Public Good

Every statistic says don't become a teacher. Gen Z is signing up anyway.

The math on this career has never looked worse. Somehow the applications keep coming.

Becoming a teacher in 2026 means accepting a job that arrives with something close to a warning label. Low pay, political pressure, funding that never quite covers classroom needs, and safety concerns that were never part of the original job description. A 2024 RAND survey found 53% of teachers report being burned out, and plenty of them are saying so publicly, in detail, on camera. If you have seen a veteran educator walk through the chaos of an average middle school day, you know the pitch is not exactly seductive.

So the enrollment numbers should be cratering. They are not. As Mark Wales reports, Teach for America brought in more than 2,300 college graduates from 600 schools in a single year, and Gen Z keeps choosing the profession its elders are fleeing. Whitney Petersmeyer, Teach for America's chief growth and program officer, thinks she knows why. A generation that spent its formative years staring at a laptop in a bedroom is, she says, "craving human connection and experiences that feel real."

Sponsored Story

50% Of Us Are Low In Magnesium (And Supplementing It May Not Help)

Magnesium is called “the most important mineral on earth for human health”. 

It helps with far more than sleep. Magnesium is also vital for heart health, bone health, brain health, even muscle and nerve function.

But roughly 50% of Americans are low in magnesium. And many of them are actively supplementing it. So what’s going on? 

First of all, magnesium comes in many forms, each with different body benefits. For example, magnesium acetyl taurate helps promote restful sleep, while magnesium creatine chelate supports hydration and exercise recovery. 

So taking just 1 or 2 forms, or taking forms with limited bioavailability, can make “supplementing magnesium” not even work.

And then there’s Qualia Magnesium+. It combines 10 forms of highly bioavailable magnesium, the first full-spectrum magnesium formula to make magnesium concerns a thing of the past. 

Right now it's buy one, get one free by clicking here — backed by a 100-day money-back guarantee. 

Do you have a GOOD picture to share?

Send us your best images, and we may feature them as the image of the day. Be sure to tell us a bit about your pic.

Previous Results

In yesterday's issue, we shared a public health professor's doctor-ordered, two-month break from every screen she owned.

And we asked: A doctor orders you off one screen for two months. Which one goes? To my surprise, more than 40% of you would send the TV packing.

• The TV, I'll survive without the big one (42.3%)

• The phone, and please take it before I change my mind (30.1%)

• The laptop, email included, goodbye forever (19.5%)

• None of them, I'll take the concussion (8.1%)

GOOD reader Linda Miller found a loophole that I really respect. She voted to do away with the laptop, but… “Only because I can get email on my phone.”

Pop Culture | Courtesy of Upworthy

Society

The psychologist who studies parents froze on her own first night

A researcher who spent two decades measuring new parents finally measured herself.

Perfectionism is the enemy of good parenting, according to Sarah Schoppe-Sullivan (no relation), a developmental psychologist who has tracked nearly 200 dual-earner couples since their first babies arrived. She learned it the hard way, just home from the hospital with a newborn, a doctorate, and no idea what to do next. What if I don't make it a full year of breastfeeding? Every small decision started to feel like a verdict.

So she started measuring it. In her lab, parenting perfectionism means holding yourself to impossible standards while believing everyone else is holding you to them too. Mothers who worried most about outside judgment had the least faith in their own instincts, and those who spent the most time tending to their Facebook accounts reported the most stress.

That's the closed loop. The worry drains the exact reserves a parent needs to stay warm and patient when a toddler bangs a plate on the table for the four hundredth time. Meanwhile, experts may argue loudly about screen time and sleep training, but they quietly agree on what actually makes a good parent. It comes down to four qualities, and not one of them is a decision she lost sleep over.

On August 25, 1916, President Woodrow Wilson signed the law creating the National Park Service, and America’s crown jewels finally got a full-time babysitter. Before that, Yellowstone, Yosemite, and dozens of other parks and monuments were managed piecemeal, with the Army overseeing some and natural resources facing threats from poaching, logging, and grazing.

The push came, in part, from an unlikely place. Stephen Mather, a wealthy Chicago businessman who made his fortune in the borax business, wrote to Interior Secretary Franklin Lane in 1914 to complain about how poorly the parks were being managed. According to a famous, though apparently unverified, story, Lane fired back: "If you don't like the way things are run, come to Washington and run them yourself." Mather essentially did, joining the Interior Department in 1915 and later becoming the National Park Service’s first director.

The law charged the new agency with conserving the parks while leaving them "unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations." More than a century later, that mission guides 433 National Park Service sites, which drew more than 323 million recreation visits in 2025. Not bad for a complaint letter. 

Do you have something GOOD to share?

We’re always on the lookout for uplifting, enlightening, and engaging content to share with readers like you. If you have something you think should be featured in the Daily GOOD, let me know!

💬 From the group text…

Behold the world record for largest skydiving canopy formation! If you look closely, you’ll see me… enjoying this video from the safety of my computer.

Join the Group Text! Send us your social media gold.