WATCH: To see video of fifth-grader Harper Carsten and coach Travis Niemeyer prepare for national Amazing Shake competition, point your smartphone or tablet camera at this QR code and tap the link.
It’s often said that a handshake can reveal a lot about someone. Their confidence, personality and level of engagement are all believed to be on display to a degree, and a Billings sixth-grader has landed at a nationwide competition to show off those skills.
The national program Amazing Shake began in Billings in 2015 and has provided fifth-grade students here the opportunity to learn the nuances of professional human interaction like giving a proper handshake, giving a successful interview, and how to remain composed under pressure.
Castle Rock sixth-grader Harper Carsten is currently in Atlanta to compete in the national competition after winning last year’s regional competition, and is the first Montana student ever to participate.
“I’ve had so much fun with this. It’s been awesome to learn all the things that I have,” she said ahead of her departure.
Castle Rock Middle School sixth-grader Harper Carsten is photographed at Beartooth Elementary on Wednesday.
The three-day competition is hosted at the Ron Clark Academy in Atlanta and consists of 40-50 case-scenario stations set up around the school that every student passes through while exercising their etiquette, composure and savoir-faire.
Upon winning last year’s regional competition, Carsten got the call in January that she would be flying to Atlanta to compete with students from across the country and has been preparing ever since with Beartooth Elementary principal Travis Niemeyer.
Making a sales pitch for bacon-scented dryer sheets, fielding questions from unruly reporters at a news briefing and accepting a gag-gift as a prestigious award. These are some of the scenarios the two have been practicing ahead of the competition in preparation.
They’ve also received some examples of what Carsten may do ahead of time, but Niemeyer admits that they’re not entirely sure what to expect once they arrive.
“They’ve shown little bits and pieces here and there, but they’ve kept it under wraps a little bit,” he said.
Castle Rock Middle School 6th grader Harper Carsten practices speaking and presentation skills with her coach Beartooth Principal Travis Niemeyer on Wednesday ahead of the National Amazing Shake Competition.
The origins of the Amazing Shake date back to the Ron Clark Academy as a way to get their own students engaged and prepared for their professional futures. With local sponsors like Delta Airlines and Coca Cola investing into the program over the years, it became widely successful with related competitions developing across the country. Billings is currently the only city participating in Montana and one of the most recent to reach the now-global competition.
The first competition in Billings started in 2016 at Newman Elementary school when then-principal Niemeyer was first introduced to the competition during a teacher development trip to the academy. Seeing the opportunity it could provide Billings students, he quickly then began exploring how he might be able to begin a chapter at his school.
He managed to pull off one competition during his final year at Newman Elementary and carried it over with him to Beartooth Elementary where they have done it every year since. The program is primarily funded through donations by the business partnerships established with the various schools, but a trust account was recently approved by the Billings Public Schools Board of Trustees for anyone interested in contributing to the program going forward.
He explained that he wanted the program to involve more than just his school.
“I’ve kinda just been waiting and waiting to see if we could grow our Amazing Shake first before trying to hold a more Billings-wide Amazing Shake and then send one person from that down there rather than just the winner from my school,” Niemeyer said.
To date, nine schools have begun their own contests. The first round is often mandatory to introduce their fifth graders to public speaking. The most exemplary students are then narrowed down with each following round that have often included “working the room” or interacting with multiple people effectively in a short span of time, conducting Zoom meetings to demonstrate technical competence and selling an idea to local business leaders.
Over the years, First Interstate Bank, KULR-TV, ExxonMobile, Rocky Mountain College and Buffalo Block Steakhouse have been among the participants to meet and grade students on their performances on communication, persuasion, listening, manners and etiquette.
Looking back at last year’s competition, Carsten said the biggest challenge she learned to overcome was the amount of preparation and studying needed to successfully present oneself and their message, regardless of the scenario.
She hopes to eventually become a teacher and believes that what she’s already learned has her heading in the right direction to succeed going forward.
