Reaching the end

My name is Shahbaz and I am the managing editor of the boys newsroom. In mid-July, after our Dawn field trip, we began writing articles for our newspaper, the first student publication of the Al-Imtiaz Academy. Our first task was to decide the name of our paper. In order to be fair, Ms. Mariya asked everyone to come up with at least three ideas after which we voted on the top five. The girls did the same and the names were then exchanged for another vote. Among the top choices were: The AIA Crescent, The AIA Exclusive, Al-Imtiaz Academy News, The Aimers, and The Al-Imtiazian.

In the end, The Al-Imtiazian won.

Writing articles was challenging because we had to apply everything we had learned. We had to interview to obtain information. We researched background information on the Web. We had to make sure we were accurate. We had to verify our facts and double check the spellings of people’s names. We had to be careful we didn’t misquote anyone. And we had to write interesting ledes. We had two weeks to do this before layout—which is this week.

Our biggest challenge, however, was dealing with power outages. When the electricity would go out, sometimes our unsaved data would be lost. Our valuable class time was also wasted because there was little to do without computers. Still, Ms. Mariya entertained us and made use of every minute. We played games, wrote headlines for our articles, took pictures we would need for the newspaper, or discussed announcements.

During the trivia games, there was a lot of competition between the two teams: Rising Stars and Abbot Lions (my team). Yesterday, the Rising Stars beat us by a few points. Our two class photographers enjoy taking pictures of the entire class, which is fun. The editor in chief, Yousaf, and I always make sure the boys are doing their assigned task. The journalism program is about to end, and we are so close to the finish line. We are almost there!

By Shahbaz Saleem