The Spanish coastline during the summer can have unbearable heat, especially due to rising temperatures caused by climate change. As a result, towns such as Alhaurín de la Torre are bombarded with dangerous levels of heat for residents and tourists. However, there is relief in the town’s shopping district thanks to a growing group of knitting grannies.
In 2019, Eva Pacheco partnered with the Senior Citizens’ Social Center to knit a multi-quilt awning to shade the popular Malaga Street from the sun. The heat had been a growing issue for Spain’s tourist industry, especially along the coast. It was important to protect citizens and visitors alike from sunburn, heat stroke, or worse.
A different kind of community project
Every Wednesday, 40 elderly women from the community would gather, socialize, knit, and crochet for three hours. They would then stitch all of their creations together to create a colossal quilt. In the end, they created a 500-square-foot awning so residents and tourists could shop on Malaga Street while being protected from the sun. To say it was a success would be an understatement.
The shade provided by the giant blanket lowered the temperature by as much as ten degrees. It also shielded folks underneath from harmful UV rays. Since the knitted awning was primarily made from water-resistant synthetic yarn, it wouldn’t absorb water during rainy days.
Lastly, it was reusable. The awning could be taken down after the summer months. This way, it could be washed, repaired, and reinstalled every year.
It not only improved the lives of the shoppers outside, but also those of the knitters and crocheters. The majority of the team that created the massive quilt were older widows who didn’t have many social outlets for making friends. Along with that, according to AARP, knitting can also help stave off Alzheimer’s, among other health benefits.
Since its initial creation, the colorful, shade-producing blanket has dramatically increased in size. It is currently over 13,000 square feet and features many more colorful designs. In 2024, the group started creating knitted blankets and quilts featuring the faces of celebrities like Tom Cruise, Antonio Banderas, and many others. While intended to protect tourists while shopping, the awning has become a tourist attraction itself.
Other places take notice
Their success has since inspired many other communities to create their own quilted canopies to provide shade. The residents of the nearby city of Coín have also created quilt barriers to protect against the sun’s heat. La Línea de la Concepción has a similar series of canopies, but they are made of mandalas rather than blankets. It has also inspired New Iberia, a sister city of Alhaurín de la Torre, to make its own “crochet ceilings.”
Over time, there will hopefully be other methods to cool down our streets. There is something to be said for the fact that it took creativity, community, and a little bit of fun to come up with a quality solution.
Beyond this evidence of political polarization, though, there’s another, less divisive reality. Ask people to name their best teacher, and regardless of their political affiliation, they will likely offer a similar answer. Most people will say that they learned a lot from a teacher who knew them, cared about them and made learning relevant to their lives.
Over five years, from 2020 through 2025, we askedmore than 2,000 Americans, including Democrats, Republicans and independents, what makes a very good teacher. We expected deep partisan divides. Instead, we found something rare: genuine, cross-partisan agreement.
How we ran the study
We began in 2020 with a nationally representative survey of 334 adults, asking them to recall a teacher they learned a lot from. We then asked the survey participants to look at 10 statements that might describe a good teacher and rank them from most to least important.
Five of the statements we offered focused on relationships – like caring about students, making educational lessons relevant and giving students individualized support. The other five focused on whether teachers covered a lot of material, rewarded top performers with grades or prizes, and whether they applied rules consistently to all students.
Respondents generally focused on highlighting the same seven out of 10 statements, giving us a vision of how they perceived a very good teacher. People prioritized the same factors – how much the teachers cared about their students and whether they supported them – regardless of their age, race, gender or political affiliation. Republicans and Democrats were indistinguishable in their descriptions of effective teaching.
People did not prioritize whether teachers covered a lot of material, made students compete or ran a strict and disciplined classroom.
In 2022, we conducted a similar survey of 179 teachers in Arizona and California. The results echoed our 2020 survey participants’ view: Teachers also defined very good teachers as ones who emphasized relationships, made lessons relevant and knew the subject matter.
