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A Southern school ditched its name to be called Barack Obama Elementary. Here's why.

It began with just one student in Jackson, Mississippi.

After having learned about a prominent Confederate leader and discussing his lasting legacy on the world, the student raised a good (if not painfully obvious) question to her mom at home: Why in the world would her school be named after a guy like that?

Yes, Jefferson Davis International Baccalaureate Elementary School is named after that Jefferson Davis — a president of the Confederacy in the mid-19th century.

Jefferson Davis. Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images.

After the girl's mother brought the issue to the school's PTA, the conversation surrounding a name change began making waves among community members. More and more people — including the students at Davis Elementary — agreed: The school's name needed to go.

PTA president Janelle Jefferson told NBC News the young students were well aware of who the school — which has a student body that's 96% black — was honoring through its name and what it meant for kids like them: "They know who [Davis] was and what he stood for."

“Jefferson Davis, although infamous in his own right, would probably not be too happy about a diverse school promoting the education of the very individuals he fought to keep enslaved being named after him,” Jefferson expressed to the school board earlier this fall.

In September, the district's school board voted in favor of giving the PTA the authority to change the school's name.

So, as Jefferson explained to Mississippi Today, the PTA gave students, teachers, and community members two weeks to submit ideas on who the school should be named after before a public in-person vote on Oct. 5.

Before ballots were cast, kids from each classroom gave a presentation on who they believed should have the honor.

Barack Obama — notably, the students' favorite — won.

Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images.

Starting next school year, Jefferson Davis International Baccalaureate Elementary will be Barack Obama International Baccalaureate Elementary.

“We really wanted to know what they thought,” Jefferson said of making sure to include the students' input. “They could relate to Barack Obama because of his achievements, because he looks like them.”

The school's name change comes amid a heated national debate over the place of Confederate monuments in public spaces.

In August, white supremacists marched in Charlottesville, Virginia, in protest of the college town's decision to remove a statue of Confederate leader Robert E. Lee. The march unraveled into chaos, as one white supremacist reportedly ran over peaceful counter-protester Heather Heyer with his vehicle, killing her.

Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images.

In the aftermath of the terrorist attack, a number of communities — including Baltimore and Tampa Bay, Florida — made moves to rid prominent Confederate monuments from public places. Although there's ample resistance from many people — including the president — that falsely argue removing these statues "erases history," advocates for change are finding where there's a will, there's a way.

It's a lesson students at Jefferson Davis (soon to be Barack Obama) International Baccalaureate Elementary School have learned well.

“The history you have to come to terms with is not the easiest thing to think about or talk about, especially with kids," Jefferson said. "But the positive came for me that our kids can see that there’s a process to it. They saw something wrong, and now they know they can change it.”

Joy

Adorable Golden Retriever absolutely loses it when he runs into his vet at a bar

No one has ever been this excited to see their doctor.

@cosmo_andtheoddparents/TikTok

He wuvs his vet.

Not every dog might jump with joy after seeing their vet out in public. But for Cosmo the Golden Retriever, it was practically Christmas all over again when he spotted his own vet, Dr. Jones, at a brewery.

In an adorable clip posted to TikTok, we see Cosmo in pure, unadulterated bliss as he snuggles with an equally happy Dr. Jones, who, considering he’s still in his scrubs, might have just gotten out of work to grab a quick pint.

Watch:

@cosmo_andtheoddparents When you run into your vet in public #goldenretrieversoftiktok #vetlife #animallovers #petparents #goldenretriever #goldenretrievers #doglife #dogmom #dailyfluff #charlestondogs #doglover #charlestondog #brewerydog ♬ original sound - Cosmo

Ugh, the cuteness is too much to handle! People in the comments could barely contain their secondhand joy.

“He looked over like, “Mom, do you see who this is?” one person wrote, while another said, “What in the Hallmark movie? Adorable!!”

One person even joked, “Did we all check the vet’s hand for a wedding ring? (Said as a married woman. Looking out for you all, or something.)”

According to Hannah Dweikat, Cosmo’s owner, the two actually share quite a history. She tells Upworthy that when Cosmo was but a wee pup, he “gave a scare” after eating a Sago Palm seed, which are highly toxic to dogs, from a plant in their backyard, which of course resulted in him being rushed to the animal hospital and staying there over the weekend.

While that’s every pet owner’s worst nightmare, and certainly a scary situation for the poor fur baby, Dweikat says that “the calm and patient demeanor” of Dr. Jones and his staff put Cosmo at ease. And because of this, “Cosmo has always loved going to see his friends—especially because they give him lots of treats and snuggles.”

