She is a regular contributor to The New York Times Education Life section and former education columnist for The Boston Globe. Her stories have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Boston Globe Magazine, The Christian Science Monitor and other publications. Pappano is founder of the New Haven Student Journalism Project, which helps second- to eighth-graders produce a real newspaper, and is writer-in-residence at the Wellesley Centers for Women. She has a bachelor’s degree from Yale.