Let's Dance! with Your Co-Editors Romy and Aisha
As a part of your job, you negotiate (“do the dance”) from the big picture (Los Angeles, California, United States issues, etc.) to the little picture (your constituency, Glendale Community College, etc.). What are the “steps” in your dance to connect these larger issues to our local needs and wants?
We continue to be inspired by our favorite gender bender queer king David Bowie with the March 2025 Issue with “Let’s Dance”.
Being Chaparral Co-editors provides ample opportunities to “dance” with so many different people as well as our regular columnists. Every month, we meet to discuss a theme for that issue (or connected themes as you have seen this year). And we are challenged to make sense of this ever-changing landscape of GCC, Los Angeles County, California, the United States and sometimes the world. If 2025 has shown us anything, it has shown that issues can quickly affect all levels of society, where preparing for disruptions, unknowns, and the occasional threat is a skillset every educator needs.
So, not to be a complete bummer and to get back on track, our steps of the “dance” every month look something like this:
- Collaborating openly and honestly, with the ultimate goal of sharing our thoughts at the moment: What are we seeing in our different disciplines and at GCC that can be further explored? Unions and labor dynamics are always on our minds, including how intersecting groups and communities can and do show up for one another, telling stories from people who impact our campus at every level, and what in the world is going on with GCC.
- Calling on our regular columnists and our community to contribute their thoughts: We look at the latest GCC announcements, town halls, meetings and faculty whisper networks for topics to cover. We also aim to provide multiple options for folks who have never submitted to Chaparral (hence all our lovely forms!).
- Editing and editorializing just a bit: We intentionally focus on the “co” part of being co-editors, so we actually read and work on all the content of Chaparral pretty closely. When we first started this in 2023, we updated our editorial handbook just to be as clear as possible about our intent, along with our Vision Statement to outline what we wanted to accomplish for these issues under our tutelage.
- Assessing how we can connect submitted content to our local issues, including figuring out how to get people involved: The “Your Action items” column, for example, was born out of our need to take what we see and hear, and give people ways to enact change and have impact both within and outside of GCC.
- Producing a legible and accessible issue: As you have seen, we try to balance pretty aesthetics with engaging yet accessible content. Let’s not forget, we have about 3 weeks to get that done in addition to our normal jobs. That means being a high communicator with our columnists, respectful to their process and time and keeping our own labor in mind. Priorities!
And then, once everything’s set in place, we end with a group dance to celebrate another beautiful issue! Obviously we skipped a few steps, but that is most of it! Now take a look at the rest of this issue and find out how other folks are “doing the dance”. We hope you enjoy this issue!
Aisha and Romy
