Yearbook curriculum

After the holiday break, it’s easy to slip into a little bit of a funk. The winter blahs are setting in and your yearbook progress might begin to stall. Don't let that happen. Whether you decide to give your yearbook staff motivation through playlists, famous movie clips, or good ol' fashion praise, it's your job as the editor to make sure everyone stays pumped. And it's not too hard to do. Read on for the best motivation ideas you'll find for your yearbook team.

Show Your Progress

The road can look exhausting until you turn your head and realize how far you’ve already come. Take a moment to celebrate the victories of the first half of the year and show how much you’ve already accomplished. One idea is to create an infographic to show the progress by the numbers. HubSpot has a library of infographic templates that you can download, and they're even available in PowerPoint format. Here are some ideas for stats you can capture to give your yearbook staff motivation in the new year:

• How many spreads have been put to bed
• Which sections are complete
• How many photos have been taken
• How much you’ve raised in ad revenue
• The number of quotes you’ve scooped
• How many words you’ve written
• The number of yearbooks purchased

Remember, it’s perfectly acceptable to showcase accomplishments without staggering numbers—there’s a lot to be said about creating “one amazing theme” or designing “one imaginative cover.” Take pride and share all these factoids with your team. Another way to show progress is to do a little show-and-tell. Select five or so of your favorite spreads and share them with the team. If you have a designated space, you can create a Wall of Fame. If not, create a quick email blast to your crew telling them, “This is why I am so proud of us.” This will unite the group and get them driving again towards a common goal.

Set Goals to Create Urgency

A little bit of urgency can also go a long way. After these breaks, there’s guaranteed to be a little hiccup, because people need to get back in the groove, and they might not know where to start. But if there’s no reason to dive back into battle, your committee won’t really feel the need to jump back in right away—which can turn a little hiccup into a big traffic jam. Here are some ways you can help to create a sense of urgency with your team:

• Make it easy for the team to get back to work by creating a punch list of things that need to be done within the next two weeks.
• Set a timeline in the form of a countdown. Figure out how many days you have left until your final deadline and break it up into smaller, more manageable goals. Share the whole timeline but emphasize the most immediate deadline. You can create a poster, write it on a whiteboard, or send an email with the subject “8 Days to Go!”
• When items are checked off the list, show some appreciation. Send a nice note, give a high-five, or share a motivating quote. Recognition is always important, but this is the time of year that your team needs to feel like rockstars.

Light a Fire

Forgive the sports metaphor, but let’s be real—it’s halftime. If Hollywood has taught us anything, it’s that this is the point where the coach gathers the team and gives a heartfelt and inspiring speech, so the players are ready to get back out there, rally, conquer, and win the game. Taking this opportunity to give your yearbook staff motivation can carry your team to the finish line. If you’ve got the soul of a coach, just go for it:

• Gather the committee into a tightly-knit group—preferably in a huddled circle. (You can even ask them to take a knee if you want to make an impact.)
• Tell your committee what they’re going to do, who they’re going to do it for, and how they’re going to do it—together.
• Instill confidence and pride, steal a few lines from Braveheart (or Independence Day, Knute Rockne, or what have you), and let them know what’s what.

If your inner Madden isn’t quite ready for his debut, you can always bring the pep through an alternative source. Share a famous halftime speech from Youtube, create an “Eye of the Tiger” playlist on Spotify, or reach out to a peer to motivate the team. Honestly, it’s the intention that counts—show them you care. At the end of the day, you just need to get your team to shake out the cobwebs and get a fresh start. Your committee is amazing and they want to do great work; they just might need a little push to get things started again. Show them how far you’ve come and create an atmosphere that will produce the excellence you need in the coming months. Your yearbook deadlines will thank you.

Sometimes we like to think of the yearbook as a big, metaphorical ‘Thank You’ note to the school. Thanks for the laughter. Thanks for the learning. Thanks for the memories. We have infinite gratitude for the yearbook advisers and committee members that pour their very souls into the creation of these beloved tomes. We know about the long hours you put in agonizing over layouts and ladders. We appreciate the care that goes into creating a knockout mod or crafting the perfect headline. We understand the weight you are shouldering in working to perfectly capture the school year. We get it. And we are so thankful for that hard work and dedication. This is a good time of year to take a break and admire just how far you’ve come on this year’s book. Take a breath and look at that amazing theme, those punderful headlines, and the stunning photos. Mesmerizing, isn’t it? As long as we’re playing the gratitude game, we’re also going to take a moment and think of why we are thankful for yearbooks themselves.

