Treering Blog

We Made Magic Happen

Beginning the evening with a conversation on themes, a tour of the new look for Treering Yearbooks app, and a magic show, we transitioned to expert-led breakout sessions. The Magical Katrina wowed us with her close-up magic and improv skills.

Breakouts to Make Your Stress Disappear

Attendees had their choice of four breakouts:

Fundraising with your Yearbook

I’m the Yearbook Coordinator… Now What?

Teaching Yearbook

Selling More Books

Bag of Tricks

While magicians don’t usually reveal their secrets, we gave up a few of ours. Scan the QR Code below to access them.

Check out the full list of upcoming Yearbook Club webinars for even more training opportunities.

Treering Yearbook Heroes is a monthly feature focusing on yearbook tips and tricks. 

Five years ago, Yearbook Hero Arielle Shansky took over the yearbook production for her Classical Conversations Community. Leading a team of three in Central Florida, she also manages an online community for over 650 others via the CC Yearbook Support Facebook Group. As the default tech person in her social circles, she enjoys helping other homeschool yearbook coordinators plan and organize their yearbooks. 

What’s unique about a homeschool yearbook?

Everything is a volunteer job. There’s no budget and possibly no team to help. Most of us do not have a yearbook background and we have to create our systems from scratch.

That said, there are many opportunities to showcase families. Under each portrait, we do a mini interview so students’ thoughts flow throughout the book. We also do a “Family Spotlight” in our yearbook. Homeschool parents take tons of photos at home because that’s where the bulk of our education occurs. Normally, those never get printed, but with a yearbook, we are able to put those moments in there.

You said you love organization. What are some tips to share?

I track everything on my phone: running notes of things to do and hex codes I’m using. I can also monitor core book page progress and check book sales using the Treering app.

How else does Treering help?

The biggest thing is allowing families to upload directly to shared folders. I send out weekly reminders to our community so we get photos throughout the year. During National Yearbook Week, we are doing our big kickoff. We have a lot of new families this year, so our goals are to get everyone to log in and upload one photo. Whoever does that will get an entry into a drawing for a coffee gift card or something. Then whoever orders by the end of the month for the discount will get another entry. We are going with a Happy Yearbook Day theme for the kick-off (to the tune of happy birthday). One of the ladies is wearing a birthday hat and making a sign that she will wear around campus with a QR code to take people to the upload page and a box to drop their name in for the drawing.

The personalized pages are also great. I scan my kids’ art and the notes they write me to add to their books. I laugh because we only have one family photobook—the yearbook replaced that.

With Proclamation 5703, former President Ronald Reagan made yearbooks even more celebration-worthy by setting apart the first week of October for “appropriate ceremonies and activities” to recognize the creators and the power of a yearbook program. Over 30 years later, National School Yearbook Week remains a time to reminisce and a time to look forward. In 2022, we are celebrating on social and at our annual Treering Live (TRL) event.

Week of Prizes

Win big during National School Yearbook Week by participating in one of Treering Yearbooks' five social media challenges. It's as easy as contributing a memory. You can also take the challenge of making an epic video to promote your own program, using the curated audio we'll share. Follow us:

• @treering on Facebook
• @treeringcorp on Instagram
• @treeringcorp on TikTok
• @treering on Twitter

There are no entry limits, so you and your yearbook team can enter as many times as you like. (We'd like a bevy of responses on Thursday, please and thank you in advance.)

Hashtags to use during National Yearbook Week

Share your celebrations and see what others are doing by using any of the hashtags commonly associated with National School Yearbook Week: #nationalschoolyearbookweek, #schoolyearbookweek, #YBWeek, #nationalyearbookweek, #yearbookweek, and, of course, #treeringyearbooks.

Week of Celebration

Imagine, yearbook staffs from coast-to-coast celebrating the power of a yearbook and the work our teams do. There's something to be said about a national week of unity for us memory makers. Remember to celebrate the yearbook heroes in your halls:

• Post profiles of your staff and celebrate their strength on social media
• Educate your school community with some behind-the-scenes edu-tainment
• Offer your campus 5% off on their yearbooks (Treering does this for you... just take the credit!)

