Everyone likes to work in a fun environment. Creating that for your yearbook staff at the beginning of the year will be one of your most important jobs.
Dear Applicant and Parent/Guardian,
Welcome to Olympia High School Publications. As we finish up the 2004 Torch yearbook and continue working on the next edition of The Oracle newspaper, I am excited about selecting the 2004-2005 publications staffs.
Nothing is quite as frantic as a badly organized yearbook room at deadline. Usually, most advisers have more than enough staff and more than enough time to make deadlines manageable. However, advisers’ main problem seems to be not having time to sit down and develop a plan for optimum staff efficiency. Therefore, with apologies to David Letterman, I would like to share my top 10 ways to improve staff development.
When people work together as a team, it shows in the finished product. Without a yearbook “team,” it would be impossible to produce a book. However, it is up to you how tight your team is. The tighter the team, the better the book. Below are some suggestions for bringing your staff together, and creating a family atmosphere inside (and outside) the yearbook room.
The staff could not contain their excitement. They showed me their cover design and said it would look “really cool” in neon orange with a bright green alligator holding our school mascot protruding from the wide open jaws. Such is the life of a South Florida yearbook adviser. When I awoke from this nightmare, I thought again about who actually controls the book. While some advisers control every step of the process, from cover to endsheets and everything in between, others hold to the philosophy that this is a student production and decisions should be made by the editor and editorial staff members.
“When a tool is used efficiently, you conserve time and energy. When meetings are run efficiently, you conserve all the resources available to management: time, energy, money, facilities, materials and human effort.”
They say that good work is its own reward, and when a yearbook staff begins pulling the first yearbooks from the box, you know this is true. However, by the time they begin unpacking books, they have been waiting for their reward for nearly a year. Because yearbook is such a long-term project, a series of small rewards along the way can keep a staff on track and motivated.
The best approach to managing your time is the approach that works best for you. There are many general suggestions that can be made to guide you in the right direction, but you may have to adapt these “formulas” to fit your specific life-style. Remember to keep your life under control!
Grading student work in yearbook class is complicated because yearbook production has many facets. Many advisers come up with their grading system by trial and error. That is how Greg Keller, adviser at Lincoln High School, Lincoln, Neb., developed his system.