Author: Nola Jones

There is a time, usually in the late summer, when parents slow down a little as they pass Holy Name School. Perhaps it’s the sight of a classroom window with a new bulletin board. Perhaps it’s a habit. For whatever reason, people are still drawn to a school like this because it is rooted, familiar, and leisurely. Holy Name School is not a single organization. From the streets of Ebensburg, Pennsylvania, to Henderson, Kentucky, to a peaceful corner of the Outer Sunset in San Francisco, Catholic communities all over the nation bear this name. Every campus is unique. However, they…

The same scene can be seen in practically every school district office on a Monday morning: phones ringing, schedules being rearranged before the first bell, administrators rushing to cover teacher absences. The majority of people outside of education are unaware of this commonplace crisis, which occurs thousands of times every week. However, Kelly Education has centered its entire mission around that exact issue. The business has worked exclusively in the field of education staffing for more than 25 years. Although this field may seem simple, it is actually fraught with difficulties. Each state has its own regulations for certification. Each…

This same headline appears on school Facebook groups and parenting blogs every summer. The Planet Fitness High School Summer Pass for 2026 is already available, and there isn’t much time left to take advantage of it, so it’s worth paying attention this year. Teens between the ages of 14 and 19 can enter a Planet Fitness location and work out for free starting on June 1 and ending on August 31. Not a period of trial. Not a preview with restricted access. The student and family are not charged for full use of the facility, which includes stretching areas, cardio…

There’s a certain quiet frustration that’s difficult to miss when you walk into any public school in a mid-sized American city. Parents who wish their child could attend a different school — maybe one that moves at a different pace, or teaches differently — but simply can’t afford the alternative. For many years, there has been a slow-burning tension in American education due to the disparity between what families want and what they can access. It is being attempted to be closed by a new federal program that will have actual funding beginning in January 2027. Any U.S. taxpayer may…

A 29-year-old Jharkhand woman spent years preparing for her master’s degree in Rome. The admission is hers. She is partially funded. She did not anticipate seeing the rupee gradually decline, almost silently, until the loan she had calculated months earlier was no longer sufficient to cover the program’s actual costs. It kept her up at night, she recently told a reporter. Although it is a minor detail, it seems to be the most accurate description of the current situation facing Indian students. In 2025, more than a million Indian students were studying overseas. Even though that figure is impressive on…

Near the end of Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion, two women return to a room full of people who have looked down on them for years. They are dressed in bright, handmade outfits that most people would laugh at. They don’t express regret. They don’t get smaller. They dance. It’s a brief scene in a comedy about nothing very serious, but for some reason it lasts longer than you might anticipate. The 1997 movie, which was directed by David Mirkin from a script by Robin Schiff, centers on Romy White and Michele Weinberger, portrayed by Mira Sorvino and Lisa…

One type of anime doesn’t make a big announcement. It doesn’t come with the hype of a fabled source material or the weight of cultural expectations. Episode after episode, it simply appears, subtly accomplishing what most shows find difficult: making you genuinely enjoy watching it. Greetings from Demon School! That type of anime is Iruma-kun. It has been acting in this manner since October 2019. The premise, on paper, sounds almost too absurd to take seriously. Suzuki Iruma, a 14-year-old human boy, is sold to a demon by his own careless parents. He is not consumed by the demon, Sullivan,…

When you watch a humanoid robot perform nine different tasks at a San Francisco tech forum for the third or fourth time, the novelty wears off and something more unsettling takes over. Not exactly fear. It’s more akin to the silent realization that the abilities we’ve been referring to as “digital literacy” for the past 20 years might already be out of date. When Faraday Future introduced its Embodied AI Developer Platform in late April, it appeared to be engineering that sensation, whether on purpose or not. There was more to the April 25 event in San Francisco than just…

One type of poverty does not appear on the front page. There is no abrupt crisis or dramatic collapse. With nothing else in the house, it appears as though a mother is consuming the leftovers from her toddler’s plate. It appears as unheated rooms, postponed travel, and a persistent, silent hum of financial anxiety that doesn’t go away at night. That is New Zealand’s cost-of-living crisis, which has been plaguing families long before the most recent budget discussions started. The World Organization for Early Childhood Education’s chapter in the nation, OMEP Aotearoa, has been watching this develop with increasing concern.…

There’s something peculiar about the artificial intelligence debate in schools. The majority of it occurs at the abstract level, such as policy conferences where education officials carefully discuss “balancing opportunity with risk,” think pieces about personalized learning, and opinion pieces alerting readers to the epidemic of cheating. In the meantime, decisions are already being made in real classrooms. After playing an AI-themed game created in collaboration with Amazon, a third-grader in Massachusetts receives a Certificate of Completion. Before they have typed a single word on their new Chromebooks, sixth graders at a public middle school discover Gemini pre-installed and nudging…