It’s hard to believe how many kids in need are crammed into a small preschool or Head Start classroom in this country. You’ll notice this before the noise starts. A child crying close to the area where people read. Someone else who needs help with shoes. Three people who haven’t eaten since yesterday. And somewhere in the middle, one adult is in charge of everything, and they often make less an hour than the person who parked your car downtown. Early childhood education has been on the edges of how people in the US think about teaching for a long…
Author: Nelson Rosario
Nelson Rosario
Nelson Rosario is an Editor at worldomep.org and a law school student who has found, somewhere in the intersection of legal theory and human development, a cause worth building a career around: ensuring that every child has access to quality education and the healthcare they need to thrive. Nelson approaches child advocacy with the analytical precision of a person who has been taught to analyze systems, spot flaws, and make the case for change. His knowledge of how policies are made, where they fall short, and what it would take to hold institutions accountable for the children they are meant to serve has improved as a result of his legal education. His support, however, goes beyond academics. It stems from a sincere belief that early childhood health and education are not being adequately addressed by the legal and social frameworks in many places. Nelson adds a legal and policy perspective to discussions about child welfare through his contributions to worldomep.org, asking not only what ought to be done but also what can be required, safeguarded, and upheld.
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A four-year-old being able to correctly identify a song thrush is quietly impressive. Not because kids don’t notice birds all the time, but because knowing the bird’s name is important in this case. You get a sticker for it. The sticker is put in a passport. And that passport, which was given out as part of an early childhood program run by a British NGO, used to get people into wildlife conservation parks across the UK at a discount. This is being run by OMEP-UK, which is the British branch of the World Organization for Early Childhood Education. It’s not…
Each kindergarten teacher talks about the same part of the day in the same way. When a four- or five-year-old child comes in for the first day, it’s easy to tell which ones have had structured early learning and which ones haven’t. The gap isn’t about how smart people are. It has to do with exposure. Feeling sure. Being able to remain still long enough to listen to a story. Australia also saw that gap. It then chose to do something about it. In Victoria, play-based kindergarten was expanded to include kids ages three and four. This is one of…
The story about AI in schools can be written in a way that makes sense. A student in a rural school gets help right away. It saves a teacher three hours of work to grade. Someone who is having trouble reading finally finds a tool that works for them. You’re telling the truth, but that version is just a small part of the bigger picture. More than 500 students, teachers, parents, and technologists from 50 countries took part in a year-long global study from the Brookings Institution. The study found that at this point in its development, the risks of…
One type of researcher writes about AI in education, while another type actually knows what happens when a teacher stands in front of a class and wonders if the new AI tool her school bought for grading is making things better or worse in a quiet way. The second group is made up of Hannah Anush. The Global Recognition Awards this year confirmed what many people in her field had been saying in private for a while: they gave her the 2026 prize in the Research category for a body of work that combines AI, healthcare, and education in a…
Something quietly interesting about the fact that Poland was chosen as the site for one of the most important conferences on early childhood education this decade. It’s not a coincidence. The 78th OMEP World Assembly and World Conference will be held in Poznań in July 2026. The choice to hold it in Poland is significant in a way that most international education summits never are. “When a Child Speaks: Korczak’s Inspirations for Education and Children’s Rights” is the title of the conference. That name, Korczak, is more important than most people outside of education might think. Janusz Korczak was a…
A certain type of story about Gen Z AI is told a lot. Artificial intelligence has been quickly accepted by a generation that grew up with smartphones, TikTok, and instant answers. They see it as just another tool in their already full digital lives. They are the locals. They understand. Everyone else is getting caught up. The data are making that story a lot more difficult to follow. The Walton Family Foundation, GSV Ventures, and Gallup did a survey earlier this year and found that 51% of Gen Zers (people born between 1997 and 2012) say they use generative AI…
Having a press tour or giving a TED Talk doesn’t give you all the power you need. It’s talked about in government advisory rooms, in the notes at the end of curriculum frameworks, and in the quiet changes that a country makes to how it treats its youngest citizens. That spot is taken by Nóirín Hayes. She has spent decades working at the point where children’s rights, developmental psychology, and early childhood education policy meet. The impact of her work is starting to reach far beyond Ireland. As well as being a Professor Emerita at Technological University Dublin, Hayes is…
You might feel a little uneasy when you walk into a Head Start classroom and realize that the teacher helping a three-year-old deal with her first social problem probably makes less than the barista who made your coffee in the morning. That’s not meant to be a heavy comparison. It seems to be the case when you look at early childhood education in Colorado, where the average hourly wage is $18.50 and 46% of the workers depend on public assistance programs like Medicaid and SNAP to make ends meet. Just seeing that number should make you think. These are the…
Different early childhood classrooms all over the world have the same kind of scene. Four-year-olds are sitting around a table covered in blocks and quietly competing by putting the blocks in order by shape. Every once in a while, one of them will ask a question that seems to come out of nowhere. There is a teacher nearby who doesn’t say anything but nudges—”What do you think would happen if you put the bigger ones at the bottom?”—and then steps back. There’s nothing about it that looks like school. But more and more studies show that it may work better…