After School at Keystone, the Learning Never Stops

The new issue of The Keystone Magazine arrives with a fresh look. From the editorial plan to the visual design, we introduced new ideas to offer readers a different kind of experience. This edition takes readers into the Keystone campus after school, into the many events and sessions happening throughout the Keystone Activities Program (KAP) where students explore, experiment, and grow. 

Our cover feature presents eleven vivid learning stories that capture students’ journeys through KAP. We see them push past their own assumptions and rediscover the many possibilities within themselves across a range of projects. We see them dig deeper into areas they care about and reach new levels of understanding. We see them cross disciplinary boundaries to solve real problems. And we see them collaborate with classmates who share their interests, committing fully to shared goals. 

These experiences may not always lead to immediate or measurable results, but what students gain from KAP takes root in quieter ways—becoming a lasting and meaningful part of their growing years.

We hope this issue of The Keystone Magazine helps readers recognize the unique paths of growth in themselves and others, and encourages them to value, and bravely pursue, the passions that matter most. 

A Look Behind Issue 13 of The Keystone Magazine

What do Keystone students do after school? How do KAP sessions expand their sense of what’s possible? And how do students make meaning of time and life through these experiences?

As you hold this issue of The Keystone Magazine, we hope you can sense the honesty behind it. More than 60,000 words and 11 stories come together in this issue’s cover feature. Through interviews and documentation, we follow Keystone students as they explore, experiment, and grow across different KAP programs. And from choosing topics to conducting interviews, from writing and editing to design and printing, every stage involved care and intention. The process is demanding but deeply rewarding.

By the time it reaches you, this magazine is more than printed pages; it becomes a conversation, a record of student growth, and a living expression of Keystone activities and projects. While creating this issue, the editorial team gathered many thoughts and feelings. We share them here in the hope that they spark new conversations of your own.

A New Way of Exploring The Keystone Magazine

Dialogues of Temporality: Keystone Visual Arts Calendar

If time marks our place in history, art reflects how we experience that passage. Art is one of the ways Keystone students explore who they are and how they see the world. For this issue, we gathered 14 artworks from Primary to Secondary students and created a single-page 2026 Art Calendar.

In the “Art Gallery” section, you can tear off the calendar along the dotted line and start your own dialogue across time.

Keystone Arts Nexus: An Art Dialogue on the Keystone Quadrangle

Remember the giant panda that appeared on campus this autumn?

For the inaugural article in Keystone Arts Nexus, we invited contemporary Chinese artist Zhao Bandi, who brought his panda-themed public installation “Brook” to Keystone. Through a mix of co-creation and conversation, he led students in what he calls an “art experiment” on the school’s quadrangle.

In Issue 13, we share More Than Just Pandas: Original Artworks along with a special conversation between Zhao Bandi and Keystone students. The works and the reflections around them carry a simple message: art isn’t distant. It can enter a school, enter daily life, and create a true connection.

Nearby Species Journal: A Window of Discovery on the Keystone Campus

How long did it take before you felt you really knew every corner of Keystone? And in the rush of daily school life, how often do we pause long enough to see our surroundings?

For this issue, we created Nearby Species Journal, a column filled with visual stories that invite us to slow down and look again—at the overlooked spaces on campus, at the life that inhabits them, and at the rhythms that shape our days.

Keystone Alumni Insights: A Letter from a Young Person to Another

After completing her undergraduate studies at Middlebury College, Phoebe Sun (Class of 2018) went on to earn dual master’s degrees—Public Administration at Columbia University and Public Policy at the National University of Singapore. Yet even as her experiences deepened, her questions did not fade. When long-set goals are achieved, what comes next? When others seem to find their direction, how does one discover her own?

In this issue of Keystone Alumni Insights, we share Phoebe’s piece, “Loss, At a Loss, and Still”, which reads less like an article but more like an open letter and unguarded reflection. Through her words, we see a young person sorting through doubt, taking steady steps through each question, and slowly assembling her own sense of purpose.

How a Magazine Is Born

The Keystone Magazine Special Exhibition

In time with the launch of The Keystone Magazine Issue 13, “Hours That Matter”, the Keystone Office of Marketing and Communications will launch on Tuesday (November 25) the “How a Magazine Is Born”, a special curation of the editorial and creative processes happening during the production of our school’s annual magazine. The exhibition will allow students and Keystone community member to understand the story behind The Keystone Magazine, through the creation process of Issue 13, including the brainstorming and drafting processes, printing of manuscripts and magazine images, as well as a video showing of the printing process and physical displays.

This curated experience will bring audiences closer to the larger story of The Keystone Magazine creation and feel the warmth of printed books in the age of artificial intelligence. 

“How a Magazine Is Born” will be held simultaneously in the PS Gallery, the HS Library, and the Student Center in the residential building from November 25 until the end of December 2025. All teachers and students are welcome to visit and interact deeply with The Keystone Magazine.

Get Your Copies!

The Keystone Office of Marketing and Communications will distribute and mail The Keystone Magazine Issue 13 to all Keystone community members.

For our readers outside of the Keystone community, please share this article to your WeChat Moments and scan the QR code below to register your information. We will arrange for a free copy as soon as possible.

The Keystone Magazine Issue 13 Team

Editor-in-Chief: Amelie Wan

Chinese editors: Zheng Muen, Yu Zaiqi

Event planner & Chinese author: Li Siyue

English editor and translator: Andy Peñafuerte

Translator: Allen Zhu

Design & illustration: Ci Jing

Photography: Liu Zheng, David Hanssen

Event support: Naomi Liu

Video production: Ivy Shen

Printing consultant: Qi Lianghaide, Fu Ying