One of my favorite bits of Bethel tradition is our long-standing ability to pull off fantastic theater productions with a student body that hovers right around 500. Opening night of the second theatrical work of the semester, Agnes of God, is tonight. I went to the dress rehearsal last night to do a bit of photography (and get a sneak peek at the show!), and it was incredible. The actresses (Sara Volweider, Justine Erb, Audra Miller) almost disappeared into the portrayal of their characters, a chain-smoking psychiatrist, a nun and her Mother Superior. The production was haunting and full of makes-one-think moments.

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So I have lived in Kansas for my entire life and love the change of seasons. I would be bored without the constant changing of weather that makes Kansas what it is. This weekend we had our first “snow” of the season, which I don’t actually count as snow because it didn’t accumulate and it wasn’t below freezing. It definitely caused a lot of excitement on campus though.

This weekend and this week are also the second round of Humans vs. Zombies. If you don’t know what that is, don’t worry, it’s kind of a college campus thing. Like Facebook was. It’s basically a huge game of tag where you start with one “zombie” who “infects” (tags) the humans. The humans can stun a zombie by shooting it with a nerf gun or throwing a sock at it. The players are identified by a bandana around the head for zombies and a bandana around the arm or leg for humans. The humans are usually also identifiable by the huge nerf guns they tote around campus. I am not participating in this game because I hate being paranoid and would like to get to class without people chasing me, but a lot of my friends play and enjoy it.

This past weekend my own fall sports experience at Bethel College came to an end. We had our last meet of the season, the KCAC championship meet at Kansas Wesleyan. It was terrific weather, and both the men’s and women’s teams performed admirably. We exceeded all pre-season predictions to finish fifth for each team. The last meet saw some of the best performances of the season as we finished on a strong note. Now we turn the page on another part of life, looking forward to the trailing end of the semester and the upcoming class projects and finals that are increasingly staring us down. We have two and a half weeks of solid work ahead of us before we get our last pre-Finals respite, Thanksgiving Break. Read More

Since you are fully informed of the Halloween activities that took place on campus this weekend I won’t go in to that!

I want to talk a little about my student teaching experiences.  I am a senior History major and I am working towards getting a teaching certificate.  In order to do this I have to have many observation hours in the classroom.  For my school and community class we are visiting schools in nearby Wichita.  The school we are currently visiting is a bilingual school.  They teach both English and Spanish in equal amounts.  Some of the classes are in English and some in Spanish.  The school is a magnet school for Kindergarten through 8th graders.  They get to choose who they allow to go to school there.  They choose half of their students to be native English speakers and the other half are native Spanish speakers.  Read More