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.
Like the old saying “you can’t be too rich,” there is no such thing as being too organized. We all talk about it. But how many of us really take the steps to become organized?
SO, YOU’RE THE ADVISER FOR A MIDDLE SCHOOL YEARBOOK. THE HARDWARE AND THE SOFTWARE MAY BE IDENTICAL TO WHAT YOUR COMPATRIOTS ARE USING AT HOME TOWN HIGH SCHOOL, BUT YOU KNOW THE STUDENTS ENROLLED IN THAT HIGH SCHOOL PROGRAM DOWN THE STREET OR ACROSS TOWN ARE DRAMATICALLY DIFFERENT FROM THE 11- TO 15-YEAR-OLDS POPULATING YOUR MIDDLE OR JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL CLASS.
Brainstorm. Any word with “storm” in it must be fairly intense. When you brainstorm for story ideas, dozens of thoughts are going through your mind at once. You may be using your brain, but brainstorming can be a gut-wrenching process. However, there are ways to capitalize on the process to make it more useful. Brainstorming for story ideas is a year-round activity for the yearbook staffs at three high schools where the advisers have tried-and-true methods for helping their students through the process.
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.
I suffered from deadline dread my first year as adviser of The Spinnaker at Laney High School. Despite those early days when pages were turned in the day of shipping for the mad dash to the plant, I have survived and learned from my mistakes. While I still have a lot to learn about yearbook publishing, I have come to understand that deadlines are a necessary evil.
Veteran advisers look back at their first year or two and wish someone had warned them about what can go wrong. Here are some of the more common issues that advisers face, and tips for avoiding or resolving them. We tried to come up with a list of the Top Ten Pitfalls to Avoid, but we can’t count, so here Mike Frazier’s article with help from advisers Renae Goldie, Amy Morgan and Danielle Bradley, and yearbook representative Karen Ray.
The new editor could visualize it: a pink and purple yearbook cover with a castle and the words, “Once Upon a Time….”
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