Capstone Event for National School Yearbook Week

Treering Live is back to drop a little 24-karat magic. In this free, totally online event we’ll give you all tips, tools, and expert-led advice to make some serious yearbook magic. TRL 2022: Yearbook Magic will take place via Zoom Events on Thursday, October 6, 2022 at 4:00 pm PT/6:00 pm CT/7:00 pm ET. (Please note: you must have a Zoom account to register and attend.) In addition to a live magic show and instruction on yearbook themes, we'll have breakouts on

• Yearbook marketing
• First-time adviser tips and tricks
• Fundraising
• Best practices for teaching yearbook

And if that's not enough to pump you up for the new school year, check out our ongoing Yearbook Club training.

It’s different: there are no grades, no minimum enrollment requirement, and no mandatory, as in state-mandated attendance, slot in the schedule. While running a yearbook club is going to look different on each campus, we hope these tips from other club leaders help you grow your program.

Offer Incentives for Club Members

Everyone starts with “What’s in it for me?” so add value to their hard work. Your students don’t get paid to work on the yearbook outside of class–heck, most of us don’t get paid to create the yearbook! We’re saints. That said, we’re the only ones who get it. Make a big deal of your students. Your yearbook club deserves to be celebrated, at a minimum, in your classroom. 

Consider the perks:

• Free yearbooks (that they receive before the student body)
• Pizza work parties
• Club shirts (consider coordinating these with your yearbook theme)
• Press passes (aka yearbook IDs for lunch and free periods)
• Free game and dance admission when they’re “working”
• Snacks

Pro tip

Yearbook Hero Janet Yieh from San Francisco suggests setting up a rotation at larger events, such as the spring dance. Photographers compose their pictures differently and, with middle schoolers, you'll probably receive different samplings of friend groups too.

What Does a Yearbook Club Do?

Successful club advisers know their budding journalists and designers need direction. We can build a structure in which they’ll thrive. 

1. Schedule Regular Meetings

Two meetings a week is what most advisers told us works for them. In the beginning of the year, the first meeting can be focused on all the how-to instructions with more and more independent work scheduled as the year advances or it can have a specific focus, like photography. (See what we did there?)

Pro tip

Sandy Violette from New Milford, CT spends time building a ladder before assigning pages. Then she sits with each student and uses the notes space in the Treering app to collaborate on an action plan for each spread.

2. Set Up a Google Classroom for Yearbook Club

Breaking down the yearbook into manageable chunks is one way to make it appear more doable for student volunteers. In order for these parts to become whole, communication needs to be consistent and in a form with which they are familiar.

Pro tip:

Janet uses her Google Classroom to keep track of homework assignments, do event sign-ups, and post open jobs, such as tagging, that need to be accomplished. She also holds 1:1 coaching sessions because she knows, inevitably, students will have questions they won’t ask in class.

3. Do the Grunt Jobs Yourself

Advisers should coordinate picture days (portrait, sports, and clubs) and flow the portraits. They should run the index. These are two tedious, yet critical jobs when it comes to accuracy.

Does the Honor System Work in a Yearbook Club?

Both Violette and Yieh agree: students show up and get their jobs done. They said there will be minimal issues if you set the expectations early and follow through. Communicate early. Communicate often.

If the need arises, revisit the expectations your student and their parent agreed to at the start of the year.

• Address issues early
• Follow the model: revisit the agreed-upon expectations, identify what went wrong, and document what will happen next
• Always leave it open for reconciliation

Yearbook Club is a vital record-keeping entity on your campus. Thank you for making it happen.

This year marks one of changes for Treering. To go with our new look, we have a new philanthropic partnership. Treering Yearbooks is taking another step towards promoting inclusion through partnering with Sandy Hook Promise. By choosing Treering to print your school's yearbook, you not only have access to crowdsourcing options and custom pages, but your purchase is also contributing to the “Know the Signs” prevention programs and K-12 instruction on empathy and inclusion.

Treering Yearbook's custom pages changed the way students tell their own stories: by providing an opportunity for families to upload photos and create their own pages in their student's book, we accurately showcase each student's interests and contributions. Then, crowdsourcing options widened the narrative to include more angles and perspectives from the year.

The "Know the Signs" programs include:

• Start With Hello: For students in grades K-12, Start With Hello teaches youth how to minimize social isolation, marginalization, and rejection by creating an inclusive community that reaches out and connects with at-risk individuals.

