The World and Everything in It - December 23, 2021

MARY REICHARD, HOST:  Ah, good morning! And thank you, Ally!

Young people need help dealing with their emotions,  but school counselors are in short supply.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Also housing prices go up and up. How long can this last?

Plus a review of the new movie American Underdog.

And more Christmastime in the kitchen with our staff.

REICHARD: It’s Thursday, December 23rd. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

BROWN: And I’m Myrna Brown. Good morning!

REICHARD: Up next, Kent Covington has the news.

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: 

I’m Kent Covington. Straight ahead: school counselors in short supply.

Plus, an underdog story you won’t want to miss.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: It’s Thursday the 23rd of December, 2021. You’re listening to WORLD Radio and we’re so glad you’ve joined us today! Good morning, I’m Myrna Brown.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. First up on The World and Everything in It: school counselors. Or, the lack of them.

Earlier this month, the U.S. Surgeon General issued a dire warning: The pandemic has exacerbated mental health problems among young people.

Here’s just one marker: The number of adolescent girls taken to emergency rooms for suspected suicide attempts doubled between early 2019 and 2021.

BROWN: Mental health concerns often affect a child’s education. That’s not new. But with trauma and disruption on the rise, schools are facing a shortage of counselors trained to help. WORLD correspondent Lauren Dunn reports.

LAUREN DUNN, REPORTER: Loretta Whitson is a founding member and the executive director of the California Association of School Counselors. She’s worked as a teacher, school counselor, and district administrator. And over the years she’s had to intervene in some challenging situations.

Whitson remembers one instance in particular, when school administrators asked for her help identifying a student who had posted suicidal messages on social media.

WHITSON: She had a hat, we couldn't tell who she was. And she was saying on Instagram, that she was really suicidal. And it took a day  for the counseling team to go through pictures, and try to figure out who this kid was. And so then I was, you know, I went down there to help and, and I, we figured out I called the parent, I was the one in charge of calling the mom. And I said, Mom, I said, it was a difficult call. I said, because I'm a mom, too.

For years, teachers and school counselors have worked with students facing mental health challenges. But amid the instability of the pandemic, educators are seeing more and more students in need of help.

And school counselors are in short supply.

Whitson says that was a problem even before COVID-19. But the gap has only grown wider in the last 18 months.

WHITSON: Just like teachers – we've seen teachers leaving the workforce, retiring early, saying this is too hard. We're seeing that with school counselors…

The American School Counselor Association recommends a ratio of 250 students for every one school counselor. During the 2019-2020 school year, the national student-counselor ratio averaged 424 to 1. Many states reported ratios of more than 600 to 1.

That’s a problem because high caseloads can prevent counselors from proactively identifying at-risk students.

Studies by healthcare company Kaiser Permanente and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have defined 10 general categories of trauma that affect students. These categories are usually called “adverse childhood experiences.” They include things like direct abuse; substance abuse or mental illness in the household; parental separation or divorce; an incarcerated family member; domestic violence; and emotional or physical neglect.

WHITSON: My phrase was, and it still is, many of these children live in homes that would defeat me.

On top of the universal COVID-related challenges, many of those adverse childhood experiences increased during the pandemic, including domestic violence and child abuse.

WHITSON: I think we'll know a lot more and as we get down the road, a couple years from now  we'll be able to reflect back and say, what did we experience here? What was the real pieces of those things? But we know it's a lot. We don't know what is there, but I think we should approach it as if we're in a crisis.

Shannon Underwood is a middle-school counselor and president-elect of the Michigan School Counselor Association. She says even when teachers are using the best curriculum or materials, a student in crisis will not be able to learn.

UNDERWOOD: I think the number one way trauma affects children is that when you are all consumed with the events that have happened to you, and around you, and you don't feel safe, your brain is like on fire and there is no room when your brain’s concentrating that much on all these events in your life. There is no room in there for your brain to calm down so that you can learn…

Whitson says it isn’t always easy for schools to identify who needs extra help. Some students who have experienced trauma may act out. Others may try to please the adults around them out of fear.

WHITSON: I think the easiest thing is, the acting out kid is easy to find. So they're causing disruption in the classroom, they're saying things or doing things. And those when I was a school counselor, those are the ones you know, that's the ones that are ushered into my office, right. But it's the acting in students, the ones that are maybe disheveled, sleep in class, disengaged, sit alone at the lunch counter, you know, tables, those are difficult to know.