“It’s also helped me in middle school (this year) because you have to give a lot more presentations and memorize a lot more things," she said. "So, it’s helped me a lot to start before when I have time to do it rather than rushing everything before and not having enough information.”
Castle Rock Middle School 6th grader Harper Carsten practices speaking and presentation skills with her coach Beartooth Principal Travis Niemeyer on Wednesday ahead of the National Amazing Shake Competition.
Over the years, students who have participated in the contest previously and their parents have approached Niemeyer off and on to tell him of the long-term impact the program has had on them. He mentioned a former student who is now a member of a local 4-H group presenting potential legislation to lawmakers in Helena. The students’ parents told him the work he's doing now can be traced back to what he learned through the Amazing Shake.
Carsten's elementary school principal Julie Hornsby said she’s noticed differences in most of the kids who have participated in the competition. Students who were smart but shy are now leaders while others who were always charismatic are now more respectful and collaborative.
“I’ve heard so many of them say, ‘I never saw myself being able to do this’ and even what I’ve heard from some of the professors and business leaders is, ‘I would have never been able to do that in the fifth grade,’” she said. “So just being able to see these kids step outside of their comfort zones has been really cool to see.”
Participating Billings schools are currently wrapping up their respective competitions ahead of this year’s regional match slated for early April. This year’s winner will qualify to attend next year’s national competition at Ron Clark Academy. With additional schools possibly joining next year, the hope is that the regional round will continue to grow and even include neighboring districts going forward.
Any school interested in beginning their own Amazing Shake competition can sign up for free at its official website and access resources and toolkits on how to implement it.
In addition to the skills students learn and the connections they can make, Niemeyer hopes that confidence is what they all take away to help them find and pursue their life goals.
“We’ve got kids that come from poverty in every school…but in every one of those schools there are kids that come from a life where we may not expect the struggles and challenges they’ve had,” he said. “And for these kids to go out and say, ‘I can do that, I can fit in to that world,’ I’ve done more than I ever thought I could do.”
KYIV, Ukraine — The Biden administration released video Thursday of a Russian fighter jet dumping fuel on a U.S. Air Force surveillance drone as the U.S. sought to hold Russia responsible for the collision that led to the drone's crash into the Black Sea without escalating already fraught tensions with the Kremlin.
Poland, meanwhile, said it's giving Ukraine a dozen MiG-29 fighter jets, becoming the first NATO member to fulfill Kyiv's increasingly urgent requests for warplanes.
This photo taken from video released on Thursday shows a Russian Su-27 approaching the back of the MQ-9 drone and beginning to release fuel as it passes, over the Black Sea, the Pentagon said.
The U.S. military's declassified 42-second color footage shows a Russian Su-27 approaching the back of the MQ-9 Reaper drone and releasing fuel as it passes, the Pentagon said. Dumping the fuel appeared to be aimed at blinding the drone's optical instruments to drive it from the area.
On a second approach, either the same jet or another Russian Su-27 that had been shadowing the MQ-9 struck the drone’s propeller, damaging a blade, according to the U.S. military, which said it then ditched the aircraft in the sea.
The video excerpt does not show the collision, although it does show damage to the propeller.
Russia said its fighters didn’t strike the drone and claimed the unmanned aerial vehicle went down after making a sharp maneuver.
While calling out Russia for “reckless” action, the White House tried to strike a balance to avoid exacerbating tensions. U.S. officials said they have not been able to determine whether the Russian pilot intentionally struck the American drone and stressed that lines of communication with Moscow remain open.
“I can’t point to that video and say this is a deliberate attempt to escalate or ... tangibly bring about Putin’s false claim that this is about the West versus Russia,” White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said. “We have made clear on many occasions, we do not seek a conflict with Russia.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin argues that by providing weapons to Ukraine and sharing intelligence information with Kyiv, the U.S. and its allies have effectively become engaged in the war, now in its 13th month.
Nikolai Patrushev, the secretary of Russia’s Security Council, said Wednesday that an attempt would be made to recover the drone debris.
