A little music in the yearbook room can pick up the spirits during these busy days.
Some people work better to music and others do not. Poll your staff to see how they like to work.
In December, the sun only shines about nine and a half hours a day – less in Alaska. Your yearbook staff may be getting to school when it’s dark and leaving when it’s dark. And the upcoming holidays only bring stress, as you and your students work to meet deadlines and prepare for the festivities.
So, take your own break before your school break with one of these ideas for celebrating the season and having fun.
The yearbook staff at Claremont High School in Claremont, Calif., has been using the fun idea of staff socks up on the wall to spread cheer around the yearbook room.
As a team-building exercise, staff members slip encouraging and lighthearted notes and thoughts into other staffer’s sock.
You can inspire your yearbook staff to write and come up with stories using these ideas for November. The type of writing might be a little different than yearbook writing, but it may get your writers to thinking about different angles to annual topics.
For Family Stories Month, have your staff write short feature articles on interesting aspects of their family, like an etiquette-breaking tradition of throwing the foil from baked potatoes into the trash can from the dinner table to see who makes it. It may generate story ideas. Consider doing this project on Nov. 15, which is I Love to Write Day.
Staff bonding can facilitate the completion of your yearbook. Bonding is beneficial because it will enable staff members to work through conflicts, share the workload and improve attitudes. Work just goes more smoothly when people understand and even like each other.
Most schools open again in August or September. On the first day, or in the first few weeks, it might be fun to have a kick-off activity for your yearbook class or club, or do one or two fun activities to help the staff bond. Here are ideas for both months.
Isn’t it summer yet? I guess I assumed that it was, due to the blitz of Iron Man 2 media I’ve been seeing everywhere. After all, to me, blockbuster action movies mean summer.
For your yearbook staff, summer can be a time to relax, recharge and reflect to get ready for next year. Unfortunately, that’s not all, though. There is work to be done – theme and cover ideas, new staff getting to know each other. And a great place to accomplish a lot of these things is at a summer workshop.
The challenge for a middle school adviser trying to implement yearbook best practices is a balance of giving students an opportunity to explore a new, enriching possibility while enlisting responsible individuals to produce a high-quality product. This all begins with the selection process.
As advisers, every time we change something about our yearbook operations, there is bound to be some resistance. I saw the need for one significant change: go from a May to an August delivery to include spring coverage. To make that significant of a change, though, I had to first change the class from an editor-centered to a student-centered class.
Few things are available for free, but new journalism teachers in more states can get assistance for free from the Journalism Education Association’s Mentor Program.
Keep your staff motivated and feeling good about their work. Do that by telling them and telling others. Reminding them of the good job they are doing will help overcome those challenging times when things are not going right, or a deadline is approaching and there is too much work.
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