• Say Something: For students in grades K-12, Say Something teaches youth to recognize warning signs, especially in social media, from individuals who may be a threat to themselves or others and Say Something to a trusted adult or report it using our Anonymous Reporting System.

• Say Something Anonymous Reporting System (SS-ARS): For students in grades 6-12, SS-ARS enables youth to easily submit safe, anonymous safety concerns through a mobile app, website, or hotline number. SHP’s highly-trained, multilingual Crisis Counselors respond to tips 24/7/365, engaging youth in dialogue to assess and substantiate the tip, provide immediate crisis/suicide intervention, and triage the tip to local school and/or law enforcement response teams as needed.

• Students Against Violence Everywhere (SAVE) Promise Clubs: These student-led clubs empower students in grades K-12 to champion violence prevention in their schools and communities.

Join us to create inclusive yearbooks while teaching compassion and looking out for one another–together, let’s create a culture change!

Can a yearbook company save lives? We're sure going to try!

Confession: academics photos used to be my least favorite. There is so much glory in snapping an action shot from a soccer game—those are the photos that bring the likes and shares. Well, what if we approached classroom photos the same way? Using the tips below, your classroom photos can be just as exciting.

Tip #1: Focus on the Reaction

Miley was right: it's the climb. When we showcase the day-to-day, it provides meaning. A-ha moments, in-process projects, and brainstorming sessions are just as important as the end results. Have your camera ready for laughter during a monologue or the face of concentration during a science lab.

Tip #2: Angles Aren’t Just for Geometry

Of the problems with "work" photos is students' faces tend to be pointed at the desk. My yearbook adviser used to say, "Zoom with your feet." Here are some quick ways to do just that.

Use Your Environment

Desks provide epic leading lines and a captive crowd adds depth and excitement. Above, the combination of depth of field and a crouched position shows the rapport of classroom teachers during an in-service. Use the crowd the next time you are photographing classroom presentations, calendar time, and open house.

Up, Up, Up, and Away

The birds-eye angle (right) shows the same students and adds the intensity of their work by showing copious notes and study materials. The angle works well for groups studying together as well as individual students drawing or reading.

Tip #3: Make a List and Check it Twice

Because you can’t be everywhere, enlisting the help of your teacher comrades is one way to increase both content and coverage. Share this list of ideas with faculty and staff to give them ideas (or else, you’ll be drowning in group shots).

Just like the yearbook represents the entire school community, the academics section highlights the bulk of a student's in-school day. It shows the distinctives of each department. It showcases students’ work. It covers the diverse learners on campus. You can divide coverage by

• Grade
• Subject
• Quarter

Special Considerations for Including Exceptional Learners

To paraphrase the Student Press Law Center, yearbooks cannot separate or denote students as members of special education programs because it is a part of their private student record. Always check with your district to see if they have a specific policy.

So, grab your yearbook team and get in the classroom to apply these photo tips. Your academics section will thank you.

Treering Yearbook Heroes is a monthly feature focusing on yearbook tips and tricks. 

Yearbook Hero Lauren Casteen decided in kindergarten if she were a teacher, she could go to school every day. Her passion for diversity, equity, and inclusion transformed her approach to teaching yearbook class: instead of recruiting the top 20 students to create a book about their friends, she built a team that reflects the students whose stories they tell. In 2022, Lauren earned an M.Ed. in Urban Education with a certificate in Anti-Racism. Her pedagogical approach is to lead the yearbook class as a public history course where the goal is to accurately and thoughtfully record the history of Northern High School. 

Why should someone buy a yearbook in 2022?

As a historian, I like knowing that there is an artifact. Our yearbook students are telling future generations, “We were here!” It is something future scholars will study. Furthermore, our yearbook students have written and published something. It matters.

So much of our memory-keeping has become digital. I have 500 pictures on my Instagram, but it doesn’t compare to having something to physically go through. Digital doesn’t create a reverence for your memories. 

How do you address issues of equity with the yearbook?

When I inherited the yearbook program, it required a written application with teacher references. It limited the type of students who could apply. Now, any student can sign up regardless of grade or ability level. I run a discipline report prior to scheduling anyone in my class and have one-off conversations with students [e.g. history of truancy] as needed.

