Carrboro Commons 1 is ALIVE!

If you want to know what I've been working on the past few weeks instead of posting on my blog, here's your chance. The first issue of the Carrboro Commons, a twice-monthly publication from my Community Journalism class, is finally online!! We got everything wrapped up on Wednesday and I'm real proud of the first issue. It's got some great articles about a Carrboro Scrabble Club, Balloons and Tunes and Figure 8 Films, the company behind "John and Kate Plus 8" and "17 and Counting."

And, of course, there's my article about the Spanish APPLES Service-Learning programs in local elementary schools and the Carrboro community radio station:

When Maisch asked his class to discuss their anxieties about the task ahead, students offered an array of apprehensions: “I’m worried about them understanding us and us understanding them.”
“I’m worried about being really boring.”
“I don’t want them to dread me coming.”
“I’m afraid of the kids not respecting me.”

But this, according to Maisch, is what makes the APPLES Service Learning Program’s partnership with Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools’ Spanish-School Reading Partners program a “match made in heaven.”

“They both get something out of it,” Maisch said. “What the kids get out of it is not just the English; it is more importantly the sense that here is this big, fancy university student and their Spanish is awful and they want to learn how to speak Spanish and it’s like, ‘Hey man, I can already do that. That makes me feel good about who I am.’”

Also, I'm back to work at Uncharted Magazine to get some articles together for the second issue, which should be coming out in March. Look out for some articles from me about Vinyl Records and the High and Mighties. If you still haven't looked at the first issue, check it out here.

Until then.