Lezya Weglarz is on the board of directors for the California Association of School Counselors. She also oversees school counselors in the San Marcos Unified School District in San Diego County. Weglarz says school counselors keep a “pulse” on student needs by observing student behavior, monitoring attendance records, and keeping in contact with the school nurse.

WEGLARZ: I think our lens as counselors is kind of that big picture, not just the student in the classroom, who you want them to do well in math, we're thinking kind of we're pulling back the layers and thinking of that student more holistically about what might be going on outside of school that might be impacting how they present at school.

Weglarz says students who have experienced trauma may feel its effects for the rest of their lives. But counselors can help them work toward healing by building positive relationships and inspiring hope.

WEGLARZ: So that's why it's so critical that as counselors and other student service professionals, mental health, school based mental health professionals that we're proactively supporting students to try to minimize the negative effects of their early childhood experiences.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Lauren Dunn.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Up next on The World and Everything in It: America’s housing boom.

How long can it last? The United States saw a historic surge in home prices this year with houses in short supply and remarkably low interest rates.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Fortune Magazine reports that between August of 2020 and August of 2021 U.S. home prices notched a gain of about 20 percent. That was the largest uptick on record.

That has many people still wondering if this is a big housing boom or another bubble that just might burst in 2022.

REICHARD: Here to talk about it is mortgage industry expert Dale Vermillion. He is the author of Navigating the Mortgage Maze: The Simple Truth About Financing Your Home.

Dale, good morning!

VERMILLION: Good morning. 

REICHARD: Well, as we mentioned, we’ve seen record growth in home prices. Is that surge beginning to level off at all? Where does the market stand right now ?

VERMILLION: You know, we believe it is. It’s interesting because if you look at the experts they all have different opinions. Zillow predicted a 13.6% increase in values, Goldman Sachs at 16%. Yet CoreLogic, who does this every single day says 2.2%. Fact of the matter is what we're seeing right now is interest rates rise, and when rates rise, you start to see a tapering off a little bit of property value increases. Not to mention the fact that we're getting to the end of the year when it starts to slow down a little bit before we get into the spring market. So we are starting to see a little bit of tapering on that. And we anticipate seeing a little bit more in 2022, probably, because affordability issues are tough in some of the markets around the country.

And it’s not just buying a home that’s more expensive. Prices have gone up for renters as well, right?

VERMILLION: For everything. It’s exponentially grown over the last year. We've never seen it. I've been 40 years in the mortgage market, never seen anything like this before that would rival it. And it's really because of supply and demand at the end of the day. We've got so much demand. The millennial generation is the largest generation of human beings buying homes that we've ever seen, bigger than the baby boomers, which really, you know, kind of developed the real estate market we have today. That's the challenge right there and the problem is we don't have enough new construction to keep up. We’ve got 700,000 units under construction right now and the problem is supply chain issues. So, you know, they're building houses as fast as they can but we've got a lot of people looking for homes.

MR: Is this just a really hot housing market … or is it a bubble? Should we be worried about a repeat of 2008?

VERMILLION: No. We should not. 2008 was a very different kind of marketplace. That was really a credit quality issue. That was really a problem with lending to people that just didn't qualify in those days. That was the core of that problem. We did see a lot of the same kind of trends and property value increases, but it was a different market. We've got a more stable mortgage market today. What we are going to see is some flattening and property values in some areas. Those areas that are vacation areas where people can work from home and want to live, those are going to continue to go up pretty dramatically, I believe. So we're just going to see some pockets of the country that are going to flatten out, some that go down a little bit, others that will continue to rise. It's going to be more regional than national in 2022 versus 2008.

MR: The Federal Reserve has indicated that it will raise interest rates next year. How will that affect the housing market?

VERMILLION: Well, it’s going to affect it in a big way because they're going to – now they've kind of doubled down on that they're going to raise it three times. We think the Fed’s going to go to about 2.2% by the end of 2022 to 2023. That's a big jump. So when you start to see those rates rise, that is going to create a little bit of a slowdown in the property value increases. For consumers who are looking to refinance, obviously, that becomes a little bit more of a challenge. That's going to change that. In fact, the Mortgage Bankers Association is predicting almost a 70% drop in refinances next year. But purchases are actually targeted to grow by about 9%. So we think we're going to continue to see more purchases next year than we even saw this year.

MR: So what does all of this mean for a potential home buyer or seller? If someone is thinking about selling their home, should they do it now and strike while the iron is hot? And should a home buyer wait for the market to cool? What do you think?

