empathy, in an incredibly cynical and ugly world - a beautiful thing to see in this scary time. As someone whose family lives in the area that is about to be pummeled by this storm, I am very grateful to him for his decency and humanity in the face of this possible horror that my family are facing. He deserves SO much credit for this beautiful display of transparency and empathy - though he obviously didn't do it for the credit but rather, out of empathy."

"I debated whether to share this. I did apologize on the air," Morales would later post on X.

He also urged folks to read his coverage of the relationships between climate change and extreme weather on The Bulletin, calling these recent hurricanes are “harbingers of the future.”

Global warming has changed me. Frankly, YOU should be shaken too," he wrote.

If a professional of 35 years is saying this…yikes.

Pop Culture

Ever seen two cellists rocking out to an AC/DC song? It's amazing how well it works.

2Cello's genre-smashing "Thunderstruck" performance has been watched 260 million times.

2Cellos rocks the house with "Thunderstruck."

If someone said, "Name two genres of music on the opposite ends of the spectrum," heavy metal and classical music would be a logical answer. So when you hear that an AC/DC song being played on classical instruments, it can challenge the brain a bit.

(Some folks may ask, "Is AC/DC really considered heavy metal?" By today's standards, no. Compared to thrash, black and death metal, definitely not. But AC/DC has been lumped into the heavy metal genre by everyone from MTV to Encyclopedia Britannica, despite co-founder Angus Young saying they were just a rock band. At the very least, they were metal-adjacent, so let's roll with it.)

"Thunderstruck" is one of those songs people of all ages know at least part of, thanks to its frequent use in movies and television shows. In fact, it's so ubiquitous that when two cellists transition into it from a classical piece, it's instantly recognizable.


Of course, the way they headbang and literally shred their cello bows while playing it also helps.

The cellists dressing in period garb and playing for what looks like an audience of Mozart's creates a delightful contrast in addition to it being in impressive musical performance. There's a reason the 2Cellos "Thunderstruck" video has been viewed a whopping 260 million times on YouTube.

Watch and enjoy:

People's reactions since the video debuted in 2014 have ranged from humor to incredulity to admiration for the duo's mad cello skills:

"I used to be a fan, but after hearing this masterpiece 1000 times, I'm an air conditioner now."

"When you're into rock but your parents buy you a cello."

"Can’t believe AC/DC made a cover of a song from the 1700s."

"These guys are like the ultimate form of being classically trained but the teachers never let them have any fun."

"As a fellow cellist, the skill you're witnessing is incredible."

"As a bass player, it's incredible how they can play that with so much precision. It is truly incredible, love the music."

Many people in the comments have shared that they keep coming back to watch this again and again, even years later.

Luka and Hauser, the famous Croatian cellists responsible for this genre-smashing masterpiece, just ended their musical career together in May of 2023. As Total Croatia News reported, "Luka is more of a family man now, with three children and a wife, and Hauser continues to be ambitious, full of ideas and eager to keep going, conquering the world and playing his music everywhere. Having different approaches to life, they thought it was best to take separate paths but will still remain great friends."

However, you can still enjoy their past performances together on their YouTube channel here.


This article originally appeared on 10.25.23

Family

'It's not Little Sun': Mom admits she's having trouble pronouncing her newborn's name

It was fine 'til other people tried to say it and now she's confused.

via JustusMoms29/TikTok (used with permission)

Justus Stroup is starting to realize her baby's name isn't that common.

One of the many surprises that come with parenthood is how the world reacts to your child’s name. It’s less of a surprise if your child has a common name like John, Mohammed, or Lisa. But if you give your child a non-traditional name that’s gender-neutral, you’re going to throw a lot of folks off-guard and mispronunciations are going to be an issue.

This exact situation happened with TikTok user Justus Stroup, who recently had her second child, but there’s a twist: she isn’t quite sure how to pronounce her child’s name either.

"I may have named my daughter a name I can't even pronounce," Stroup opens the video. "Now, I think I can pronounce it, but I've told a couple of people her name and there are two people who thought I said the same exact thing. So, I don't know that I know how to [pronounce] her name correctly."



@justusmoms29

Just when you think you name your child something normal! #2under2mom #postpartum #newborn #momsoftiktok #uniquenames #babyname #babygirl #sahm #momhumor

Stroup’s daughter is named Sutton and the big problem is how people around her pronounce the Ts. Stroup tends to gloss over the Ts, so it sounds like Suh-en. However, some people go hard on the Ts and call her “Sut-ton.”

