It is always with some hesitation that a wholly original approach is taken in developing a yearbook theme. Given the diversity inherent to our west Texas border town of El Paso, the 2009 Franklin High School yearbook staff and I sought to reflect the many dimensions of living on a border by choosing a theme relevant to our existence.
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Even outstanding quotations should not be out standing alone. Quotations are like grout: we cannot leave them out. Grout fills the crevices to make the wall or floor complete, but it is no substitute for tile. Quotes can fill in gaps in a story, but they cannot be substituted for a story.
For yearbook students and advisers, awareness of legal issues is essential in balancing rights with responsibilities. They need to know media law and how to find out more about media law.
Lesson ideas using photo websites that teach students how to judge effective images and write their reactions.
Photo web sites that provide good examples, inspiration, great discussions, and information on jobs and ethics.
One of the most useful tools in the yearbook room is the lead notebook. At the beginning of each year, I make a standing assignment of 10 “knock your socks off” leads per week from each writer. They must cut these out of newspapers or magazines and glue them onto a piece of notebook paper. I give the students credit each week for the 10 leads by just glancing at the papers; then I put them in the big red lead notebook that everyone uses. Periodically, I grade them carefully, just to let them know I am serious. And only the sheets with 10 outstanding leads receive an A.
One bad habit that just drives me nuts is misplacing things. I even put my keys on a big, pink, stretchy bracelet only to get in the habit of taking it off everywhere – in the darkroom, by a computer, at the overhead projector…. Many staff members seem to have similar habits requiring them regularly to hunt for notebooks and pens.
Give a well-organized, enthusiastic, go-getter type the responsibility of advising the yearbook and she still may be reduced to a sniveling, jumbled-mumbling zombie by the second deadline (it is impossible to remember first deadlines – too hideous). What is it about yearbook deadlines that makes them so elusive many schools admit missing some, most or even all of them during the year?
What’s the big deal about libel and school yearbooks anyway? In the history of the United States, there is no reported court decision anywhere that a high school has been held libel for content printed in its student media, according to the Student Press Law Center in Arlington, Va.
When it comes to libel, the law does not have a sense of humor.
A doctored photograph showing a classmate exiting a pornographic bookstore may be meant as a joke, but when the boy’s mother sees it in the yearbook, she will not be laughing. Neither will the court.