VERMILLION: I think they can wait until after the first of the year for it to cool off a little bit. But, look, here's the bottom line, you've got to always compare what it's going to cost you to rent to what it's going to cost you to own a home. And owning a home is generally going to be the better choice for you because of tax deduction benefits, asset growth, wealth building, all of the reasons we know of that make homeownership the American dream. The key here is: be educated. Don't go into a transaction to buy a home without doing your homework. Have all of your information together. Be prepared when you talk to the lender. Know what your credit scores are, make sure you get the best credit score you can, have a good down payment. And most importantly two things, two rules you never break: Do a budget before you buy anything. Don't just rely on what the lender will approve you for. But do a budget for what you can afford so you don't over buy. And make sure you hold back money for reserves when you buy. And if you can buy cheaper than you can rent or for the same you can rent, buy the house. That's the thing to do.

MR: Sound advice. Dale Vermillion has been our guest today. Dale, thanks so much and Merry Christmas.

VERMILLION: Mary, same to you. Appreciate you and God bless.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Thursday, December 23rd. Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Mary Reichard.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown. Coming next on The World and Everything in It: a new movie, American Underdog.

It’s unusual for a Christian movie to make it into theaters nationwide, especially on Christmas Day. But some stories hold universal appeal that make everyone want to cheer.

REICHARD: This latest film from the Erwin Brothers showcases a football player who is just as much a hero off the field as on it. And it rightly tells the important role his wife and family played in his success. Here’s reviewer Sharon Dierberger.

Brenda Warner: “You go out there, and you show them what I’ve known all along. You were born for this.” 

SHARON DIERBERGER, REVIEWER: American Underdog tells the true story of a remarkable athlete—NFL Hall-of-Fame quarterback and Super Bowl MVP Kurt Warner.

Warner: “I waited for it. I bled for it. I know who I am and I know why I’m here. If you give me a chance.”

Announcer: “Green went down hard and he is not getting up.”

Warner: “I will not let you down.”

An against-all-odds athlete success story always inspires audiences—but what makes this film special is most of the movie focuses on Warner’s personal and relational struggles and growth. His eventual embrace of Christianity comes naturally, without cloying, over-emotional scenes, as he begins to realize sports meant everything to him.

Warner: “All my life I’ve defined myself through sports. I’ve always come up empty. Coach, I can win for you.”

Coach: “You need to start thinking about life after football.”

Warner grew up idolizing four-time Super Bowl champion quarterback Joe Montana. All Warner wanted to do was be an NFL quarterback. But no team drafted him after playing at Northern Iowa–starting only as a fifth year senior. Then the Green Bay Packers cut him at training camp. Warner, played by Zachary Levi, winds up at the local Hy-Vee supermarket stocking shelves. Ironically, those shelves include boxes of Wheaties plastered with a photo of Dolphins quarterback Dan Marino.

While in college, Warner meets and later marries Brenda, played by Anna Paquin. She’s a single, divorced mom with two children. Her unfaithful husband left after he dropped their son, causing a traumatic brain injury and irreversible blindness. The warmest spots of this movie are scenes between Warner and Brenda’s son, Zack, played by Hayden Zaller, who is also blind.

Zack: “ Football.”

Warner: “Yeah, they didn’t pick me.”

Zack: “I pick you.”

Warner: “I pick you, too.”

Brenda has her own compelling story, telling Warner she’s a work in progress. It’s her strong faith in God—her relationship with him, she explains—that helps Warner see he’s made his own dreams paramount to God’s will. But they both want the best for the other.

Warner: “I promised that I would take care of you and the kids, so that’s exactly what I’m gonna do.

Brenda: “If this is your dream, don’t give up on it!”

Never losing his desire to quarterback, Warner grudgingly agrees to play Arena Football with the Iowa Barnstormers. (By the way, the movie doesn’t refer to his time playing football over in Europe.) Arena football is a whole different kind of play—a bit like a circus, on a smaller field. But Warner learns valuable skills that eventually gain attention from the St. Louis Rams. The team signs him, but offensive coordinator Mike Martz has his doubts. And yet, at a critical juncture, he’s the one to step in to encourage Warner.

Martz: You know why I was so hard on you? Why I put all that pressure on you? I had to know that you were ready. I had to be sure. And guess what. You are. I never would have put you on that field if I didn’t fully believe you were a champion. Now, you get back out there and you get this job done. Let’s go. Let’s get after it.

Warner: Yes sir. And coach? Thank you.

