November 2025
It has been a full and rewarding fall here at MBCI due, in part, to our Homecoming celebration in September. Part of our recognition of this milestone is a Legacy Wall installation in the link walkway. With photos and captions that highlight important benchmarks in our story, this wall helps us to visualize our journey over the decades.
This installation, along with our Homecoming preparations, have provided space for me to reflect upon those factors that help an organization and a community like MBCI to survive through generations and also to flourish.
MBCI began in 1945 with a vision – shared by families and the church – for providing rigorous education that would open doors for students while passing on the treasures of faith and heritage. This vision only became a reality, however, when embodied through hard work, sacrifice, and deeply-held conviction.
We know today, just as our community understood 80 years ago, that core values fall short unless we have the foundational and understood behaviours to go along with them. Our vision and mission today – for equipping students to learn, love, and engage with the world, within an environment grounded in meaning, purpose and belonging – will fall short unless we nurture the kind of student and school culture we need to translate our vision into reality.
And just as MBCI’s founders wanted to create a school with a difference, we continue to embrace the privilege and responsibility of shaping a learning environment that reaches beyond teaching and includes nurturing “the light” in our students.
The context within which we teach and learn in 2025 is shifting and changing in remarkable ways. While this can feel daunting at times, we believe in the ability of education and faith to shape our students in ways that equip them to move on from here to shape and serve the world.
We believe that the world needs young people who are prepared with the skillset required to solve problems, and also the character and habits they will need to serve and care for others.
We need young people who can think critically while also being able to sit at the same table with those who are different than us – to be respectful and even curious to listen. We need young people who can pursue individual goals while remembering their responsibility to others. In short, we continue to need vision and core values, embodied through character, practices, and behaviours.
At MBCI we’re working toward this goal by focusing on the kind of student culture that we nurture here. This is our training ground for learning how to engage with the world.
Our learning culture is built on a growth mindset, embracing a willingness to try, and try again, knowing that through practice, creativity and collaboration we can improve and become better problem solvers. We nurture curiosity and innovation in our students and a sense of ownership over their learning.
Our community culture is focused on the privilege and responsibility of taking care of one another; understanding and treating each other as beloved children of God. This doesn’t happen by accident, but through the relational and conflict transformation practices we choose every day with our students, and by designing culture-building activities to foster a sense of belonging.
Our faith culture is built upon the life and teachings of Jesus Christ, using that as our example for serving others with compassion. We know that as staff we need to model the behaviours for which we want to plant seeds in our students. And we provide the chance to practice Christ-like compassion through service learning.
Our Legacy Wall in the walkway does not have a conclusion. We have an entire wall facing it on which to continue the story some day! We are dedicated to a flourishing MBCI that serves our students, families and our world into future generations, guided by a clear vision and a steadfast commitment to embodying this vision through behaviour and action.
If you haven’t connected with us recently, I invite you to do so. Let us know if you want to come to campus for a visit or learn more about how our learning focuses on meaning, purpose and belonging. We’re always happy to hear from you and to grow and expand our alumni connections.