Given the prominence of politically charged education debates, we were a bit surprised by our results. We began to wonder: Do people privately agree on what it means to be a good teacher, but change their opinion if their image of good teaching is associated with an ideological orientation they disagree with?
To explore this question in late 2024 and early 2025, we ran a third experiment with a nationally representative sample of 1,562 adults from a range of political backgrounds.
We gave all participants the same description of a very good teacher, identified in our previous experiments. We then randomly noted if these descriptions of a good teacher were endorsed by Democrats, Republicans or people with no political affiliation.
When the participants read the teacher descriptions without any political labels attached, about 85% of Democrats, Republicans and independents agreed with the description of a very good teacher.
When we added a note saying that a political party the survey participant did not identify endorsed a particular description of a good teacher, they became less likely to support the statement.
The effect was sharpest among Republicans: Support fell from 85% to 64% when the description was tied to Democrats. Democrats’ agreement slipped less, from 86% to 76%, when the description was tied to Republicans.
Even with these caveats, nearly two-thirds of Republicans and Democrats still agreed on what it means to be a good teacher.
Political scientists call this affective polarization: How we react to an idea depends not just on the idea, but on who we think supports it.
Yet at the individual level, many Americans continue to express confidence in their own local schools. Our findings suggest that part of this gap may be driven by how issues are framed rather than by fundamentally incompatible beliefs.
Federal and state education policy over the past four decades, including laws like No Child Left Behind, which mandated routine federal testing in reading and math, emphasize testing and competition. These priorities don’t always match what Americans across the political spectrum say they value most.
But these disagreements coexist with a shared beliefs about what good teaching looks like in practice.
Recognizing this gap could open new possibilities for education reform. When debates focus exclusively on disagreements, they can obscure areas of agreement that might otherwise serve as starting points for collaboration.
We encourage readers to go ahead and run a similar, small experiment: Ask people about their best teacher, then listen to what they say. The answer, it turns out, is likely more unifying than you expect.
Sometimes the biggest moments in our lives might slip by unnoticed. That’s exactly what was happening to Airman Joel Usher. At his United States Air Force graduation ceremony, he stood alone, already knowing that no family members were coming to celebrate the occasion.
Many people know what it feels like to hit a major milestone and wish someone were there. Usher was visibly emotional as fellow graduates reunited with cheering family members. Suddenly, a friend he made during training stepped forward. Phone in hand, recording the moment, he walked up to “tap him out.”
1 year ago today. it’s been a journey man still can’t believe i’ve made it this far but is only the beginning more blessing to come💫#fypシ#militarytapout#explorepage
Caught completely off guard, a teary-eyed Usher smiles, turning what could have been a lonely memory into one defined by friendship. He posted the video on TikTok with a title overlay reading, “i had no one at my graduation to tap me out but that one good friend i met during training found me and come through for me…”
At military graduations, there’s a tradition known as “tapping out.” Family members or close supporters step forward at the end of the ceremony to officially greet and escort the graduates away. According to the AF WingMoms, it can be an emotional experience, but the Air Force views its military purpose as a productive way to maintain orderly disbursement.
In an exclusive interview with People, Usher described how important that kind act was, leaving him holding back tears:
“When my friend tapped me out, I was overwhelmed in the best way possible. It wasn’t just about finishing, it was about having someone there who truly had my back in that moment.”
Usher went on to explain that the achievement was important, but the friendship and support shown to him are what he remembers most. After sharing the moment online, he was surprised by all the feedback. He believes the overwhelming response was a strong reminder of the beauty behind meaningful acts of kindness.
Best friends take a group selfie. Photo credit: Canva
TikTok post resonates
After 4.6 million views, people flooded the comments with emotional reactions. For some, the small gesture perfectly captured the kind of bond people form while going through difficult experiences together. This wasn’t a performative moment—just someone refusing to let another person experience an important occasion alone.
For others, it was heartbreaking. Often, soldiers don’t have family members who are able to make the trip, or they find themselves on a solitary journey. Either way, the idea that people can accomplish something amazing and still be left to stand alone afterward can be difficult to swallow.