How Warner gets his big break at the expense of the injured starting quarterback, is only part of his spiral to success. Dennis Quaid plays head coach Dick Vermeil, who also made a comeback after 14 years out of coaching.

Vermeil: When I did come back they said I was a re-tread, has-been, too old. (laughs) game had passed me by—all that stuff. All that same stuff that they’re gonna say about you. What they didn’t know was that all that experience that I had in those years, made me who I am. Made me ready for this moment. Gave me something others didn’t have. And I see that in you, Kurt.

Then Vermeil tells him: “There’s something special about you son, and I can’t wait to find out what it is.”

The movie includes some great game footage of the real Warner spliced in well with the actors’ grid iron action. But the film drops the ball in one way worth mentioning. Levi plays a believable Warner, replete with athletic build and a decent forward pass, but at 41 he looks way too old to play Warner in the college scenes.

Even though we know how the movie ends, it’s still an inspiration to watch it unfold. Especially the parts off the field that aren’t as familiar. The Erwin Brothers do a really good job telling a true sports story that elevates faith, marriage, family, and overcoming the odds. That in itself is worth an MVP award.

Coach Dick Vermeil: “Destiny—It belongs to the underdogs.”

I’m Sharon Dierberger.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Thursday, December 23rd. Christmas eve-eve! Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown. Baking for the holidays can be tricky for people who have food allergies. But with a little creativity, you can do it without sacrificing familiar flavors.

REICHARD: Here’s our book reviewer Emily Whitten to start us off with today’s holiday cooking traditions.

CLIP: Are they pumpkin muffins or pun-kin muffins? They are pum-P-kin muffins. 

EMILY WHITTEN, REPORTER: Whenever friends tell me they’re going gluten free, I often share our version of a recipe for pumpkin muffins. It’s easy to make, and it’s pretty healthy. And if you have a kid like mine with numerous food allergies, this recipe won’t make them feel they’re on a starvation diet.

CLIP: It’s really good. It tastes like pumpkin. Good. All right. This is actually really good. I can taste all the spices. 

C. S. Lewis wrote that God often uses pain as His megaphone. If that’s true, food has definitely been His megaphone to our family. My oldest was still pretty little when we figured out that most of our normal food responded like poison in her body. So, pretty much every recipe my mom taught me to make for holidays is now off limits.

What do we make instead? Well, this recipe fits nicely as a substitute for my mom’s pumpkin pie. No gluten, no sugar, and no dairy all means no stomach aches, no acid reflux, and no child crying herself to sleep. In fact, these days our cooking is filled with a lot of laughter.

CLIP: We need 11/2 cups of blanched almond flour. Ok, why don’t you go ahead and find the almond flour? [LAUGHS] You found it! Oh, how exciting. And put it in the bowl. 

We started our most recent batch with a cup and a half of almond flour. We then added salt and baking soda. Next came the spices—2 ½ teaspoons of cinnamon, ½ teaspoon of cloves, and ¼ teaspoon pumpkin pie spice which we substitute for nutmeg.

CLIP: This is one fourth. That’s what we want. ¼ of a teaspoon. You gotta use the mash and twist method on this almond flour. Some people sift it and they work really hard to get all the clumps out, but I feel like the clumps add some texture.

Then we mixed in the wet ingredients. ¾ cup of canned pumpkin and, because my daughter has trouble with eggs, we used an egg replacement. I’ve found that different ones work better in different recipes. For this recipe, we used a brand from Kroger with the creative title, Egg Replacer.

CLIP: You need to add eight tablespoons of water to that little bowl over there and then you’re gonna get a fork and mix it up. Ok.

Our final substitution makes the recipe lower carb so it won’t spike your blood sugar as much. Instead of ⅓ cup of maple syrup, which is delicious if you’d rather use that, we use ⅓ cup Whole Earth Allulose blend as a sugar substitute. One caution–it does tend to billow up out of the bowl.

CLIP: Yeah, sorry, you definitely want to give some room to the allulose baking blend. I feel like I’m going to, like, drown. It’s in my mouth. 

After we mixed everything together, we put the batter into greased muffin tins. We sprinkled them with allergy-friendly Enjoy Life chocolate chips, and we baked the muffins at 350 degrees for 25-30 minutes. My suggestion, make a sample batch beforehand to nail down your perfect bake time. Almond flour can be tricky to bake without over-baking or leaving a mushy middle.

This Christmas, I confess I will miss pressing sugar cookies and mixing fudge with my mom, who’s now in heaven. But this recipe for pumpkin muffins lets me pass down some of our favorite flavors to another generation. That makes the new Christmas memories we’re baking up just a little bit sweeter.