With yearbook, there are many places where different kinds of students can be successful, and I want a committed staff that is representative of the student body. We are a majority non-white, Title 1, semi-urban school. Students of all educational abilities and language backgrounds roam the halls. The yearbook class should reflect that. 

And you sold out three times.

Yes! I had to do a second order and had to open up sales to with the ship-to-home option. 

What made the Knights want the yearbook?

The yearbook staff evaluated last year’s yearbook: we found out it covered mainly the juniors and seniors. It was also very white, when the school is very diverse. We resolved to make it look like our school. 

As a school that is committed to equity, we can’t do that if we don’t know who is in the book. Since the yearbook is a historical document in the most faithful way possible, our team tagged and tracked coverage. And since my staff cannot be everywhere all the time, it is important for other people to send us things.

How did you crowdsource content?

I started with the teachers. I recorded a tutorial and emailed it, asking them to send us photos for the yearbook. The chorus and outdoor ed faculty were early adopters. I even taught the lacrosse team how to share photos via the app when they were headed to Wilmington for a game.

On our yearbook Instagram, we post sneak peeks. Someone commented that the outdoor ed page looked good. We responded, giving credit to the teacher. This created a buzz and now some teachers have a student classroom photographer to put ownership and responsibility on the kids. It also makes them want to join the yearbook staff.

Students like that the app talks to their Instagram; teachers like that it connects to their Drive.

What does the fall look like for the team at Northern?

I have 70 students signed up for the yearbook class for the 2022-23 school year. We are excited about this year’s book, as it will be the last book we’ll produce in our current building—we’re moving to a new home next year!

It’s go time: a blank yearbook ladder is in front of you and you need to know which pages to put in the yearbook. Do you take a chronological approach and cover events as they happen? Or should you create a sectional yearbook and handle coverage topically? Did you even know there were options beyond this is what we’ve always done? Below are samples of how other schools have done it and their rationale.

Put Your Yearbook Pages Chronologically

Sequoia high school’s yearbook uses 50 of its 148 pages to cover academics, student life, and special events on spreads. The two spreads below show what happened in the month of January and cover the literary food festival, spring musical auditions, lunchtime candids, as well as coursework from economics, Spanish, drafting, logic, yearbook, and graphic design classes. These spreads feature over 40 students and five faculty members.

There’s no rule on how to put pages in your yearbook chronologically: we’ve seen schools organize their yearbooks monthly, quarterly, and seasonally. Treering's Seasons of Our Lives yearbook theme makes it easy to put pages chronologically in your yearbook.

Feeling ambitious? Weekly chronological coverage can be of value to larger or K-12 schools within modules dedicated to academics, club activities and meetings, plus a sporting event of the week. 

Chronological cover yearbook coverage helps keep you organized by:

• Structuring your coverage: you can’t cover an event after it’s passed 
• Building in mini-deadlines: because you have a structure, you can build due dates and workflows
• Telling the story of the year as it unfolds

Use Traditional Yearbook Sections

Tradition works for a reason. Done right, yearbooks show the complete picture (pun intended) of how students contribute to their communities. It’s a visual reminder of how each story weaves together to become a group narrative. Yearbooks are definitely worth bonding over.

By using sectional, or traditional, coverage to put together your yearbook, pages are placed in topical categories. We know to find Start with Hello in the club section and volleyball in sports. 

Traditional sections to put in your yearbook include

People

Student portraits (organized by class, homeroom, or grade), staff, and personality profiles tend to dominate yearbooks. Consider breaking up coverage by adding in siblings, outside-of-school hobbies, and international students.

Student Life

All the big, schoolwide moments plus the small distinctive ones (think homecoming, Read Across America, hot cocoa in Mrs. Cruz’s classroom, Dot Day, lawn chair lunches, etc.) make their home in the student life section.

Organizations

Clubs and committees that comprise a large portion of student life may warrant their own section. If most of your clubs are inactive beyond a monthly lunch, consider keeping club activities in the student life portion or feature the group photos in the reference section.

Sports

Remember, action shots have a place, as do club sports, pre-game rituals, and scoreboards.

Academics

If you’re not putting a “Life in…” page, consider grouping academics coverage by grade or subject. Ensure daily classroom activities, as well as holiday parties, are included in the coverage.

