Judy Pierce feels like she cannot catch a break. Five years ago, Pierce took over the yearbook program at Cedarcrest High School in Duvall, Wash., and from day one, management of the class came with complications.
I am addicted to conferences. I love to attend the workshops and conventions, where I can learn about new ideas for yearbooks, software and writing. I always leave with something I can use in my classroom. However, when I get back into my routine of grading papers and preparing lessons, my new-found ideas get lost in the shuffle.
If you want something done right, do it yourself, right? Too bad the world of yearbooks doesn’t work that way. However, an effective use of your editorial staff can help you to be well on your way to a great publication – done right.
Veteran advisers understand the importance of summer workshops to their yearbook program. New advisers or reluctant staff members may not fully comprehend the benefits of getting a jump-start on the next yearbook.
Recruiting a top-notch yearbook staff is important to the success of a yearbook program – just ask advisers who have no control over the process.
There are many ways to tell a story, but to entice readers to linger over the yearbook copy, the best writers follow basic story-telling rules. Most of those rules revolve around the stories of the people in the school. The events may not change year to year, but the people do, and how they participate in and react to those events makes each year unique. Consider these basic points ofcopy writing to tell the story of those people.
Whether we have a pleasant or a horrible experience creating a yearbook is not influenced by our quality of layouts or photographs. Most of us can even accept it and carry on if our page software occasionally does not behave. What really makes you despise or love this whole process is how organized you are.
High school yearbooks and newspapers provide students with real-world training and an opportunity to create and showcase their work. Despite these similarities, viewpoints on the roles for the yearbook and the newspaper are usually vastly different. However, with each passing year, the line of distinction seems to be getting blurry.
It is hard to give up control. Even after three years as a yearbook adviser, I find it hard to know when to step in and when to let the staff make mistakes for the sake of learning from them.
You may be overlooking a vast and multi-talented resource for your yearbook program: parents. Parents love their children, want them to succeed and want to help when they can. If you show them the value of your program, and explain how it works in a way they can support it, your program will benefit.
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