The power of language
How have you experienced gendered language? Has certain language hurt you or made you feel welcome and safe? These are some of the questions that students reflected on in a recent peer-led survey about Canadian Mennonite University (CMU). Last semester, Jubilee Dueck Thiessen surveyed the CMU student body about experiences of gendered, binary and heteronormative…
‘She cared a lot about everybody’
Gail Schellenberg influenced the lives of thousands of people during her career as a teacher and principal in Mennonite high schools across Canada, and later as executive director of Initiatives for Just Communities (IJC). She died from cancer in 2020, but her legacy lives on in people’s memories. Now, it will live on in a…
Families negotiate education during pandemic
Mary Anne Neufeld of Vineland, Ont. teaches Kindergarten in the public school system and was surprised at the beginning of the school year that 92 percent of students returned to the classroom instead of taking online classes. This was a tough decision for many parents. Staff members at Neufeld’s school were nervous, but the professional…
Learning to live with technology
The internet and the myriad technologies that have accompanied its rise to media supremacy have transformed the way people communicate. For better or worse they have also transformed education. As principal of Rosthern Junior College (RJC), a Mennonite high school in Rosthern, Sask., Ryan Wood has seen the impact of technology in the classroom and…
Boshart next AMBS president despite expressed concerns
David W. Boshart, Ph.D., of Wellman, Iowa, has been appointed the next president of Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary (AMBS), Elkhart, Ind., effective Jan. 1, 2020, following a period of “extended discernment” that included “outreach to and listening sessions with the AMBS community,” according to board chair Bruce Baergen of Edmonton. Boshart succeeds Sara Wenger Shenk,…
Cycling into the future
When Philip Martin discovered several years ago that “cycling education in Canada is almost non-existent,” he set out to do something about it. With the help of his students at Sheppard Public School in Kitchener, Ont., he designed a program that would fill the gap. It was those students who pushed him to make the…
Same Quest DNA, new flexibility for students
Starting this fall, Quest, Columbia Bible College’s longstanding one-year discipleship program, is adopting a more flexible approach to its academic requirements in order to provide a richer experience for incoming students. Under the current model, Quest students complete a high academic load while also spending 40 days on off-campus excursions that include alpine backpacking, tall-ship…
The adventure of leadership
I got my first taste of journalism at a Mennonite school. As a second-year English major, I began writing for The Weather Vane, the student newspaper at Eastern Mennonite College (now Eastern Mennonite University), in Harrisonburg, Va. The following year I accepted the challenge of becoming co-editor of the features section. Since those years, I’ve followed…
Lessons in the Kinderforest
About once a month, 24 students from the Goshen College Laboratory Kindergarten class—a partnership between the college’s education department and Goshen Community Schools—spend the day climbing trees, building shelters and making mud pies in Witmer Woods. While it may sound like the children are given a whole day of recess, they are actually participating in…
The arts remind us to ask what it means to be human
At Conrad Grebel University College, students engage the arts in two ways. Those enrolled in academic programs immerse themselves in questions central to the human experience: how to compose a moving work of music, how to understand the Bible in the 21st century or how to effect peaceful social change. As they learn their discipline,…