U.S. officials have expressed confidence that nothing of military value would remain from the drone even if Russia retrieved the wreckage. They left open the possibility of trying to recover portions of the downed $32 million aircraft, which they said crashed into waters that were 4,000 to 5,000 feet deep, although the U.S. does not have ships in the area.
Russia and NATO member countries routinely intercept each other’s warplanes, but Tuesday's incident marked the first time since the Cold War that a U.S. aircraft went down during such a confrontation, raising concerns it could bring the United States and Russia closer to a direct conflict.
Moscow has repeatedly voiced concern about U.S. intelligence flights near the Crimean Peninsula, which Russia seized from Ukraine in 2014 and illegally annexed.
The top U.S. and Russian defense and military leaders spoke Wednesday about the destruction of the drone, underscoring the event's seriousness.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin attends a virtual meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group on Wednesday at the Pentagon in Washington.
The calls between U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, as well as between Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley and Gen. Valery Gerasimov, chief of Russian General Staff, were the first since October.
The Russian Defense Ministry said in its report of the call with Austin that Shoigu accused the U.S. of provoking the incident by ignoring flight restrictions the Kremlin had imposed because of its military operations in Ukraine. The U.S. said the drone was operating in international airspace.
Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley attends a virtual meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group on Wednesday at the Pentagon in Washington.
The MQ-9, which has a 66-foot wingspan, includes a ground control station and satellite equipment. It is capable of carrying munitions, but Air Force Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder, a Pentagon spokesperson, would not say whether the ditched drone had been armed.
The video's release is the latest example of the Biden administration making public intelligence findings over the course of the war. The administration has said it wants to highlight Russian malicious activity as well as plans for Russian misinformation operations so allies remain clear-eyed about Moscow’s intent.
The White House deferred to Austin on the decision to release it, with the Pentagon and President Joe Biden’s national security aides agreeing it was important to let the world see what happened, according to an administration official familiar with the decision-making process. The official, who requested anonymity to discuss the deliberations, said it took time to go through the declassification process and insisted the administration was not concerned it would further escalate tensions with Russia.
Separately, Polish President Andrzej Duda said Warsaw would give Ukraine four Soviet-made MiG-29s “within the next few days” and that the rest needed servicing and would be supplied later. The Polish word he used to describe the total number of warplanes can mean between 11 and 19.
“They are in the last years of their functioning but they are in good working condition,” Duda added. He did not say whether other countries would follow suit, although Slovakia has said it would send Ukraine its disused MiGs.
While Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has pleaded for fighter jets from the West, some NATO members — including the U.S. — have expressed hesitancy.
The White House said Poland gave the U.S. advanced notice of its decision to provide the MiGs.
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The Pentagon has released video footage showing what they claim is two Russian Su-27 aircraft in an “unsafe and unprofessional” intercept of o…
NEW YORK — While Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen offered firm, upbeat reassurances to rattled bank depositors and investors Thursday, 11 of the biggest banks in the country announced a $30 billion rescue package for First Republic Bank, in an effort to prevent the California-based institution from becoming the third bank to fail in less than a week.
A television screen displaying financial news is seen inside one of First Republic Bank's branches Thursday in the Financial District of Manhattan.
First Republic serves a similar clientele as Silicon Valley Bank, which failed Friday after depositors withdrew about $40 billion. It appears that First Republic, which had deposits totaling $176.4 billion as of Dec. 31, was facing a similar crisis.
In a statement, the group of banks confirmed that other unnamed banks had seen large amounts of withdrawals of uninsured deposits, which are those that exceed the $250,000 level insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. First Republic's shares dropped more than 60% Monday, even after the bank said it had secured additional funding from JPMorgan and the Federal Reserve.
On Thursday, the bank’s shares were down as much as 36%, but rallied after reports that the rescue package was in the works, and closed up nearly 9%.
JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup and Wells Fargo agreed to each put $5 billion in uninsured deposits into First Republic. Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs would deposit $2.5 billion each into the bank. The remaining $5 billion would consist of $1 billion contributions from BNY Mellon, State Street, PNC Bank, Truist and US Bank.