Reference

Put pages devoted to the index, group photos (club and team), and ads in the reference section of the yearbook. 

If you need additional inspiration for which pages to put in your yearbook, check out these sample ladders from other schools and adapt them to fit yours.

When you have over 300 pre-designed theme ideas from which to choose, how do you pick the “right” one for your school yearbook? Good yearbook themes are the ones that make grab us at the cover and make us gush over its cool design. Great yearbook themes capture the here and now. One way to make your yearbook theme so 2023 is to apply graphic design trends from the year. Incorporating these trends as well as pop culture makes your yearbook relevant now and will make your grandkids deem it a ‘20s relic.

Yearbook Theme #1: Watching

With 200 drag-and-drop graphics to customize this streaming media theme, your yearbook will showcase the memorable events of the school year in a format, frankly, we know too well. Press play on sports action shots, recap spirit week, make section dividers menus, and "favorite" key classroom moments.

Yearbook themes based on technology aren't timeless, and that's a good thing. Remember Clippy? He represents a moment in time, as does your yearbook.

It may be tempting to search movies and show titles for the headlines of every spread and to use our drag-and-drop templates to create three layers of menus as modules. If that seems overwhelming, keep it limited to the thematic pages: title page: table of contents, divider pages, and closing. Use the theme's graphic package to enhance, not dominate content. Like all things Treering Yearbooks, it's fully customizable.

The "Watching" yearbook theme will make your school want to rewind and relive its memories. Yes, we're still watching.

Yearbook Cover Idea #2: Well Plaid

Middle and high school yearbook theme ideas can get their inspiration from your campus building as well as what's trending. Private schools, schools with a Highlander or Scottie as the mascot, or even school districts in cities such as Glasgow, Aberdeen, or Lothian can play off their tartan as a theme element. Some thematic coverage ideas include:

• Uniform combinations and how students accessorize
• Where's Scottie? a Where's Waldo-esque feature with your mascot hidden in a crowd
• Punny titles such as Breaking Plaid (school records) or The Powers Plaid Be (student leadership)
• Plaid hair days and other spirit week coverage

Yearbook Theme #3: Vibrant Nostalgia

We told you last year that nostalgia was a hot trend. (We even did a 90s-themed event for advisers!) With the rise of Y2K aesthetic and the popularity of serif fonts, the Windows 95 look is popping up on packages, movie posters, and social media.

Both design geeks and fashionistas will love how we featured Pantone's Fall/Winter Color Trends within the "Vibrant Nostalgia" theme palette.

Click here to check out all 300+ themes available for free in the Treering Yearbooks design application. And if you’d like more ideas for your school's yearbook theme this year, check out these five questions to ask your yearbook team.

Using graphic design trends such as 3D and geometric shapes, nostalgia, art deco, and paper cut out, the Treering Yearbooks design team created 22 new collections of graphics, font pairings, layouts, and backgrounds to help organize the story of your year. These yearbook covers and themes make it easy for you to create a whole book look with backgrounds, templates, and fonts.

Update for 23-24 school year:

https://blog.treering.com/yearbook-themes-2023/

Bold Yearbook Covers and Themes

We love the way these three yearbook covers grab your attention. The vibrant colors and bold graphics are immediately attractive because they all have roots in the familiar. According to shape psychology (yes, that's a thing) geometric and abstract shapes are a part of the natural world, and because we see them in our daily lives, they create a level of trust we don't get with the abstract.

If you don't want to dive deep into that rabbit hole, and just want something pretty, try adding embossing to make the text or art pop even more. The extra tactile sensation on your yearbook cover will wow your school community.

Coordinating drag and drop layouts repeat the yearbook theme elements introduced on the cover. In addition, there are thousands of graphics and backgrounds you can mix and match.

A rule of thumb for creating your yearbook theme style guide: stick with the three-peat. Choose three repeating elements (font, color, or photo shape) and KISS.

Trending Yearbook Covers and Themes

One way to make your yearbook theme so 2023 is to apply graphic design trends from the year. Incorporating these trends as well as pop culture makes your yearbook relevant now and will make your grandkids deem it a ‘20s relic.

Vibrant Nostalgia

I'm not going to say, "I told you so." Just seeing the Windows 95 look popping up on packages, movie posters, and social media is enough.

