Author: Nola Jones

On any given Tuesday in the early 2010s, you most likely wouldn’t have noticed Sean O’Malley if you had entered Capital High School in Helena, Montana. Not because he was invisible, but rather because he spent a significant portion of his time in the In-School Suspension room or working through Credit Recovery classes, which are academic rescue programs that schools covertly provide to students who aren’t quite sure what to do. This child had no college recruiting letters written for him. He was not being referred to as a future champion. The same Sean O’Malley recently defeated Aiemann Zahabi in…

About halfway along the lengthy gravel driveway leading up to Tring Park School, first-time visitors experience something. You see ballet dancers performing behind a floor-to-ceiling window through the trees, and you start to get the impression that this place, whatever it is, doesn’t exactly adhere to the norms of a typical school. You never get rid of that feeling. Built around a mansion created by Sir Christopher Wren in 1685, Tring Park School for the Performing Arts is situated on a sixteen-acre estate in Hertfordshire, England. Rolling lawns, oak staircases, and ceiling friezes are examples of architecture that leaves you…

Yan Diomande used to conduct drills on a high school soccer field in northeastern Florida that were largely ignored by outsiders. It’s not like Yulee High School is a football factory. It is located in Nassau County, a peaceful area of Florida that most people travel through on their way to another location. That’s where Diomande’s American chapter started, not under stadium lights or in some prestigious academy compound, but in a setting where being present and making an impression are two completely different things. At fifteen, he came from Abidjan. Most teenagers find it confusing to move countries at…

A teenager once wrestled through the kind of winters that don’t make the highlight reels at a gym somewhere in Clovis, California. No lights in the arena. No noise from the crowd. Just weight loss, early mornings, and a quiet, unyielding refusal to fit in. Josh Hokit was that teenager, and if you watch him fight now—he was undefeated in ten professional fights and ranked fifth in the UFC heavyweight division as of April 2026—you can’t help but think of those high school days at Clovis High School. Hokit was not originally from Clovis. Before his family moved, he was…

Why Are So Many Parents Still Concerned About Fiji School Term 3? It began with a circular, as these things usually do. An internal administrative document intended for ministry staff and school administrators somehow made its way into the public eye. It was misread, misinterpreted, and shared on social media at a rate that facts hardly ever keep up with. In a matter of days, parents all over Fiji began to worry about whether or not their kids would be attending school during Term 3. Navin Raj, Permanent Secretary for Education, says the short answer is “yes.” Officially, without a…

When things aren’t going well in a music classroom, there’s a certain kind of silence that occurs—the awkward pause between a teacher’s lesson and a room full of students staring blankly at software that costs more than their parents’ monthly grocery bill. If you visit enough schools, you’ll notice it right away. It used to cost a lot to be silent. However, an increasing number of music educators are recently figuring out a way around it, and the cost is surprisingly low: free. Even though it hasn’t exactly made headlines, BandLab for Education has been developing something significant over the…

Somewhere in Google’s Sunnyvale headquarters is a conference room that gained some notoriety in April of last year. Workers entered, took a seat, and wouldn’t leave. They weren’t calling for better pay or benefits. They were calling on their employer to cease doing business with a government that they perceived to be carrying out crimes. Trespassing charges were brought against nine of them. Twenty-eight were let go. Eventually, the figure reached fifty. Even by the increasingly turbulent standards of Silicon Valley, it’s difficult to ignore how unusual that is. One of the most contentious business agreements in recent memory is…

Around the second week of CS50’s Introduction to Artificial Intelligence with Python, things start to feel less abstract. You’re looking at an A* search algorithm on your screen when all of a sudden you realize that this is the same logic that most likely instructed your maps app to stay off the highway this morning. Over 1.6 million enrolled students have reportedly experienced that feeling, which is equal parts strange and electric, thanks to Harvard’s most ambitious online AI program. This course has accumulated gravity so subtly that it’s difficult to ignore. No big-budget advertising campaign or celebrity endorsements. David…

The closure of Drumduan School has a subtle, devastating quality. The slow, sinking kind that occurs when something truly rare vanishes from the world without enough people noticing in time, rather than the dramatic, headline-grabbing devastation of a scandal or an abrupt collapse. Drumduan was never your average school, perched above Forres on the Moray Coast in the kind of northeastern Scotland that gives you the impression that the wind has opinions. No tests. No uniforms. No desperate attempt to improve scores on standardized tests. For forty years, the tiny Steiner Waldorf school nestled into Drumduan House drew families who,…

Dabo Swinney has never been one to tuck his thoughts away in his back pocket. The head coach of Clemson, who has won two national titles and spent decades watching from grass fields to NIL battlegrounds, has witnessed college football change into something he hardly recognizes. And lately, he’s been expressing this clearly, loudly, and with such specificity that it’s difficult to write him off as just another traditional coach who opposes change. In a recent conversation with Chris Low of On3 Sports, his frustration erupted, and the quote that emerged was remarkably clear. “The only thing worse than having…