Author: Nola Jones

Every college football fan is familiar with a particular moment. It’s late August, the season is just a few weeks away, and everything seems exciting: rivalries are being rehashed for the hundredth time, rosters are being analyzed, and predictions are flying. On July 9, EA Sports College Football 27 will arrive with the same level of excitement, and this year, there’s a good reason to believe that it merits it. It’s noteworthy how much the series has developed in a short period of time, as this is the third edition since the game returned after a ten-year hiatus. It was…

Jennifer Aniston was a young child in Manhattan navigating the unique, subtly harsh world of performing arts education long before Rachel Green entered Central Perk. Given the magazine covers, the awards shelf, and the career that has managed to remain relevant over three decades, it’s easy to forget that Aniston’s journey began in a classroom. Specifically, a drama classroom in one of the most rigorous public high schools in New York City. Aniston was raised in a home that valued art. John Aniston, her father, was a professional actor. Nancy Dow, her mother, had her own film credits. Strangely enough,…

Pedro Pascal’s journey through formal education, which took him from Chile to California and then California to New York, was neither glamorous nor quick. In retrospect, however, it seems almost inevitable that a child who spent his early years traveling between nations, languages, and identities would eventually settle into a drama school. Pascal’s family fled Chile when he was nine months old in order to escape the Pinochet dictatorship. Pascal was born in Santiago in 1975. A person is shaped by that kind of early displacement in ways that no classroom could. He was eleven years old and had more…

Growing up, Patrick Mahomes lived in Whitehouse, Texas, a small town east of Tyler where high school football still takes place on Friday nights and everyone knows one another. It’s the type of place where an athlete gradually builds their reputation through practices, seasons, and little moments that don’t often make the highlight reel. For Mahomes, those years at Whitehouse High School were subtly pivotal, not only in terms of athletics but also in every aspect of a young person’s development prior to the public eye. Mahomes was more than just a quarterback at Whitehouse. He also played basketball and…

One fact about Karoline Leavitt that often gets overlooked in the commotion surrounding her daily press conferences is that she was the first member of her immediate family to earn a college degree. On the surface, that fact is quiet and unremarkable, but it reveals something genuine about her journey to this point. Not everything is explained by it. However, it’s worth pausing to consider it before continuing. Leavitt was raised in a family that owned a used truck dealership and an ice cream shop in Atkinson, New Hampshire. She played softball well enough at Lawrence, Massachusetts’ Central Catholic High…

Working with a three-year-old who has recently declared that putting on shoes is an act of war requires a certain level of patience. When most people imagine an early childhood educator, they don’t consider that. They envision crafts. A story circle, perhaps. They fail to envision a qualified expert, who has studied child psychology, language development, classroom management, and curriculum design for four years, quietly making choices that will impact that child’s education for the next twenty years. A bachelor’s degree in early childhood education is a four-year undergraduate program that prepares students to work with children from infancy to…

The part of Anthony Edwards’ story that takes place off the court, in a classroom, in between a difficult grade report and a decision that changes his life, is one that is never shared. Most people are familiar with him as the Minnesota Timberwolves’ electric shooting guard, the first overall pick, and the player who silences NBA arenas in the middle of a dribble. However, Atlanta, Georgia’s schools quietly and consciously laid the groundwork for that career. Edwards started playing basketball in high school at Atlanta’s Daniel McLaughlin Therrell High School. As a four-star prospect with a clear future for…

Around the time of a child’s third birthday, parents begin to ask a question they weren’t fully prepared for: now what? Suddenly, preschool becomes an urgent, specific, and surprisingly complex issue instead of a vague future concern. That question increasingly directs families in the Chesterfield and greater St. Louis area to Rockwood Early Childhood Education. Preparing very young children for school without making the experience feel like school is something that Rockwood Early Childhood has been quietly establishing a reputation for in the area. As you pass one of their classrooms, you’ll probably see children engrossed in a learning center…

Megan Fox has never claimed to be a school lover. She has stated unequivocally in interviews over the years that she thought formal education was mostly pointless, that she was bullied so severely in middle school that she had to eat lunch by herself in a restroom, and that by the time she was 17, she had completely given up on the traditional classroom. Even though it goes against the conventional narrative of success requiring degrees and credentials, there is something almost refreshing about that degree of honesty. Fox was raised in the neighboring town of Rockwood after being born…

When you look at Bryan Kohberger’s academic record, something stops you cold. On paper, it appears to be the profile of a serious, committed student, not because it’s unusual in any obvious way. an associate’s degree. psychology bachelor’s degree. master’s degree in criminal justice. Next, a criminology PhD program at a major research university in the Pacific Northwest. That is a substantial amount of education. That equates to years of self-control, reading, writing, and attendance. Nevertheless, Kohberger is accused of carrying out one of the most horrific campus killings in recent American history somewhere in the midst of all that…