Watching

Yearbook cover and themes based on technology aren't timeless, and that's a good thing. Remember Clippy? He represents a moment in time, as does your yearbook.

It may be tempting to search movies and show titles for the headlines of every spread and to use our drag-and-drop templates to create three layers of menus as modules. If that seems overwhelming, keep it limited to the thematic pages: title page, table of contents, divider pages, and closing.

ThreeD

"Vibrant Nostalgia" may be today, but "ThreeD" will be tomorrow. Sorry if that sounds like a Black Eyed Peas song. Designers who are pushing this visual envelope are doing away with flat graphics, and still using recognizable shapes and even text. If your students want to do a "Dare to Dream" or "Future-Forward" yearbook theme, this cover design and accompanying theme package are for you.

Design Your Own: Even More Elementary Yearbook Cover Ideas

Creative elementary school yearbooks tie in their theme with a cover contest. Artwork from runners-up can appear on the back cover, on autograph pages, or on the title page.

What’s next for you? How about surveying your student body? If your yearbook team selects their pick for the five elementary yearbook cover and theme ideas, the student body can select their favorite.

Getting social to sell yearbooks sounds easy: just post and parents will pay up, right? We get it, yearbook sales can be stressful, especially if you have a publisher who requires an order quota. Adding social media to your yearbook marketing strategy can only help increase the visibility of your staff and your product. Here are five types of Instagram and Facebook posts to add to your yearbook's social cadence. (Share if you love your yearbook… kidding.)

1. Positive Peer Pressure

Customer loyalty is a big deal–it’s why we collect stars and points and become an Insider. You can erase the thought of a back-end engineering feat to get students a digital punch card in their Remind account and head to the local dollar store for a bag of candy. (We like candy necklaces because they are wearable reminders, thus reinforcing our campaign.) 

A simple, reward offering of “Sweet! You bought a yearbook!” followed by the names of buyers will create a positive buzz around campus.

How it Helps Sales

We’ve talked about social proof. We’ve talked about FOMO. This yearbook social media post does that and

1. Shows appreciation to those who listened early on and bought a yearbook.
2. Answers the age-old question: “Did I buy a yearbook?”

2. Call to Action: Crowdsourcing

Specific asks give you specific results. Consider these the two above: which one brought in 35 submissions in 24 hours? 

How Pictures Yield Purchases

This is not new information: if students know they are in the book, they will want the book. Using student-sourced photos from social media help sell yearbooks because it tells more of the year. And that’s our job. Follow up these calls to action by showing students you used their photos.

3. Sneak Peeks

Sneak peeks include: cover shots, close-ups or excerpts of spreads, and releasing yearbook photos. Be sure to include a countdown to distribution.

A few weeks before your final deadline, order your printed proof. Besides seeing the top-notch quality, you can use your book in photos to promote last-minute sales.

Use the Yearbook to Sell Itself

Product teasers are a mainstay in the marketing world. They pump up potential yearbook buyers and answer “What’s in it for me?”

4. Show and Tell

Giving glimpses of the work behind the scenes connects customers to the product. It builds trust among the student body because they see your team them working hard to photograph track meets in 100-degree heat or giving up their time at Homecoming to take photos on the dance floor. Beyond work, teambuilding, editor lunches, and TikTok trends can also serve as recruiting tools for next year’s staff.

Sell by Showcasing Your Yearbook Culture on Social Media

The yearbook shouldn’t be about your yearbook staff, but because of them. Parents, students, and teachers will believe in the work you are doing if they see themselves in it.

5. Nitty Gritty

The most important thing you can do it tell people how, when, and where to buy. Give them the details and make it easy. While a general “Buy a Yearbook” post shouldn’t be the only yearbook marketing post in your social toolkit, friendly reminders do help. You will sell more yearbooks by varying posts and increasing engagement on your social media channels.

Why We (Still) Share Yearbook Info

For the same reason your five year old knows the phone number for an all-inclusive resort, mere exposure leads to sales. People tend to love familiarity, and that’s why yearbooks are a tradition.

We’re just going to leave this here.

Volunteered or volunTOLD? However you ended up as the yearbook coordinator, you'll walk away with four strategies to help you start and finish your yearbook! But first, pin, save, or bookmark the essential yearbook timeline. Are you taking over a yearbook class? Check out our six weeks of lessons to start the year and our free Google Drive templates. Getting a late start? Here's how to build a Yearbook in 60 Days.

