Ashley Cleary currently serves as History Department Chair and Upper School history teacher at Abington Friends School in Jenkintown, PA.  Before teaching historical content through creating engaging...

Guns kill 125 Americans daily, and our national rate of gun homicide soars at 28 times higher than that of countries of similar economic status. For many, it can be hard to conceptualize the loss that...

You can’t miss Director of Libraries Toni Vahlsing; she’s easily recognizable by her large displays in the library and her props that are presented on the stage in the AFS productions. When I walked...

Passivity, compliance, peace: some might think that Quakerism is about skirting conflict and trying to resolve discourse in the quickest way possible. That couldn’t be further from the truth.  Quakerism...

As rising high school juniors and seniors begin to do their college research, their friends and family talk about getting into an Ivy League school, or according to Forbes, maybe even some of the “New...

October 6, 2025, marks the start of the Mid-Autumn Festival. It is a three-day harvest festival celebrated in East Asian and Southeast Asian countries that follow the lunar calendar, such as China, Vietnam,...

Over the last two years, Orla Maxcy ‘25 and Miranda Shandell ’25 have both founded and successfully run a thriving student newspaper at Abington Friends School, but the beloved editors-in-chief are...

AFS’ Director of Choral Music, Justin Solonynka, has been involved in our school since 2009 and has been teaching for even longer. Even before he found himself in this role at AFS, though, Solonynka...

Nicole Hood began her first year as head of Abington Friends School this fall. She had previously taught at a number of different schools, and she reminisces on what makes AFS different from those other...

The first time Arbor Day was celebrated in the United States was back in 1872. As settlers began to migrate to the west from the North and the South seeking new opportunities, people missed the presence...

“The largest domestic deportation operation in American history!” Donald Trump called out at a rally in Pennsylvania, and his promise was met with cheers from those who viewed that statement as something...

As we come to the end of our time as editors-in-chief, we begin to reflect on the time we've spent creating and working on The Blue and White. Now, in the months of April and May we are preparing to pass...