"I'm not gonna enunciate the 'Ts' like that. It drives me absolutely nuts," she noted in her TikTok video. "I told a friend her name one time, and she goes, 'Oh, that's cute.' And then she repeated the name back to me and I was like, 'No, that is not what I said.'"

Stroup also had a problem with her 2-year-old son’s speech therapist, who thought the baby’s name was Sun and that there weren’t any Ts in the name at all. "My speech therapist, when I corrected her and spelled it out, she goes, 'You know, living out in California, I have friends who named their kids River and Ocean, so I didn't think it was that far off.'"

Stroup told People that she got the name from a TV show called “The Lying Game,” which she used to watch in high school. "Truthfully, this was never a name on my list before finding out I was pregnant with a girl, but after finding out the gender, it was a name I mentioned and my husband fell in love with," says Stroup. "I still love the name. I honestly thought I was picking a strong yet still unique name. I still find it to be a pretty name, and I love that it is gender neutral as those are the type of names I love for girls."

The mother could choose the name because her husband named their son Greyson.



The commenters thought Stroup should tell people it’s Sutton, pronounced like a button. “I hear it correctly! Sutton like Button. I would pronounce it like you, too!” Amanda wrote.

“My daughter’s name is Sutton. I say it the same way as you. When people struggle with her name, I say it’s Button but with a S. That normally immediately gets them to pronounce it correctly,” Megan added.

After the video went viral, Stroup heard from people named Hunter and Peyton, who are dealing with a similar situation. “I've also noticed the two most common names who run into the same issue are Hunter (people pronouncing it as Hunner or HUNT-ER) and Payton (pronounced Pey-Ton or Pey-tin, most prefer it as Pey-tin),” she told Upworthy.

“Another person commented saying her name is Susan and people always think it is Season or Steven,” Stroup told Upworthy. After having her second child, she learned that people mix up even the simplest names. “No name is safe at this point,” she joked.

The whole situation has Stroup rethinking how she pronounces her daughter’s name. Hopefully, she got some advance on how to tell people how to pronounce it, or else she’ll have years of correcting people in front of her. "Good lord, I did not think this was going to be my issue with this name," she said.

Teddy Roosevelt, Ronald Reagan, Joe Biden and Barack Obama all having a laugh.

Like it or not, we’ve recently entered the age of artificial intelligence, and although that may be scary for some, one guy in Florida thinks it’s a great way to make people laugh. Cam Harless, the host of The Mad Ones podcast, used AI to create portraits of every U.S. president looking “cool” with a mullet hairstyle, and the results are hilarious.

The mullet is a notorious hairdo known as the "business in the front, party in the back" look. It's believed that the term "mullet" was coined by the rap-punk-funk group Beastie Boys in 1994.


While cool is in the eye of the beholder, Harless seems to believe it means looking like a cross between Dog the Bounty Hunter and Kenny Powers from “Eastbound and Down.”

Harless made the photos using Midjourney, an app that creates images from textual descriptions. "I love making AI art," Harless told Newsweek. "Often I think of a prompt, create the image and choose the one that makes me laugh the most to present on Twitter and have people try and guess my prompt."

"The idea of Biden with a mullet made me laugh, so I tried to make one with him and Trump together and that led to the whole list of presidents,” he continued.

Harless made AI photos of all 46 presidents with mullets and shared them on Twitter, and the response has been tremendous. His first photo of Joe Biden with a mullet has nearly 75,000 likes and counting.

Here’s our list of the 14 best presidents with mullets. Check out Harless' thread here if you want to see all 46.

Joe Biden with an incredible blonde mane and a tailored suit. This guy takes no malarkey.

Donald Trump looking like a guy who has 35 different pairs of stonewashed jeans in his closet at Mar-a-Lago.

Barack Obama looking like he played an informant on "Starsky and Hutch" in 1976.

George H.W. Bush looking like he plays bass in Elvis's backing band at the International Hotel in Vegas in '73.

Gerald Ford looking like the last guy on Earth that you want to owe money.

"C'mon down and get a great deal at Dick Nixon's Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep and Ram, right off the I-95 in Daytona Beach."

"Who you calling Teddy? That's Theodore Roosevelt to you."

Grover Cleveland is giving off some serious steampunk vibes here.

Pray you never key Chester A. Arthur's Trans Am. If you know what's best for you.

Honest Abe? More like Honest Babe. Am I right?

Franklin Pierce looking like your favorite New Romantic singer from 1982. Eat your heart out, Adam Ant.

"Daniel Day Lewis stole my look in 'Last of the Mohicans.'" — John Tyler

Many have tried the tri-level mullet but few pulled it off as beautifully as James Madison.