“The actions of America's largest banks reflect their confidence in the country's banking system,” the banks said in their statement.
The nation's banking regulators also issued a statement in support of the bank rescue package.
“This show of support by a group of large banks is most welcome, and demonstrates the resilience of the banking system,” said Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, Acting Comptroller of the Currency Michael Hsu, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell and FDIC Chairman Martin Gruenberg.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen testifies before the Senate Finance Committee about President Joe Biden's proposed budget request for the fiscal year 2024, on Thursday in Washington.
The news could help calm the nerves of bank investors after the collapse last week of Silicon Valley Bank, which was the second biggest bank failure in U.S. history after the demise of Washington Mutual in 2008.
The shuttering of Silicon Valley Bank Friday and of New York-based Signature Bank two days later has revived bad memories of the financial crisis that plunged the United States into the Great Recession of 2007-2009.
Over the weekend the federal government, determined to restore public confidence in the banking system, moved to protect all the banks' deposits, even those that exceeded the FDIC’s $250,000 limit per individual account.
At a hearing Thursday on Capitol Hill, Yellen told senators that the U.S. banking system “remains sound” and Americans “can feel confident” about the safety of their deposits.
Her remarks came against the backdrop of deepening concerns about the health of the global financial system.
By the time her testimony was over, First Republic had received the emergency infusion of $30 billion in deposits from 11 banks. And in Europe hours earlier, Credit Suisse, Switzerland’s second-largest lender, got a promise from the Swiss central bank of a loan of up to $54 billion.
Republican senators laid a big part of the blame for the problems on Democratic President Joe Biden's administration.
“The reckless tax and spend agenda that was forced through Congress” contributed to record high inflation that the Federal Reserve is having to compensate for through increasing interest rates, said Sen. Mike Crapo of Idaho. And those surging rates have caused banks — as well as regular citizens — problems.
The Republicans also questioned Biden's assurances that taxpayers won't bear the brunt of the commitment to make depositors whole.
Yellen resisted that scenario, though she said, “We certainly need to analyze carefully what happened to trigger these bank failures and examine our rules and supervision" to prevent them from happening again. She defended the government’s argument that taxpayers will not end up paying the cost of protecting uninsured money at Silicon Valley and Signature.
The Treasury secretary was the first administration official to face lawmakers over the decision to protect uninsured money at the two failed regional banks, a move some have criticized as a bank “bailout.”
“The government took decisive and forceful actions to strengthen public confidence” in the U.S. banking system, Yellen testified. “I can reassure the members of the committee that our banking system remains sound, and that Americans can feel confident that their deposits will be there when they need them."
The week has been a whirlwind for markets globally on worries about banks that may be bending under the weight of the fastest hikes to interest rates in decades, increases intended to quell rising inflation on consumer goods.
The Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission have launched investigations into the Silicon Valley Bank collapse, and President Joe Biden has called on Congress to strengthen rules on regional banks.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Thursday, "There are things that we can do in the administration, but in order to really deal with this issue we have to act. Congress needs to act.”
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NEW YORK — A bank run conjures images of "It's a Wonderful Life," with anxious customers crammed shoulder to shoulder, desperately pleading with a harried George Bailey to hand over their money.
The failure of Silicon Valley Bank had the panic but few other similarities, instead taking place on Twitter, message boards, mobile phones and bank websites.
What made it unique compared to past failures of large banks was how quickly it collapsed. Last Wednesday afternoon, the $200 billion bank announced a plan to raise fresh capital; by Friday morning it was insolvent and under government control.
A pedestrian carries an umbrella Tuesday while walking past a Silicon Valley Bank Private branch in San Francisco.
Regulators, policymakers and bankers are looking at the role that digital messaging and social media may have played in the collapse, and whether banks are entering an age when the psychological behavior behind a bank run — mass fear from depositors of losing their savings — may be amplified and go viral quicker than bank officers and regulators can successfully respond.
