![](https://yellowbarn.org/sites/default/files/styles/artist-image/public/musician-images/bonnie.png?itok=5DJwhSHP)
Bonnie Mennell (Putney, VT) has worked as an educator for the last 39 years, focusing on creating inviting, vital, collaborative “containers” for self-directed experiential learning in community—whether that community is a language classroom, a department meeting, a language teacher training session, or a weekend training in The Way of Council. Awareness of self, of others, of community, of the communication dynamics that contribute to the type of work relations we all long for are central to Bonnie’s work. Her current work at SIT Graduate Institute includes coordinating the Language and Culture Department’s writing lab, advising MAT students on their independent professional projects, and teaching "Organizational Behavior I: Building Multicultural Teams". Bonnie also is a trainer with the Ojai Foundation’s Center for Council Training in Ojai, California, and an independent educational consultant in teacher education. In Bonnie's early career, her preferred medium was watercolors. Today the materials that Bonnie uses are predominantly natural ones (twigs, leaves, grass; shells, bones, skulls; stones, seaweed, thorns), united into larger sculptures bound by a new connective tissue: recycled newspapers, calendars, and other paper that she reconstitutes into her own handcrafted paper.