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Jill Chittum
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If you’ve been involved with yearbook for more than a couple of years, you’ve probably heard and maybe even met Mike Taylor. Advisers and staff members alike are instantly drawn to Taylor and are proud to call him friend. Now friend has become an official title as Taylor was named one of this year’s JEA…
Updated by Walsworth Yearbooks One of my favorite memories of advising yearbook has very little to do with the actual production of the yearbook. Instead, it has to do with developing caring young adults. I was determined to teach my students that giving a portion of themselves to the world around them is more important…
Rethinking Your Yearbook Post-COVID Closing the door on the 2021 school year could not come soon enough for teachers across the country. It was a tough year, but if anyone made lemonade from lemons, it was classroom teachers. There was also good that came from one of the craziest school years ever, and I want…
“Every book that has ever been done at Northwest, if you’ll go look at it, you’ll find the fingerprints, the thumbprints, of everyone on this podcast,” yearbook adviser Susan Massy shared early on in the latest episode of the Ask Mike podcast, explaining the importance of having a yearbook family. Massy is the yearbook adviser…
How many new words and phrases have entered your vocabulary since March? Social distancing, mask mandate, virtual learning and now, time to add another phrase to the vocabulary: crowdsourcing. You may ask, “What is this crowdsourcing and why would I need it for the yearbook?” Let me explain. The staff wants to do a spread…
Let’s talk about quick reads. First of all, what is a quick read? You may call them another name – sidebar, secondary coverage, mod, even side salad. No matter what they are called, they have an objective; tell a story or give more information about a story in short, digestible bits. Given that the readers…
You have a theme. You have even created or are working on a cover. You might have worked on theme-related pages that are traditionally found in every yearbook, such as the endsheets, title page, opening, closing and division spreads. Now it’s time to do the storytelling, right? But wait. What about the theme? What about…
Mitchell Franz, from Yoakum, Texas, wanted to be a writer when he was a kid. He joined his school’s journalism program, where the small staff size mandated that everyone take photos for their publications. With encouragement from his adviser, Paula Adamak (now Walsworth Yearbooks rep Paula Griffin), he fell in love with scholastic journalism and…
A note from the producer: This episode of Ask Mike was recorded during the recent yearbook workshop held in El Paso, Texas. While editing the episode, I fell in love with the border community, despite never having visited. The love Mike Taylor has for El Paso is also evident. The young people interviewed in this…
Mike Taylor, CJE, believes yearbook theme copy should be so strong that the school principal can read from it at graduation. Writing strong copy for the whole school year is no easy feat considering themes are typically developed in October. Some schools are even working on their 2020 themes now – in the spring of…
