Heart and Soul Drum Academy teaches at the last school it can during the COVID-19 pandemic. The administrator flicks off the lights. The director shouts the count off and the groove emerges from the darkness making every bone in the chest vibrate with more vitality than the heart. With no distractions, all that matters is the rhythm and feel of the beat of the drums. Voices join in and all the parts weave together to make one song. A strong flam hit together ends the song and the lights come ba

Brooke Gottschalk wishes she could teach fifth-grade in person but still searches for creative ways to make class engaging. Elementary teacher Brooke Gottschalk threw a tennis ball to her miniature Aussie, Juno, who backflipped before catching it in his mouth. Her talent for the virtual talent show Dec. 4 wasn’t exactly her own, but it didn’t matter because all of her fifth-graders were smiling and laughing the whole time. The acts of dancing, singing and puppeteering allowed the scholars to sh

Ben Anderson commits to an idea that pops into his head and bikes 125 miles seeking to enjoy the journey and find adventure. Ben Anderson looked at the weather forecast for the weekend to decide if he could make his trip. Some unfavorable rainy weather pushed his trek off until the next weekend but it didn’t look much better. On Tuesday he made the call to leave Thursday afternoon and take advantage of the nice conditions. Since the idea popped into his head on June 10th, Anderson and his frie

The Bethel Election Shock Therapy Watch Party Tuesday night drew people from the left, the right, the politically curious and the just plain curious. Christopher Moore went to his professor’s home and joined his fellow students on couches and chairs for a watch party for the 1996 presidential election when he was a freshman in college. Now, as an Associate Professor of Political Science at Bethel, he is helping to host a watch party with other political science professors Andy Bramsen and Matth