Cosmo and Dr. Jones’ buddyship has also blossomed thanks to proximity, as Dweikat only lives down the street from the clinic. “Which means we get to see Dr. Jones and his staff out in public at times and Cosmo takes every chance he can get to say hi,” she explains. This time, however, she was able to capture it all on video. Yay for us!

What makes a good vet?

While not every vet, however gifted, will be able to elicit this type of reaction from their patients, having a calming presence like Dr. Jones is certainly a good sign for pet owners to be on the lookout for when shopping around for their own vet. But that’s not the only quality a good vet needs. According to Saint Matthews University, a vet also needs to have high stamina (both physically and mentally), as well as an ability to tolerate unpleasant situations (you can’t faint at the sight of blood or vomit), a high level of emotional intelligence (maybe all doctors should possess this skill, but especially those who work with animals), adaptability, a sense of enthusiasm, and finally, excellent communication skills.

Dr. Jones seems to have these attributes in spades, and his patients clearly love him for it. None so much as Cosmo, obviously.

By the way, if you’re in need of even more content featuring this precious pup, you can follow Cosmo on both TikTok and Instagram.

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Parenting

His mother gave him a 'husbands in training' course as a child. Every parent should do it.

Learning how to be a good spouse shouldn't just be something we pick up by accident.

via Doug Weaver/TikTok

Doug Weaver explains "Husbands in Training."

Even though the marriage rate in the United States is on a steep decline, chances are that the majority of kids growing up today will get married at some point in their lives. If current trends continue, about half of those will end in divorce.

Research published in the Couple and Family Psychology journal found that the top five reasons for divorce are a lack of commitment, infidelity, too much conflict, getting married young, and financial problems.

Wouldn’t it be great if we were taught from a young age how to be a good spouse so we could avoid these pitfalls? But in American culture, most of us aren’t taught the specifics of how to have a happy and healthy marriage. Most of us tend to pick things up from watching the married people in our orbit, most likely our parents.

No comment on how that's going.

Artist Doug Weaver had a much different upbringing. His mother, Mickey, made a curriculum for him and his two older brothers when they were kids to help them be great husbands when they got married.

"When I was a kid, my mom did this thing for me and my two older brothers called 'Husbands in Training,'" he explained in a TikTok video that has more than 5.9 million views. "It was a full, multiple-level curriculum on how to be a better husband."

Weaver says the training covered topics from chivalry to eating to a rather uncomfortable discussion on "the ethics of the porn industry." His mother also stressed the importance of listening to women and identifying when another man may be giving them trouble.

"There was a lot of really good stuff in that curriculum," Doug said. "There were things like what to do if your spouse says something and the information they give is wrong. How to handle it if they say something wrong in public versus in private, when it is appropriate to correct them and when it isn't."

Weaver’s mother was also way ahead of her time because she made a big deal about teaching her sons the importance of consent. "We talked about consent, we talked about the basics of respecting and honoring women and listening to women, and all of the things that really just make you a decent human being," Doug explained.

@dougweaverart

Husbands in training! #parenting #storytime #story

The lessons were so powerful that even Weaver’s father decided to take the course. "A lot of the things that we were learning from my mom were things that he was never taught growing up,” Weaver said. "So, he decided he also wanted to take 'Husbands in Training.'"

The course officially ended when Weaver and his brothers got married. "My mom even made certificates of completion that she signed and gave to each of us on our wedding day," he shared in his TikTok clip.

However, the video Weaver shared was so popular on TikTok that he’s making his mother’s course available to the general public. “After posting about ‘Husbands in Training’ on TikTok, the TT community really wants my mom to produce content about raising boys to be good men,” he wrote on a GoFundMe fundraising campaign in 2022.

The overwhelming response to Weaver’s TikTok has inspired a new YouTube channel to spread Mickey’s lessons far and wide. But it has also made a lot of people realize that teaching people how to be great spouses is a lifelong journey and should be a major part of child-rearing. Learning how to be a good spouse shouldn't just be something we pick up by accident.


This article originally appeared three years ago.


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Popular

Surprising 16-year-long ADHD study reveals opposite of what researchers expected

The findings shed new light on how we might one day understand and manage ADHD.

Unsplash

There's still so much to learn.

