The stiff rental gowns, the gymnasiums that smell slightly of industrial cleaner and old bleachers, and the principal mispronouncing at least three of the names as they are read aloud into a microphone have all contributed to the unique emotional texture of graduation season. Most people don’t feel this ceremony; they just endure it. Every now and then, something occurs that causes everyone in the room to lose their sense of location. Seniors from the Class of 2026 entered what they thought was a typical end-of-year celebration at Country Day School in San Rafael de Alajuela, Costa Rica. Instead, they…
Author: Kelsey Myers
Kelsey Myers
Kelsey Myers is a Senior Editor at worldomep.org and a dedicated advocate for early childhood education whose work begins — and ends — with a simple belief: that the earliest years of a child's life matter more than almost anything else we can invest in. Based at a local school, Kelsey works daily alongside the children and families whose experiences inform everything she writes. She doesn't observe early education from a distance. She is inside it — in the classrooms, on the playgrounds, in the conversations between teachers and parents that shape how young children understand the world around them. That proximity gives her writing a warmth and specificity that purely policy-driven commentary rarely achieves. Through her writing at worldomep.org, Kelsey brings that same energy to readers — making the case, clearly and consistently, that early childhood education deserves far more attention than it typically receives. Kelsey shares her personal opinions on: https://x.com/Butterflyboule
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The majority of people who have sat in a business school classroom are familiar with the type of frustration that develops there. The ideas are sound. The case studies are reliable. However, something is lost somewhere between the classroom and the real world, and graduates who have studied entrepreneurship but never tried it land their first jobs. Forge Greensboro and North Carolina A&T State University are making a direct effort to address that. The partnership, which was announced in April 2026, links the Willie A. Deese College of Business and Economics with Forge Greensboro, a community makerspace that sits between…
The United Nations General Assembly adopted a document in 1989 that outlines 40 specific rights that every child on the planet has, including the right to life, access to healthcare, education, protection from abuse, and participation in decisions that impact them. It is the most extensively ratified human rights agreement in recorded history. It has been signed by every member state of the UN. That is, everyone but the United States. It’s difficult to ignore how that fact has aged. The United States did not simply abstain from participation in the negotiations of the Convention on the Rights of the…
A grocery company did something most people wouldn’t expect a grocery company to do on Sunday night in Houston during an awards ceremony that somehow felt more like a real celebration than a corporate obligation. In addition to giving $480,000 to educators, including teachers, counselors, principals, and school boards, H-E-B invited Emmy Award-winning actress Sheryl Lee Ralph, who is best known for her role as a kindergarten teacher on “Abbott Elementary,” to give the keynote address. The optics were intentional and effective. However, it was worth watching the people who were being honored. The San Antonio region produced three of…
At most academic award ceremonies, there is a part where the handshakes, applause, and pictures outside a conference room seem a bit staged. However, something slightly different appeared to be taking place when Aisling Burke stood to accept the OMEP Ireland Early Childhood Student of the Year Award at Dublin City University. The Minister of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration, and Youth, Roderic O’Gorman, was present. Furthermore, he wasn’t there out of duty. He was present because, according to the judging panel, Burke’s dissertation research, which examined how early childhood educators provide parenting support in Irish care settings, produced work “written…
Nearly 400 educators, researchers, and policy advocates from all over the world convened for the 76th World Assembly of OMEP—the World Organization for Early Childhood Education, an NGO founded in 1948 that currently operates in more than 60 countries—in a conference hall at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok during the sweltering Thai summer of July 2024. In the US, the incident did not make the front pages. It most likely ought to have. A formal declaration advocating for a United Nations Decade for Early Childhood Care and Education was the assembly’s main product. The concept is fairly simple: a persistent, ten-year…
The staffing picture is essentially the same in practically every nursery or preschool in the English-speaking world. Mostly women. If there are any male practitioners, they are usually noticeable just by virtue of their presence. Men make up one to four percent of early childhood educators in many Western nations. For preschool and kindergarten in particular, that number is approximately 2.5% in the US. In the past, Denmark and Spain have performed marginally better, approaching eight percent by the mid-1990s. However, the general pattern is consistent. The discussion of why early childhood education is still one of the most gender-biased…
In Tillamook, Oregon, there is a two-story structure with ivory trim and grass-green siding. It doesn’t appear to be the focal point of anything significant. It appears to be a place where young children nap and finger paint, which is, of course, exactly what it is. However, facilities like that one, which are dispersed throughout Oregon’s 36 counties, many of which are understaffed, many of which are operating below capacity, and some of which have wait lists that go back a year and a half, are quietly at the heart of one of the state’s most persistent and underreported labor…
When they saw the name near the top of the 2026 PGA Championship leaderboard at Aronimink Golf Club, the majority of viewers most likely had to take another look. Smalley, Alex. 29 years of age. There are no PGA Tour victories. 42 is the current world ranking. And yet there he was, at one of the most difficult Major setups in recent memory, with a two-shot lead after 54 holes. It didn’t seem like an anomaly. It had the feel of something that had been developing for a very long time—quietly, methodically, in a manner that is practically out of…
The oldest area of Michigan State University’s campus feels almost purposefully slow when you stand on the north bank of the Red Cedar River on a chilly Michigan morning. Instead of being straight, the roads curve. The area feels like a forest that at some point decided to allow buildings among its roots due to the thickness of the trees. Beaumont Tower, a clock tower that marks the location of the first classroom building that no longer exists, rises above the site of the original College Hall. Despite its inability to preserve the tangible proof, the campus appears conscious of…