Here are some of the comments:
“i’m glad you made a good friend along the way who came looking for ya. those are the meaningful connections you make while in the military”
“now this just broke my heart”
“Those teary eyes”
“This just breaks my heart! Everyone should have someone tap them out. So much respect for the military”
“The pain in bros eyes. Went to my soul. Brother we are here for u! Ty for serving”
“sometimes thats all we need! Just one good friend”
“I’m so sorry no one from your bloodline was there for you in that moment but you have all of TikTok cheering you on and we are so proud of your accomplishments”
“Ex military that tap means more than you think.”
“i really wish they had a volunteer program for something like this… let other mamas and dads come and be there for these young men and women.. we never know how bad they just need SOMEONE to be there for them”
“Been there my man. But you’re going to be an amazing soldier. Use that to be the best you can be”
The mix of responses shows why meaningful moments shouldn’t be faced alone. Friendship and community are defined by simple choices: stepping in, showing up, and refusing to let a proud day also become someone’s loneliest. These small acts turn milestone accomplishments into memories carried forward with a tearful, joyful smile.
Photo credit: Kim Hong-Ji/Getty Images – South Korean soldiers oversee the arrival of a batch of Johnson & Johnson’s Janssen COVID-19 vaccines donated by the U.S. government on June 5, 2021.
Foreign aid may not improve how recipients view donor countries – but it can set off a chain of goodwill that spreads far beyond the original act of giving.
The South Korean government reserved donated Johnson & Johnson vaccines for military reservists and, for medical reasons, excluded anyone under 30. As a result, we could compare the views of South Koreans just above and below that threshold.
We found that the donated vaccines did not improve people’s views of the United States. South Koreans who received American vaccines reported similar views of the U.S. as those who had not been vaccinated.
Yet the results were striking in another way. Those who received donated American vaccines became more supportive of their own government sending aid abroad. Recipients shifted from neutrality on the matter to expressing moderate support for foreign aid, scoring about one point higher on a seven-point scale than those who didn’t make the eligibility cutoff.
There is also evidence that these effects extend beyond direct recipients. South Koreans who were simply told that the U.S. was providing vaccine aid to developing countries also became more supportive of their own government doing the same – though this effect was concentrated among political moderates.
Together, these patterns point to what social scientists call “generalized reciprocity” – the impulse not to repay kindness directly but to pass it on. In this way, one act of aid can prompt another, and spread across borders.
Why it matters
From Washington and London to Berlin and Tokyo, foreign aid budgets have been cut. In November 2020, former U.S. Agency for International Development Administrator Samantha Power invoked a common assumption when she argued that providing vaccines abroad would restore American leadership – that the value of aid lies in the goodwill it generates toward the donor.
Our findings suggest this is one way aid can matter, but not necessarily the most important.
Instead, aid may foster a form of international cooperation that does not depend on treaties or direct reciprocity between nations but emerges from ordinary people’s willingness to pass on goodwill.
If aid can trigger chains of giving across borders, then how we assess its value may need to change. Current frameworks tend to emphasize donor nations’ direct returns or strategic benefits, but the cooperative effects we identify are largely invisible to those metrics.
This suggests that current cuts may be shutting down effects that policymakers have not yet learned to measure – a form of international cooperation that, once set in motion, can generate cascading effects well beyond what any single donor nation could achieve alone.
What we don’t know
Important questions remain: Do similar patterns emerge with other forms of aid – such as disaster relief, food assistance or long-term development programs? And how long do these effects last?
There are also hints that the threshold for triggering this response may be lower than previously thought. The effect persisted even when using eligibility for donated vaccines, rather than actual receipt, as the measure – suggesting proximity to aid, not just receipt, may be enough to activate the impulse to give.
If evidence that past recipients of aid have themselves become donors strengthens public support for giving in donor countries, then aid may be more self-sustaining than critics assume – reinforced not just by its immediate effects, but by the example it sets.
