Author: Nola Jones

On Sunday nights, a specific type of anxiety strikes. The impulse to open an app, check a number, and either feel relieved or quietly spiral is more specific than the general, nebulous dread of Mondays. StudentVUE is that app for millions of students in American school districts. A portal that is so ingrained in everyday academic life that checking it has practically become automatic, similar to looking at a weather forecast you’re not sure you want to see. On paper, StudentVUE is an Edupoint-built student information system that is linked to school districts via the Synergy Education Platform. It generates…

Jeffrey Epstein never obtained a degree. Not from Cooper Union, where he spent the late 1960s studying advanced mathematics. Not from the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at NYU, where he subsequently enrolled in courses on mathematical physiology before discreetly leaving without finishing anything. Nevertheless, by his mid-twenties, he was teaching calculus in front of pupils at one of Manhattan’s most prestigious private schools, chalk in hand. A dropout teaching at the Dalton School, the kind of school where tuition fees alone signify entry into a particular class of New York life, has an almost darkly humorous quality. Epstein was…

You see the same things when you enter practically any low-income pre-primary classroom, whether it’s in rural Mississippi, Karachi, or Nairobi. rooms that are packed. One weary teacher overseeing fifteen pupils. There are no books on the shelves. A cracked chalkboard, perhaps. And kids, who have no idea about any of this, are merely attempting to make sense of their surroundings. It’s difficult to avoid the impression that societies’ priorities in recent years have been fundamentally flawed. Right now, there isn’t much debate about the science. The human brain develops at a rate that will never be matched again during…

The origin story of Benson Boone has an almost disarming quality. Not because it’s particularly unusual, but rather because it’s so stubbornly ordinary—a child in a small town in the Pacific Northwest, competitively diving, playing tennis, and attending class like everyone else—until one afternoon in a high school auditorium, the entire course of his life was subtly altered. Boone was raised in Monroe, Washington, a small city about 35 miles northeast of Seattle where the pace of life hasn’t quite caught up with the urban sprawl that is slowly spreading out from the city and the mountains begin to feel…

In Manhattan, there is a building close to Columbus Circle where students congregate in between classes, carrying laptops, with the intention of going somewhere. It lacks the name recognition of NYU, which is a few miles south, or Columbia, which is a few miles north. However, it deserves a more thorough examination than most people do because of what occurs inside and what is produced. Founded in 1955, the New York Institute of Technology is commonly referred to as NYIT or New York Tech. Alexander Schure founded it using a European polytechnic model, which was pragmatic, career-focused, and based on…

Every parent is familiar with a certain type of frustration. The late cancellation of a school trip. The after-school program that abruptly and silently vanishes. The ten-year-old’s backpack contained the permission slip that, for some reason, never made it home. A small Leicester-based business spent years trying to find a solution to that exact issue, and for a while it actually appeared to be working. With a modest address on Darker Street in Leicester, Teachers2Parents created what many UK schools described as the simplest communication tool they had ever used. Over 10,000 schools in Britain trusted the platform at its…

In one of Mckenna Grace’s interviews, she jokes that she has never gone to a school prom. She’s been actively attempting to persuade her friends who attend regular schools to invite her as a guest, not because she missed out. It’s a minor, nearly insignificant detail. However, it gives you an accurate picture of her childhood, which was inquisitive, unusual, and simultaneously accelerated and unfinished. Born in Grapevine, Texas, in 2006, Grace secured her first commercial job at the age of five. She was sharing scenes with Chris Evans by the age of twelve. There was never much space for…

It doesn’t seem like much when a teacher first sits down with a four-year-old and silently observes how they stack blocks or answer a question about a picture book. There was no exam table, no number two pencils, and no wall clock. However, most parents are unaware of the greater significance of what is happening at that precise moment. One of the most important aspects of early education is preschool assessment, which is the meticulous, continuous process of observing and recording young children’s development. And a lot of people still misinterpret it. It makes sense that people often associate the…

When discussing Ariana Grande, most people completely ignore one particular detail. The Manchester tribute, the whistle notes, and the consecutive number ones are all mentioned. They rarely discuss the fact that she virtually created one of the most prosperous careers in contemporary music while attending a Florida preparatory school while physically standing on a Broadway stage in New York City. On June 26, 1993, Ariana Grande-Butera was born in Boca Raton, Florida. On the surface, her early years appear to be a fairly typical South Florida childhood, but by the time she was eight years old, she was already performing…

There’s a video somewhere on the internet of Tyler Robinson, fresh out of high school, sitting in front of a camera and reading aloud a merit scholarship offer from Utah State University. He appears pleased. Maybe a little nervous. It’s the kind of video a mother saves forever, the kind that gets replayed at Thanksgiving. Now, it’s difficult to watch it without experiencing an odd weight that falls somewhere between anger and grief. Robinson, now 22, stands charged with the aggravated murder of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, shot dead on September 10 at Utah Valley University in Orem. The man…