Author: Nola Jones

When something goes horribly wrong, a certain kind of silence descends on the school community. Not the emptiness-filled silence, but the kind that is heavy and full of questions that no one is quite sure how to ask just yet. In the weeks after March 9, when Lennox and Addington OPP responded to Bath Public School for what was initially described as a medical emergency, the Limestone District School Board found itself in a situation similar to that. A student in Grade 8 was transported to the hospital. The pupil failed to return home. A police investigation, criminal charges against…

Nowadays, you can find the same comforting scene in almost any preschool that markets itself as “Montessori”: wooden toys on low shelves, kids moving freely between stations, and a teacher sitting cross-legged on the floor rather than at a board. It appears correct. It seems forward-thinking. And that image is sufficient for many parents. However, scholars and an increasing number of teachers who have worked in these classrooms for decades are starting to pose an awkward question. The mere fact that a school displays the Montessori name above its entrance does not guarantee that the students enrolled are receiving instruction…

The early start of it all is almost unsettling. A child’s story begins to be silently written long before anyone can read it—not at birth, not at the first word or step, but at conception. For decades, researchers in the fields of neuroscience, biology, and developmental pediatrics have been attempting to figure out why some children thrive while others struggle. The answer they consistently come back to is surprisingly straightforward: the first 1,000 days. The brain grows at its fastest rate during that period, which lasts from conception to the child’s second birthday. Neural connections develop during those months at…

Something strange occurred in a conference room in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, in November 2022. More than 2,500 representatives from 147 nations, including heads of state, ministers, teachers, and researchers, convened under one roof to discuss children who are still unable to read, write, or, in many cases, tie their own shoes. If you believed the science in the room, the stakes were extremely high when it came to early childhood education. The pledge they left behind seems straightforward enough: allocate at least 10% of national education funds to pre-primary education. However, the gap between that Tashkent promise and the reality on…

Early in 2023, there was a particularly memorable moment. Standing in a dark green Alexander McQueen coat inside a Leeds market, Kate Middleton, recently crowned Princess of Wales, is laughing with strangers while promoting a campaign that most people were unaware of. Days before, Shaping Us had debuted at BAFTA with a speech about brain development and a Claymation movie. At the time, it seemed like the kind of modest royal initiative that receives courteous praise but little action. It’s possible that a lot of people believed that. After three years, it appears more and more incorrect. The campaign, which…

A certain type of anxiety lurks like a shadow over contemporary parenting. Are we doing enough? You see it at the playground, in pediatrician waiting rooms, and in the frantic Google searches at two in the morning. Enough reading, conversation, and stimulation. Over the course of two or three decades, the enrichment industry has subtly persuaded a whole generation of caregivers that a child’s brain needs constant, urgent input. flashcards. bilingual applications. Baby yoga. bins for senses. The underlying premise is that greater stimulation leads to improved development. It’s an interesting concept. Additionally, it seems to be seriously misinterpreting the…

Approximately 32% of teenagers in the United States fit the description of an anxiety disorder. Nobody outside of the clinical psychology community has given much thought to that figure, which has been sitting in the research literature for years. However, the American Psychological Association has begun to make a stronger statement that breaks through the typical academic hedging: what’s happening to American children today isn’t a phase that will pass, something they’ll outgrow, or a problem that families and schools can discreetly handle on their own. A federal response is required. Whether Washington is truly paying attention is the question.…

There was a faint smell of wet clay and tempera paint in the classroom. Every wall was covered in drawings, which were expansive and ambitious rather than the tidy, teacher-directed artwork you would anticipate from five-year-olds. The school parking lot as seen by a child. An attempt was made by someone else to map the cafeteria from memory. Principal Diana Morales appeared to be genuinely impressed by what her students had created rather than an administrator conducting a walkthrough as she stood in the middle of it all. By all accounts, this specific kindergarten wing at her Miami-Dade elementary school…

You notice things when you stroll through any underfunded preschool in rural Idaho or the lower parts of Montana. Alphabet-lettered wall borders are peeling off. classrooms that occasionally serve as storage spaces. teachers who are genuinely concerned but are overworked. It’s difficult to ignore the fact that the kids seated in those areas are getting a slower, quieter start in life due to their birthplace rather than any personal fault. While the youngest students—the three and four-year-olds who may require the most deliberate investment—remain an afterthought in half of the states, America has spent years debating education reform at the…

Researchers have been sitting quietly in a conference room somewhere in Yale’s Child Study Center with a conclusion that most parents aren’t prepared to hear. Your child’s first smartphone purchase wasn’t the beginning of the mental health epidemic affecting American teenagers. It didn’t start during the awkward violence of puberty or middle school. Researchers like Linda Mayes, MD, chair of the Yale Child Study Center, claim that the groundwork for what eventually manifests as teen depression, anxiety, and social collapse is being laid far, far earlier. Perhaps even before your child was able to construct a sentence. A well-known statistic…