Welcome to the Lantern

By:Sara Io

Welcome to The Lantern! This is the first issue of the middle school newspaper. My name is Sara, and I am in 6^th grade. I really appreciate, Howie Chan, Autumn Callister, Brian Sun, Jakob Timmerman, Mr. Mark Lau and Mr. Schwagler for designing the Lantern with me and getting it where it is today. We wanted this paper, The Lantern, to be created as a platform because there are many students that don’t get to show their work and we felt that a newspaper would help students be recognized of their work. The Lantern’s purpose is to help students know what is happening in our school, community,  Guangzhou, and the world. There are articles about entertainment, your own wellbeing, and so much more. We hope to have a variety of articles so that the readers of middle school can be interested in many things and explore the topics that have been written. We hope The Lantern will have more people contributing, so that everyone’s work will be shown.

There were many steps that were followed to start the middle school paper. So many people were helping this paper to get where it is today. There was the logo, the name, the website, the team, all of that had to be done to start The Lantern. Read on to find out about the process in finding the perfect name and the logo.

THE ORIGIN OF THE NAME:

The name, The Lantern, was inspired from the concept, the Beacon, the high school newspaper, was trying to show. This way, it would seem as if The Beacon and The Lantern were different newspapers but still had a link together, because we are one school. After speaking to the IB high school English teacher, Ms. Jess Barga and the teacher editor of the Beacon, Ms. Katie Dean, we generated ideas of how both newspapers could be linked, a common concept. The Beacon was a name that wanted to display that it could shed light, while The Lantern was also trying to show the concept of shedding light and lighting the way. Shedding light was a common concept that both The Beacon and The Lantern wanted to display through the name.

At first, the middle school newspaper had many names. We generated a lot of ideas, this included, The Shining Rams, Illuminate, Enlighten, Starlight, and Northern Lights. All the names were thought of while thinking of the common concept, shedding light and lighting the way. When we first heard the name “The Lantern”, we considered it because a lantern could light the way and the path. I wanted articles in our newspaper to be guiding and I think that if the name was The Lantern, it would show that our newspaper was guiding a way and it was lighting a path, not only for the writers but also for the readers. Hence, that’s how The Lantern found its name.

THE LOGO:

We went through many logos before we chose our official logo of The Lantern. Brian Sun, from grade 6 was hand drawing all the logos that we went through. We didn’t have that many logos that were made until we found the logo now. The first logo that was made was when the idea of The Lantern first came up. It was when the name was just chosen and then very first draft of the logo was created. It was an amazing logo, but we wanted to see what else we could come up with. We went through our second logo and then a while after we found our official logo. It was perfect, it had enough color, a clean look, it was exactly what The Lantern needed. (Underneath, there are pictures of each logo from first to last, from top to bottom).

I hope that you enjoy reading the articles in our first issue of The Lantern. If you would like to be part of the team to make The Lantern better and a more interesting place for all students, please email me at 14ios@aisgz.org. Enjoy The Lantern!