The news can feel heavy. But this year also brought moments of hope, including heartening advances in dementia research and heroic rescues. Here are five of our favorite optimistic stories from 2025.
1. Schools are banning phones — and remarkable things are happening
For the past few years, the lunchroom at Ballard High School was a hushed place.
“You’d walk in there and everybody had their heads down,” Principal Jason Neuss told me this fall. “Just scrolling.”
This year the school in Louisville implemented a bell-to-bell phone ban. Neuss said the change was immediate: The lunchroom is loud again.
Something else happened, too. In the first month of school, students took out 67 percent more books than the same month last year. That trend has continued for the rest of the school year so far.
“Even my library aides who do the bulk of the circulating were like, ‘Gosh, there’s a lot of kids checking out books,’” said Stephanie Conrad, the school’s librarian.
Ballard is just one of a growing number of schools that’s banning cellphones. We interviewed psychologist Jean Twenge about bell-to-bell phone bans, which she advocates for because of the academic, social and mental health benefits of spending less time on social media.
2. An 80-year-old woman hiked the entire Appalachian Trail
Here at The Optimist, we write a lot about people who break world records. But the story of Betty Kellenberger was one of my favorites — because she wasn’t motivated by that at all.
Kellenberger finished hiking the entire 2,197-mile Appalachian Trail this year at 80 years old, and she had no idea she was about to become the oldest woman to ever do so.
“We put all kinds of limitations on ourselves,” Kellenberger told my colleague Sydney Page. “Sometimes the biggest one is we don’t get up and try it.”
Kellenberger had been interested in hiking the Appalachian Trail since she was a kid.
“I was just fascinated by the idea that you could walk from Georgia to Maine,” said Kellenberger, who grew up on a farm in Howell, Michigan. “It was a dream more than anything else, because I never had the time.”
Kellenberger was a middle school teacher for decades, and when she retired she started checking off her bucket list. Now that she’s completed the trail, she hopes to go hiking in Iceland and perhaps even tackle the North Country National Scenic Trail, which runs from North Dakota to Vermont.
“I’ll do it as long as I’m able,” she said.
3. A bodega manager found a way to get kids excited about studying
In 2023, Wail Alselwi made a bet with a young customer. He told Zamier Davies, then 12, that if he got good grades on his report card, Alselwi would give him anything in the store he wanted — free.
The motivation worked. Zamier came back with an 88 percent average and got a free Oreo milkshake. With the permission of Zamier’s parents, Alselwi posted on TikTok about it, and other kids flocked to the bodega with their report cards, too. Alselwi paid for the goodies out of his own pocket — until commenters on his TikTok asked to contribute. Some of the kids choose special treats, but others buy staples like milk and eggs for their families.
Alselwi said he plans to keep it up, and he hopes that others are inspired to encourage kids in their own communities.
“I see the progress the kids make,” he said. “It pushes them toward greatness.”
4. A bear cub was rescued and is being raised by humans in bear suits
In April, campers in Los Padres National Forest found a tiny baby bear alone. He was crying, and his mother was nowhere to be found.
At just three pounds, experts at the San Diego Humane Society’s Ramona Wildlife Center said the cub was “extremely fragile.” But after just five weeks in their care, he was thriving. He gained weight and had reached several developmental milestones — including learning to climb.
The cutest part though was that the staff who cared for him did so while dressed as bears.
The costumes weren’t just for the incredible photos — the wildlife center staff said that it was important to prevent the cub from forming an attachment to humans that could be dangerous when he is reintroduced to the wild.
In June, the baby bear cub was moved to Sonoma County Wildlife Rescue to continue his rehabilitation with two other bear cubs.
“Growing up together will give these cubs the chance to learn from one another and develop critical natural behaviors they’ll need to thrive in the wild,” Nina Thompson, with the San Diego Humane Society, said in an email to The Post. “That’s our most important goal of all: to see these bears go home.”
5. A nurse saved a drunk raccoon from a dumpster — using CPR
Drunk raccoons are having a moment.
Recently a raccoon ransacked a Virginia liquor store, passing out in the bathroom after making some “poor life choices” according to authorities.
When I saw this story, I immediately thought of another couple of drunk raccoons my colleague Kyle Melnick wrote about earlier this year.
After indulging in too many fermented peaches from a nearby distillery, the pair were rescued from a dumpster in Kentucky by local nurse Misty Combs.
One ran off, but the other was in bad shape — soaking wet, barely breathing and reeking of moonshine. Her colleague thought the raccoon was dead.
“Not on my watch,” Combs recalled thinking. “I’m going to try to do whatever I can.”
Combs ended up performing CPR on the little guy and then calling local animal control. She and her colleagues nicknamed the raccoon Otis Campbell after the “town drunk” on the “The Andy Griffith Show.”
After a vet helped the raccoon recover, Combs was able to set Otis free, back into the wild.
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