Our understanding of ADHD has come a long way in just a few short years. Though it wasn't even formally recognized as a medical condition until the 1960s, by the time the 90s rolled around, diagnoses and stimulant prescriptions were extremely prevalent. Today, diagnoses and treatment are a lot more thoughtful and individualized, and there are more options for treatment and therapy. Even with all these advancements, though, we still have more to learn.

A new long-term study published in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry has proven to be an excellent next step in getting a better understanding of the disorder.

Researchers studied 483 participants who were diagnosed with ADHD in childhood and continued to assess them for a period of 16 years. The study's authors wanted to get a sense of how ADHD symptoms might change over time.

What the researchers found surprised them. In most participants, symptoms of ADHD fluctuated greatly over the years. What surprised them even more were the environmental factors that seemed to play a role in those fluctuations.


a close up of a human brain on a white backgroundUnderstanding our brains is an ongoing process. Photo by BUDDHI Kumar SHRESTHA on Unsplash

Researchers expected that greater life demands—like more responsibility at work, a heavier workload at school, major life changes, etc.—would exacerbate ADHD symptoms. What they found was the opposite.

It makes sense that a person that struggles with inattention or hyperactivity might have more trouble focusing when they have more "going on" and more distractions to pull them in different directions. It was a huge surprise to the researchers that, actually, people's ADHD symptoms seemed to ease up when life got hectic.

“We expected the relationship between environmental demands and ADHD symptoms to be the opposite of what we found,” study author, professor, and clinical psychologist Margaret H. Sibley explained. “We hypothesized that when life demands and responsibilities increased, this might exacerbate people’s ADHD, making it more severe. In fact, it was the opposite. The higher the demands and responsibilities one was experiencing, the milder their ADHD.”

I have a 4-year-old with ADHD and the findings totally track for me.

We find it's actually easier to be in perpetual motion sometimes—out running errands, doing activities, visiting friends and family—versus staying put too long. When we're just relaxing at home, that's when she tends to start bouncing off the walls!

Doing nothing or doing very little is not often a restful state for people with ADHD. Typically, people with ADHD experience more background noise than neurotypical brains—so a quiet, seemingly restful environment can sometimes amplify racing thoughts, negative self-talk, and impulsive behavior versus dampening it. Of course, as always in science, you have to be careful assuming causation from the findings.

a boy doing schoolwork at wooden deskQuiet can make it hard to focus. Annie Spratt/Unsplash

It's important to note that the results of the study don't definitively prove that being busy causes a decrease in ADHD symptoms. “This might mean that people with ADHD perform their best in more demanding environments (perhaps environments that have stronger immediate consequences, like needing to put food on the table for a family or pay rent monthly). It also might mean that people with ADHD take more on their plate when their symptoms are relatively at bay," Sibley says. Either way, the correlation is certainly strong and worthy of more study.

In the meantime, the study's authors think the results could be viewed in a hopeful light for people just learning to manage their ADHD. “If you’re a doctor talking with a patient who is first getting diagnosed with ADHD, it’s a huge help for that person to hear the message that, ‘You’re going to have good years and not-so-good years, but things can go really well for you if you can get the right factors in place,'” Sibley said.

We're learning more and more about what those factors are—what might exacerbate symptoms and what types of things can help—and we're starting to get a clearer picture of how people can manage this challenging disorder.


This article originally appeared last year.

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Pop Culture

Woman who lives on a cruise ship for free shares the 4 things she can’t do

Living on a ship isn’t perfect. It’s just close to perfect.

via Pixabay/Pexels

Upworthy has covered a few stories about people who decided to live permanently on cruise ships because it's cheaper than living on land or in a nursing home. These stories have connected with millions because they say a lot about the modern cost of living but are also aspirational.

Christine Kesteloo has become popular on TikTok with over 680,000 followers because she shares what living on a cruise ship is really like. Kesteloo is the wife of the ship’s Staff Chief Engineer, so she gets to live on the boat for free. She only has to pay for alcohol and soda, which she gets for half off according to Business Insider.

“I live on a cruise ship for half the year with my husband, and it's often as glamorous as it sounds,” she told Insider. “After all, I don't cook, clean, make my bed, do laundry or pay for food.“

Kesteloo’s life seems pretty stress-free. After all, she's basically on a permanent vacation. However, even though she lives on a cruise ship as a “wife on board,” there are a few things she either can’t or shouldn’t do.

She shared these four things in a TikTok video with nearly 10 million views.

