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.
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.
WHEN I WAS SITTING IN UNDERGRADUATE CLASSES, ONE OF THE KEY POINTERS THAT PROFESSORS GAVE US FUTURE TEACHERS WAS TO APPRECIATE AND RECOGNIZE THE SUPPORT STAFF IN THE SCHOOLS IN WHICH WE WOULD BE WORKING. AS A TEACHER, I HAVE FOUND THIS TO BE GREAT ADVICE, BUT AS A YEARBOOK ADVISER, IT OFFERS EVEN MORE.
Almost eight decades after she worked on the first yearbook staff at St. Peter’s High School, G.G. Wehinger made her first trip back to her alma mater last spring when she visited the 2001-2002 Petrarchan yearbook staff.
Deb Buttleman Malcolm expects her students to be able to do more than reading, writing and editing when they graduate from her program — she expects them to be culturally literate.
Each year, advisers and staffs work to develop a theme to unify their yearbook and make it a reflection of the school and students during that particular year. This is one of the most daunting tasks of the entire production process. Themes do not magically appear. It takes thought and hard work. And theme development itself has a process.
Well-written job descriptions are like fences providing defined boundaries for what is inside and outside the enclosure. For students, job descriptions define their role on the yearbook staff and help them meet the expectations of their position. But the descriptions also aid advisers, who can use them to develop their staffs and ensure goals are accomplished.
Your staff has successfully created a theme, and now they must interpret it on the cover for everyone to see. Luckily, help is available for advisers and staff to get their cover finalized and into production.
1. Review last year’s expenses to know where money was spent. Expenses include more than the cost of the book. Determine whether there are less expensive ways of acquiring supplies. Are you spending money on motivational items, such as prizes and pizza? These items are important, but examine whether you can do as much or more with less.