The Five Ws are as relevant to yearbook coordinators as they are to writers:

• What am I doing?
• Who is going to help me?
• When will I be finished?
• Where am I going to get all the photos?
• Why did I ever agree to do it?

Strategy 1: Plan With Success in Sight

Yearbook coordinator, meet the ladder; ladder, meet the yearbook coordinator. Your yearbook ladder is your plan. Use it to determine how many pages you will put in the yearbook and what will go on each.

Four veteran yearbook advisers shared theirs with you. You can make a copy to edit and adapt them to your school community's needs. Remember, there is no "one way" or "right way" to do this.

You'll know you successfully managed your program when you've completed these spreads. (Better yet, since it's digital, you can add, subtract, and move spreads as needed.)

Strategy 2: Phone a Friend

Now that you have a plan, it's time to ask for help. Look at your ladder and see how you can partner with students, parents, and school leadership.

Yearbooking is a contact sport.

Tweet

Build a Team

Boosters, parent groups, teachers, and students are all stakeholders in the yearbook creation process. Involving them will make your job easier as the yearbook coordinator. You can crowdsource content through:

• Shareable folders
• Social media
• Targeted email asks (e.g. parents of students who went to camp)

You can also recruit team members to help you build and market the yearbook. With Treering, you can set permissions and assign pages to help delegate your workload. Additionally, parents and students can help gather content and promote book sales.

Students

Students have a pulse on campus life and are invaluable for determining what content is valuable. Work with them to get photographs from in-school activities and events: labs, presentations, assemblies, and lunch candids.

Parents

Partner with parents to get yearbook sales information in PTG/PTO/PTA newsletters and social channels, promote campus organizations, and plan distribution events.

Remember this clip from the Golden Age of TED Talks? To create a movement, you just need one to jump on board. As yearbook coordinator, you're the lone nut (sorry, not sorry). How will you nurture your first follower?

Your Publisher

Check with your yearbook publisher to get access to their training. Treering offers free Yearbook Club webinars throughout the year plus our signature event, TRL: Treering Live during National Yearbook Week.

Connect with School Leadership

From obtaining a student and teacher roster and seeing the master calendar to getting the principal's message and coordinating picture day, all the proverbial magic happens there. The front office is your go-to resource. Chances are, they will also reach out to answer the inevitable, "Did I buy a yearbook?" question parents will send their way all year. If your front office doesn't have dashboard access through Treering Yearbooks, consider sending a weekly sales update to help them help you.

Two questions to ask:

1. When may I get student and staff rosters?
2. Who is the school photographer? (Remember to request your portraits in PSPA format.)

Also, find out who your club and sports leaders are then send an email to introduce yourself and request photos. Ensure your shared photo folders are set up so they can submit photos.  Regular reminders—think a day after that tournament down in Simpsonville or after the choir nationals in Chicago—help get those folders filled.

Strategy 3: Build

Remember the tortoise and the hare? Spoiler alert: slow and steady wins. The same is true for your yearbook. We feel like it has to be complete asap as possible, and when you're setting your own deadlines, proper planning puts you in control.

Fall Tasks

1. Select your theme (or stir up some excitement by letting the school vote with these editable surveys ES, MS, HS)
2. Update your rosters in Treering before promoting book sales
3. Order your free flyers and start promoting sales
4. Upload portraits
5. Start building pages as events happen (first day, Halloween, Dot Day, etc.). Trust us, you’ll feel better in the spring if you don’t wait to do it all.

Spring Tasks

1. Send purchase reminders
2. Finish up your spring activity spreads
3. Download a PDF proof and have teachers approve their class pages to ensure students’ names are correct and no one is missing
4. Order your free printed proof to ensure fonts are easy to read and the cover looks good
5. Double-check your order list and add homeroom teachers to any student that doesn't have one listed for easier distribution
6. Redeem any free books you earned or use your fundraiser to purchase extra copies
7. Hit Print Ready!

Strategy 4: Know It's OK

It's OK if everyone is not 100% passionate about what you're doing.

It's OK if it's not perfect.

It's OK if you had more fun than you thought!

It's OK to be glad it's finished.