Boiko Eyes, Issue #1!

It took longer than we expected -- we had to overcome a flu epidemic, a school quarantine, a lot of skepticism and other obstacles -- but today, we finally distributed the first issue of "Boiko's Eyes." This was the project that Selma and I started back in February. The final product was a simple newsletter. The front page is above, and here's the second page:



We also published the newsletter in Russian. The students turned in both English and Russian versions of their stories. Selma and I edited the English versions; Yulia helped tremendously with the Russian copy. (And Yulia helped with the headlines, because puns like "Boiko students get their kicks playing sports" doesn't translate.)



The students who worked on the paper seemed happy -- and their schoolmates snatched up copies. (I printed 200 -- half in Russian and half in English.) The school administrators also seemed pleased.

Where do we go from here? At the staff meeting today, the students agreed to publish one more issue before school lets out for the summer. Our plan is to distribute the paper on May 21 -- but to do that, the students will have to submit their stories by May 7. That's a tight deadline; there's a weeklong "worker's rights" holiday beginning May 1. I hope the success of this first issue will motivate students to work hard on Issue #2.

(And yes, when I designed "Babushka's Bugle," I used the same template as I did for "Boiko's Eyes." Hey, if it ain't broke, don't fix it! For Boiko, I layed out the English version first, and then flowed the Russian copy into the same space. One thing I discovered: Russian takes up about 20% more room than English -- the words are longer, or you often need two Russian words to express one English word. So I had to use a smaller font to accommodate the Russian text.)