Washington's mullet was like a white, fluffy cloud of freedom.

Find more cool, mulletted U.S. presidents here.


This article originally appeared on 3.1.23

Humor

Deaf woman shares list of ‘hearing anxieties’ after learning what others can actually hear

“Nobody should be able to hear that much…that’s not your business.”

Deaf woman shares 'hearing anxieties' after learning what others hear

People who were born hearing often can't imagine what it would be like to not hear the world around them. But since the world is set up around the capabilities of hearing people, there isn't much that would cause someone to think further into the experiences of deaf and hard of hearing (HoH) people.

But in many ways our ability to hear can cause deaf and HoH people anxieties that hearing people don't even consider. All the noises bodies make when people are just existing are recognized but easily tuned out by hearing people, though we use those body sounds as signals when needed.

Deaf people are not innately aware that bodies make noises without trying so when they become aware, some may develop a self consciousness around it. Recently a deaf woman shared that she got together with her friends to share their newer "hearing anxieties."


Scarlet May took to TikTok to share a list of what she and her deaf friends call "hearing anxieties." Hearing anxieties are basically things hearing people can hear that are normal that deaf people are or have been unaware others can hear. For instance, there's a story about a deaf student who had no idea other people could hear them pass gas until their teacher pointed it out. There was no mention of the child developing hearing anxiety around farting in school but it would be understandable if they did.

Sign Language Asl GIF by @InvestInAccessGiphy

"I was just with all my friends and we were sharing stories of our hearing anxieties. It's basically things we as deaf people didn't know that hearing people could hear," Scarlet says.

The young woman speaks quickly while also using American Sign Language (ASL), some users pointed out that her long nails clicking together while she signed was soothing, before wondering if she knew people could hear that. Some of the hearing anxieties may be surprising to hearing people but it makes sense when you think about what the realization must have been like.

talking sign language GIFGiphy

"First one we didn't know y'all can hear is our breathing. My friend said his boyfriend could tell he was mad just based off his breathing. Like he was huffing and puffing hard and then he was like, 'are you mad?' and he was like 'no why?' He was like, 'I can hear you breathing hard," the woman explains.

Hearing someone breathe isn't something people who are hearing think much about until they notice a change in someone's breathing pattern that can give clues into how the other person is feeling. Like Scarlet's friend, being angry changes a person's breathing pattern, so does being anxious, afraid and bored. Hearing people take these cues to offer up additional support ore recognize when someone might be upset with them.

Sign Language Please GIF by @InvestInAccessGiphy

"Number two, how can y'all tell when we're hungry? This one happened to me. I was starving and my friend was like, 'oh somebody's hungry,' and I was like 'what,' and she was like, 'I can hear your stomach.' Huh? Why can you hear so much that you can tell I'm hungry? That's weird. Nobody needs to hear that much," Scarlet says while seemingly irritated at the thought of people hearing hunger.

This is likely less helpful to hearing people than hearing breathing changes but it can come in handy in a pinch. If you're in a meeting with a rumbly tummy a friend sitting near you may silently offer you a snack to hold you over. It can also be helpful if someone is nonverbal and unable to communicate their hunger needs appropriately. But outside of that, many hearing people find it embarrassing for their belly to be angrily rumbling since there's no controlling it when you're trapped adulting with no food within reach.

@scarlet_may.1 hearing anxiety is so real 😭 #fyp ♬ original sound - Scarlet May

The last thing Scarlet lists is the fact that hearing people can hear people eating, saying, "this one, I do not like. Every time I'm eating around hearing people I'm always making sure I'm not too loud, even if I'm quiet I don't even know how much y'all can hear." She further explains that it causes her to become self conscious about it and attempt to change how she's eating. Commenters sympathized with Scarlet and her hearing anxieties, some even pointing out that they also feel like hearing people can hear too much.

One person writes, "The socially acceptable behavioral standard is to pretend like you don't hear any of those things. It's the polite thing to do."

Another shares, "I'm with you on all of this. I'm tired of hearing this much."

All That Nicksplat GIF by NickRewindGiphy

Someone commiserates with the anxiety, "I'm anxious about these things too and I'm not even deaf, especially the stomach one."

"As a hearing person I also think we don't need to hear that much. I can hear my blood flowing through my body, that's too much," one commenter cries.

"If it makes you feel any better we also are embarrassed when people know we are hungry or are breathing hard," another offers support.

You don't have to be deaf to be embarrassed or anxious about the sounds your body makes. Everyone has body noises they can't control and it's probably safe to say that most of us wish we couldn't hear those things.