The flyer for the Clarke Central High School Spanish Book Club’s celebration of its multilingual magazine “Nexus: Connecting cultures” is shown. The magazine was created with the help of the University of Georgia’s Glickman Challenge Grant, which has allowed the club to facilitate several activities over the past three years, with the magazine being the culminating product. “(Myself and club members) were thinking, ‘What can we do to find some closure to conclude these three years (with the grant)?’” Spanish Book Club co-sponsor Christian Cordon said. Graphic courtesy of Christian Cordon
For their last year of receiving UGA’s Glickman Challenge Grant, the CCHS Spanish Book Club has worked to compile a magazine as a way to highlight student’s cultures.
Three years ago, the Clarke Central High School Spanish Book Club entered a partnership with the University of Georgia Department of Language and Literacy Professor Dr. Lou Tolosa-Casadont through the university’s Glickman Challenge Grant.
This grant has allowed the club to create a space for students to learn about Hispanic culture and fund projects such as a mural installation during the 2024-25 school year, but will only be allotted to the club until the end of the 2025-26 school year. In their final months with the grant, the club has worked to create a schoolwide multilingual magazine.
“(Myself and club members) were thinking, ‘What can we do to find some closure to conclude these three years (with the grant)?’” Spanish Book Club co-sponsor Christian Cordon, a CCHS world languages department teacher, said. “(The) mural that we did last year says ‘Remember your roots.’ So, we want that to be the theme, (to) remember why you work (hard) and where you came from, for students to share their stories.”
“I want this magazine to spark empathy and admiration for other cultures, not just acknowledge diversity but also celebrate it.”
— Sofia Acosta,
CCHS Spanish Book Club Vice President
The process began with Cordon and Spanish Book Club co-sponsor Francisco Soler consulting with iliad Literary-Art Magazine adviser Daivd Ragdale, Editor-in-Chief Margo McDaniel and Managing Editor Finely Sleppy. The club also hosted a poetry-writing workshop with CCHS English department teacher Grace Crumpton and reached out to students and teachers from CCHS world language classes to submit pieces.
“My goal is for it to be published, to have physical copies that students can share with their parents and with their families, and have some for the students here in the school to have something,” Cordon said. “The idea is to have as much representation of the school as possible.”
The first edition of the magazine, which is themed “Nexus: connecting cultures” is set to be released in the last week of April, with a celebration held at 3:45 p.m. on April 28 in the CCHS Media Center, where students published have been invited to read their pieces. For CCHS Spanish Book Club Vice President Sofia Acosta, a senior who has been involved with the club since she was a freshman, the magazine represents a culmination of her experience in the organization.
“I hope this magazine makes every student and teacher at CCHS feel like their culture and language matter and are welcome in our school,” Acosta said. “I want this magazine to spark empathy and admiration for other cultures, not just acknowledge diversity but also celebrate it.”