@dutchworld_americangirl

I go through four things I can, and cannot do it while living on the cruise ship with my husband #weliveonacruiseship #4things #alaskacruise #cruiseship #cruiseshiplife #cruise #alaska #caribbeancruise #cruiselife #livingstsea #getreadywithme

1. No gambling

Kesteloo says she cannot sit at a slot machine and “play my heart out until I win.” She believes it would “look a little weird if I, as the wife of the staff chief engineer, won a big jackpot.”

2. Can’t leave the ship with the guests

When the ship arrives at a destination, she can't get off with the guests. She must wait about an hour and exit the vessel with the crew. When returning to the ship, she also has to be on time. “No, they will not wait for us,” she says. And the same goes for her husband, if they “miss the ship, someone else will take over the role.”

3. Sit in a crowded pool

Although Kesteloo has access to the pool, gym, and all the ship’s amenities, she’s cautious not to interfere with the guests' good time. She’ll exit the pool if it’s busy because “it’s just the right thing to do.”

4. Must have international traveler insurance

She must have insurance in case of a misfortune on the ship. But as a citizen of the Netherlands, they already have coverage and just have to pay a few extra dollars a month.

Some of the most popular commenters on the video were from women regretting that they married men who aren’t chief engineers on cruise ships or those who want to know where to find a single one.

"OK, can you explain how to marry a cruise ship engineer?" one female commentator wrote.

"How. in. the. H E double hockey sticks do I become the wife of a cruise ship engineer???? I don’t have to work AND cruise for free!" another added.

"Does he have any single friends with same job??? Asking for me," one more asked.

It's a charmed life!


This article originally appeared last year.

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Health

Longevity test: If you can hang from a bar this long, you’re likely to live longer

Hang time is a great measurement of overall health.

via Ketut Subiyanto/Pexels and Dinielle De Veyra/Pexels

How long can you hang out?

Would you really want to know how long you have to live? On one hand, it’d probably inspire you to go out and complete your bucket list. On the other, it may be depressing to know just how many days you have left. Well, science has yet to discover a way to determine the average person's life expectancy, but some indicators can show whether someone is in danger of having their life cut short by deteriorating health.

A study published by Clinical Interventions in Aging in 2019 determined that handgrip strength can be a reliable proxy for how long one has to live. One of the best ways to judge handgrip strength is to time how long you can hang from a bar. To test your grip strength, find yourself a pull-up bar, whether at a gym or local park, take a deep breath, and start hanging.

The study found that 30 seconds is a good target for women and 60 is an excellent goal for men. Therefore, if you go longer than the goal, you’re looking at a long life. But if you can’t quite get there, your life may be shorter than you’d like.



Dr. Peter Attia, founder of Early Medical and author of Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity (2023), believes that grip strength is a great way to determine one’s overall health.

“It's just a great proxy for overall body strength and muscle mass, but I think it's also a very functional form of strength,” he said on The Drive podcast. “Basically, everything in your upper body is mediated through your hands. And if your grip is weak, everything downstream of that is weak. When you watch someone who's got a weak grip deadlifting it's very difficult for them to deadlift correctly because they don't create a proper wedge.

Doctors Eve M. Glazier and Elizabeth Ko at UCLA Health say poor grip strength is connected to numerous diseases. “Research continues to link a decline in grip strength to a range of adverse health issues, including heart disease, arthritis, osteoporosis, Type 2 diabetes and certain cancers. It has also been found to be a predictor of the likelihood of post-surgical complications, post-surgical recovery time and mortality,” they wrote on the UCLA Health blog.

Weight can also significantly affect how long a person can hang from a bar. So, do lighter people have an unfair advantage over those on the heavier side? Well, weight is also an important indicator of longevity. A study published in Aging Cellfound a direct correlation between increased body mass and decreased longevity.



The good news for people who didn’t quite make their hang time goal is that you can improve it by practicing dead hangs.

How to perform a dead hang (according to Healthline):

  • Use a secure overhead bar. Use a step or bench to reach the bar with your arms easily. You don’t want to jump straight into a dead hang.
  • Grip the bar with an overhand grip (palms facing away from you). Aim to keep your arms shoulder-width apart.
  • Move your feet off the step or bench so you’re hanging on to the bar.
  • Keep your arms straight and stay relaxed.
  • If you’re new to the exercise, hang for 10 seconds. Then, work your way up to 45 seconds to 1 minute at a time.
  • Slowly step back onto the step or bench before releasing your arms. Repeat up to 3 times if you wish.

This article originally appeared last year.
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