A word from the editor: Working as a Team
The Circle Gazette team is growing! From the beginning, we have been excited to receive your wonderful submissions to the paper: articles, poems, interviews, stories, art, and so on. The process only starts there. After we receive your work, there is an enormous amount of effort made before it lands back in your hands as part of The Circle Gazette. We have to review and edit all of the submissions, organize them into sections, select front page articles, assemble all into the paper, fill in editorial details, print proof it, send the finished paper to print, promote the paper, and distribute it. We also publish an online version of the paper on The Enrichment Circle web site (enrichmentcircle.com). A lot of work for, what was initially, a very, very, very small team. If you’ve seen the 1964 movie of Mary Poppins, our initial team was a lot like Bert in that first scene of the movie, where he played the drums, the harmonica, cymbals, and a bicycle horn; all while dancing and singing. Fortunately, our team of newspaper “builders” has been growing  with every issue. Our editorial/production team is now complemented by people doing marketing and graphic design. This not only eases up the construction of the paper, it also makes it more enjoyable. Working as a team is always better. Every issue we learn more about editing, design and marketing.

Summer Fundraiser

Editorial Team

As an honorable non-profit organization, THE ENRICHMENT CIRCLE is proud to launch the Summer Fundraiser to Support THE CIRCLE GAZETTE!
Ten months of have gone by and they have yielded an amazing collection of articles, stories, poems, art and much more, by fantastic children from all over South Florida, Texas, Nicaragua and Venezuela! Our paper has been distributed where our authors reside and we have also had a small, but important, presence in: Kentucky, California, Virginia, New York and Montreal. (Cont...)

Editorial : Having faith in the unseen road ahead

by Nicole Bronson Smith
Guest Editor

Well... It's that time of year! For the past eight months you have been rolling out of bed, stuffing a pop tart into your mouth, taking a few strokes with the  toothbrush, putting on your outfit for the day and it was off to another day of school! Whether it be a public school, private school or homeschool you have been learning, note taking, memorizing, studying, writing papers, completing projects and taking tests for way too long now and you just plain need a break!Well, here it is! Summertime!Achance to free your mind and have some fun!

Editorial: Making the Ordinary Extraordinary

by Serena Serrano

"The sun was scorching hot, it baked my skin like a strip of bacon in a sizzling frying pan. The sawgrass blades were slicing my lower half, making tiny road maps of red across my legs. The glowing red welts from mosquito bites  completed the topography. I made a mental note to recommend pants when I wrote of this hike in my next newspaper submission. Despite the heat and discomfort, I was determined to push on. I had a deadline and I was after a photograph of the elusive pig frog. And so, here I was, sloshing through the marsh, swatting the buzzing mosquitoes, blistering in the sun, all for my next article."
In reality, most of us aren't spending our days hiking through swamps or flying to faraway places to interview foreign royalty, but even so, we do have interesting experiences to share with our community. Many of you may be thinking, "like what?" Well, I am writing to help you see the extraordinary in our ordinary lives. For example, we visit our community children's theater for the latest creative and talented performance, and catch the newest eye-popping 3-D
movie at the IMAX.... (cont...)

A few years ago, while looking for a new job, I realized the
importance of effectively communicating with others. Communication
is something we do on a regular basis. We communicate
at the dinner table with our family, we communicate
with the librarian while searching for reference material, we
communicate on the phone with family, we even communicate
while chatting on the internet. It's an activity we do so often it
would seem that we were all effective communicators, but most
of us need practice to improve our skills.
I knew I needed to learn how to communicate more effectively.
And so, I joined a club called the Toastmasters. The
Toastmaster club began in 1924 at the YMCA in Santa Ana,
California. Currently, it has clubs throughout Florida and
around the world. The clubs unite people who are interested in
learning communication skills and improving their public
speaking. Club members practice by giving speeches at their
own pace. Each speech is then critiqued by other members in
a positive manner, focusing on what was done right and what
could be improved.
Here are some public speaking tips that I learned as a member:
1. Pick a topic that interests you and learn as much as you
can about it.
2. Practice your speech and time yourself.
3. Know your audience.
4. Relax, pause, breath and smile.
5. Remain focused and concentrate on your message.