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation estimates that customers withdrew $40 billion — one fifth of Silicon Valley Bank's deposits — in just a few hours, prompting the agency to shut down the bank before noon ET, instead of waiting until the close of business, which is the regulator's typical operating procedure.
Some other well-known bank failures, such as IndyMac or Washington Mutual in 2008 or Continental Illinois in the 1980s, happened after days or weeks of reports indicated those banks faced deep financial difficulties. Then a run occurred and regulators stepped in.
Hundreds of customers of the insolvent Penn Square Bank line up to withdraw their money July 6, 1982, in Oklahoma City after federal officials closed the bank.
The Silicon Valley Bank run was, in many ways, the first of the digital era. Few depositors lined up at a branch. Instead, they used bank apps and phone calls to access their money in minutes. Venture capitalists and business owners described the early stages of the Silicon Valley run being led by private message boards or Slack channels, where entrepreneurs were encouraged to withdraw their funds.
Silicon Valley Bank also was unique in being almost entirely exposed to one community: the tech industry, venture capital and startups. When this close-knit community of depositors talked to one another — using digital channels to do so quickly — the bank likely became more vulnerable to rumors and a run. This was a risk outside of the growth of social media, industry experts said.
Sam Altman, CEO of Open AI, tweeted: "the speed of the world has changed. things can unwind fast. people talk fast. people move money fast."
While the withdrawals initially may have been orderly, they became a full-on bank run Thursday evening after the news spilled over to Twitter that billionaire venture capitalist Peter Thiel advised his invested companies to close their Silicon Valley Bank accounts.
Customers and bystanders form a line Monday outside a Silicon Valley Bank branch location in Wellesley, Mass.
For David Murray, the warning of the first bank run of the social-media age came in a one-sentence email. He's a co-founder of Confirm.com, an employee performance management company in San Francisco that had millions of dollars sitting in accounts at Silicon Valley Bank.
Murray received a terse email Thursday morning saying that a run was underway there and recommending everyone pull their money out immediately. The email came from an investor whom Murray hears from so infrequently that his co-founder wondered if it was a phishing attempt or other scam.
After verifying the email and seeing the steep drop in the stock price of the bank's parent company, SVB Financial, Murray and his colleagues rushed to withdraw the company's money. Instead of heading to a branch, they quickly pulled up a webpage and logged in. It took a few tries, but they eventually moved every cent to an account at a different bank within a half hour.
Murray could see fear rising among other startup companies in real time.
"We have a trusted network of founders" of startup companies who communicate with each other over Slack, Murray said. "Normally these chat groups are dead. But that day, all the Slack groups were lit up."
Crowds gather Dec. 11, 1930, outside the Brownsville Branch of the Bank of the United States in New York City after it had been ordered to shut down and taken over by the New York State Banking Department.
Between 1930 and 1933, during the Great Depression, roughly 9,000 banks failed. Because a bank run can happen at random and is hard to stop once started, the U.S. government created the FDIC to stop future bank runs under the premise that depositors' funds would be insured.
Since the FDIC's creation in 1933, bank runs have become much rarer. According to the FDIC, there were 562 bank failures between 2001 and 2023, with the vast majority of those happening during the 2007-09 recession.
Banks are now grappling with the fact that they could be the next target of a social media-fueled bank run.
Several prominent investors issued bombastic predictions that if the federal government did not step in to make all Silicon Valley Bank depositors whole — both insured and uninsured — there would be more bank runs on Monday.
In the end, Washington capitulated. Under the plan announced Sunday, depositors at Silicon Valley Bank were able to access all their money. A new Federal Reserve program will allow banks to post certain high-quality securities as collateral and borrow from a government emergency fund. Both Treasury and Federal Reserve officials told reporters over the weekend that the programs were created in part due to concerns further bank runs — fueled by social media — could occur.
Bank runs happen when customers panic and everyone tries to get their money out at once. Christine Romans explains that's what happened at Sil…