CLIP: Merry Christmas from the Whittens! Merry Christmas! Merry Christmas!

I’m Emily Whitten.

MARY REICHARD: Aw. That’s what moms do, isn’t it? Find a way. Well, now we’ll hear from our Jenny Rough, whose Christmases past came to the fore in a very meaningful way this year.

JENNY ROUGH, REPORTER: Buckeye trees grow abundantly in Ohio, where my two younger brothers and I grew up. A buckeye is a dark brown, round nut with a light brown circle on one side.

GREG: We were running around Ohio, I saw one on the ground and said, “Oh, man, I love buckeyes.” And I picked it up and put it in my mouth. They’re not edible. You can’t really chew through it with human teeth.

My brother Greg learned the hard way that the nut wasn’t the same as the buckeye treat. Peanut butter balls partially dipped in chocolate. Keep a circle of peanut butter visible to match the look of a real buckeye.

GREG: They look so much like the nut. For a 5-year-old you can’t distinguish.

Real buckeye nuts are poisonous.

GREG: You can’t eat them. That’s the big point. And if you could, they’re not nearly as good as these.

It’s hard to stop eating the treats. Highly addictive. When I was growing up, my mom made them every Christmas. And my brothers and I loved to help.

We’re adults now. Our lives have taken us in different directions. But this December, brought us back together. Although not entirely for a season of good tidings and cheer. It’s also a season of mourning. Our mom was dying. On an evening in early December, her earthly pilgrimage came to an end.

Two days after the memorial service, my brothers and I gathered for breakfast in my dad’s kitchen.

AUDIO: [Eggs cracking]

JENNY: Dad, do you want your eggs over spinach?

DAD: Sure. Anybody want a croissant?

Spouses and kids had already come and gone, so it was just us. A family of four now, instead of five. That morning, we made buckeyes.

JENNY: So we need something to mix the buckeye mix in.

GREG: Like a mixing bowl?

ADAM: Bottom left next to the oven.

Start with peanut butter.

AUDIO: [Removing wrapping from jar of peanut butter]

Add butter, vanilla, and powdered sugar.

AUDIO: [Opening powdered sugar bag]

Squish together with hands.

AUDIO: [Mixing dough]

GREG: Yeah, a little bit more powdered sugar.

JENNY: I just kind of dump it until I get the right consistency.

GREG: This is half the reason we wanted to make this because we got to use our hands to mix the dough. As a kid that was super fun.

As an adult? More of a task, as my brother Adam notes.

ADAM: One year I wanted to make a bunch. And then when we got into it, I was like, “Oh, this is taking forever.” It’s not hard work, it just takes a lot of time.

Roll the buckeye dough into balls—one by one. Freeze them. Then dip the frozen peanut butter balls into melted chocolate—one by one.

ADAM: What kind of chocolate did you get?

JENNY: Semi-sweet and then unsweet.

AUDIO: [Pouring chocolate chips in double-boiler, mixing chocolate chips]

GREG: Is the double-boiler on?

Adam’s right: The steps are simple but making them can be a bit of a pain. It makes me appreciate all the mundane, tedious, and laborious things our mom did for us over the years. She loved her family well.

We’re suffering this Christmas season, the first without her. But we’re not without hope. Christmas, after all, is the fulfillment of a long-awaited promise: Christ has come, our Savior, our Redeemer.

At my mom’s memorial service, a family friend read from Job 19.

SMITH: “I know that my Redeemer lives. And that in the end. He will stand upon my grave. I will see God. I, myself will see Him with my own eyes.” He’s looking forward to the day when he sees God face-to-face.

Death is not the end.

SMITH: And then here’s what’s really sweet. He’s standing on our grave to give us assurance. And we are standing on His grave, the empty tomb, we’re standing on that to give us our assurance that He will be on the other side.

Christ’s birth, death, and resurrection gives us assurance that His people will be restored and live again. Merry Christmas.

I’m Jenny Rough.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Tomorrow: the Christmas story! You won’t want to miss this special presentation.

And, the last of our visits to the kitchens of our staff in our series on holiday cooking traditions.

That and more tomorrow.

I’m Mary Reichard.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown.

The World and Everything in It comes to you from WORLD Radio.

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I sought the LORD, and He answered me and delivered me from all my fears. Those who look to Him are radiant, and their faces shall never be ashamed. Oh, taste and see that the LORD is good! Blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him!

Go now in grace and peace.

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