Author: Nola Jones

San Antonio is not a quiet city. It expands, grows, and bears the burden of one of the biggest school districts in Texas. Tens of thousands of students from a wide range of backgrounds and access levels are served by San Antonio ISD throughout a large portion of the city. It’s not an easy task to get them all into the same digital learning environment. In actuality, it’s quite difficult. And for some reason, the solution turned out to be surprisingly straightforward: one launchpad, one login, and one starting point. ClassLink is that solution, and within SAISD, it has evolved…

In Taylor Swift’s 2022 NYU commencement speech, there is a detail that most people overlooked. She acknowledged that she had previously set the conclusion of her “Love Story” music video at her “fantasy imaginary college,” a made-up college campus. She was unable to live the dream, so she recorded it. More truth about her relationship with formal education can be found in that one confession than in any headline or press release. Swift did not attend a university. That portion is fairly easy. What’s more intriguing is how she reached adulthood without it and what that journey looked like in…

The fact that Florence Pugh, one of the most naturally talented actresses of her generation, felt like she was in the wrong room for the majority of her school years is subtly telling. It’s not exactly the wrong school. The wrong life, that’s all. Oxford provided the backdrop. But she didn’t get much more from the classrooms. Pugh was born in Oxford, England, on January 3, 1996, into a creative family. Her mom was a dancer. Her dad was a restaurant owner. There were four kids in all, and according to most reports, the house exuded energy. Due to Pugh’s…

In Ljubljana, Slovenia’s Miran Jarc Primary School, a picture is displayed on a wall. It depicts a young Luka Doncic with the following quote attributed to him: “I never dreamed of success.” I worked for it.” It’s an eye-catching sight for a school hallway, not because honoring a well-known alumnus is unusual, but because everyone who knew Doncic there will attest to the quote’s veracity. It’s not as common as it seems. Nestled in a verdant Alpine valley, Ljubljana is a city of about 300,000 residents. Basketballs ringing on the pavement, schoolchildren at recess, quiet streets. At the age of…

Beneath highlight reels and contract numbers, there is a detail about Micah Parsons that, once you notice it, alters your perception of the entire narrative. In 2021, he received his degree from Penn State. Not during an off-season when things slowed down, not after four years of quiet on campus. He opted out of his junior season, so he did it while also getting ready for the NFL Draft. That’s a big deal. That’s someone quietly determining that completion is important. The mid-sized state capital city of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, where Parsons was raised, is located along the Susquehanna River. It’s…

Most people have a time during their time in college, usually in the last semester, when they start to feel uneasy about the future. Brad Pitt did not receive a resume or a job offer as a result of that moment. It resulted in a car, a suitcase, and a drive toward Los Angeles with no assurances. The story seems almost careless because he was only two credits away from earning a journalism degree from the University of Missouri. Naturally, it appears to be brilliant in retrospect. It was probably frightening at the time. Although Pitt was born in Shawnee,…

On a Tuesday morning, you can find a student using Schoology somewhere between the announcements in the hallway and the rush for Chromebook chargers in practically every Frederick County school. It’s now as commonplace as opening a textbook, with the exception that the textbook now keeps track of whether you’ve read it, responded to it, and received a score high enough to advance. For what seems like a straightforward reason, Frederick County Public Schools adopted Schoology as their official learning management system: a single platform for managing courses, grades, communication, and teamwork for grades PK through 12. In reality, it’s…

The way Finn Wolfhard’s educational background fits so well into the larger framework of his life is subtly striking. After landing a role as big as Stranger Things, the majority of young actors quickly abandon traditional education, engulfed by press tours, sets, and the peculiar machinery of celebrity. Although Wolfhard didn’t completely avoid that attraction, his educational journey—rooted in Vancouver, molded by Catholic principles, and interrupted by the demands of early fame—tells a tale that merits further examination. Wolfhard was born in Vancouver, British Columbia, on December 23, 2002, and was raised in a home that obviously valued education. His…

A 1964 black-and-white photo conveys more information than the majority of political biographies. Standing in his uniform from the New York Military Academy, Donald Trump has twelve medals on his chest that he borrowed for the photo. Most of them, he hadn’t earned. Nevertheless, he borrowed them, put them on, and looked directly into the camera. Even though it’s tiny and often ignored, that picture manages to convey a person’s entire personality. The Kew-Forest School in Forest Hills, Queens, was the unremarkable starting point of Donald Trump’s education. Detentions there reportedly became known as “Donny Trumps,” a sign of either…

Isabela Merced talks about a moment that sticks in your memory. Seven years old, she was dropped off in her mother’s hometown of Huancayo, Peru, to relearn a language that she had been gradually losing due to assimilation back in Cleveland, Ohio. It infuriated her. She described it as a punishment to trade a summer in the Northern Hemisphere for a winter in the Southern Hemisphere. However, something opened up somewhere in that discomfort. She returned with a sense of identity that most children her age couldn’t have expressed if they tried. She was sharper and more grounded. Perhaps the…