Why We Are Thankful for the Yearbook Experience

We get to know the student body. Sometimes a school can feel like a sea of bodies in constant motion, ebbing and flowing between the classrooms. The yearbook gives you the opportunity to bring it back to a personal level. At the very least, you are matching names with faces. But more often than not, you are crafting stories and finding sources, reaching out to people you may never have approached if it weren’t for yearbook. We get to focus on the details. Think of all the random information you’ve garnered over the past few months. Because of yearbook, you know that you can’t play field hockey left-handed. You also know that the soccer moms are very superstitious and Nirvana is getting big again. We’re creating something that will last for decades. Students’ memories today are heavily invested in digital media. If we learned anything from MySpace or Friendster, it’s that these mediums aren’t the most dependable. A yearbook is an unwavering record of the time a student spent in school. #PrintMediaIsForever We can take photos all the time without looking like crazies. There’s a special freedom that comes with being a yearbook photographer. You are able to weave in and out of the crowd and snap pictures without having to explain. We learn to speak in code. (Sort of.) “Can you adjust the kerning so the pull quote doesn’t travel into the gutter?” “Is there room to expand the mod by a pica or two so we lose the orphan in the block text?” I mean. Seriously. How cool are we? (Very cool. Obviously.) We get to try new things. You’ll attend more activities than anyone else at the school. You will get to experience the anxious exhilaration of the Spelling Bee Finals. You will be obligated to taste the goods at the bake sale. You will get to see the pure joy that comes from nailing a jump shot at the buzzer. We dream big and find inspiration everywhere. Once you get yearbook on the brain, it’s a stubborn bug to shake. You will be finding fonts in the Chinese takeout menu and a color scheme in your grandma’s afghan. You will find inspiring images to emulate and smile with pride when you manage to pull them off.

Yearbook is a Gift

Working on the yearbook is an incomparable experience, one that we would not trade for the world. This is the perfect time of year to take a break and really consider why you are willing to sacrifice so much of your time and energy into creating the perfect yearbook for your student body. Think of the experiences and knowledge that you cherish the most. What are you thankful for? Take this gratitude and bottle it up for a rainy day. And next time you’re banging your head against the wall as the deadlines steadily creep up from the shadows, remember that you are doing this for a reason, and there is so much to be thankful for.

There are some pages in your yearbook that practically write themselves. Your sports pages are not those pages. Because each new season brings a new story, you’ve got a ton of new stories to capture for your yearbook. Luckily, you can do that a little more easily (and a little better than before) with one change: use a survey. A survey is a simple tool that will make your information collecting way easier. Send it to each team’s coach, have a “return by” deadline, and watch the information roll in. It’s so good, in fact, it’ll deliver all the basic information you need to produce the pages for your sports teams—and then some. To get you started, we created a free survey template for you. But read on. We'll walk you through how to use it and how it can help you make your sports pages the best your yearbook has ever seen.

What Your Survey Should Include

It’s best to start your survey with the basics, like the names, numbers, and correct spellings of all players and coaches; the schedule; and the key dates in the season. This type of information isn’t “nice to have;” it’s the information you need to create a page for each of your sports teams. If that’s all you have time for, that’s okay. Everything else is gravy, as they say. If you have more time and resources, though, go bigger. Get the type of information only someone who is around the team every day would know. Ask about traditions, interesting storylines, and off-the-field lessons team members have learned. It’s this type of information that will get you the beginnings of a narrative.

When You Should Send Your Survey

The best time to send your survey depends on the type of sports pages you’ll be running in your yearbook. So, let’s break it down by type:

• Basic Yearbook Sports Page. When you’re running a basic sports page or spread, you don’t need to send your survey until after the season is over. In fact, it’s better that way. You can collect the information mentioned above along with the team’s results (scores, win-loss records, stat leaders) for inclusion.

• Magazine-Style Yearbook Sports Page. If your approach to the yearbook is inspired by great magazine journalism, you’ll want to send your survey before the start of the season. Collecting basic—and colorful—information that early will allow you to plan what games you’ll be going to, which players you’ll be interviewing, and how many resources you need to dedicate to the coverage.

How to Use Your Survey Results

The survey is the perfect planning tool. If you’re planning to only use the information that comes back from the survey, you know exactly what you’ll be working with. You can create your page layouts, send out a photographer to a few key games, and wait to do the rest of the work until the survey is returned. In fact, that approach works even when you’re taking a more in-depth approach to the pages. The only thing that changes is assigning someone to cover the team for additional interviews and writing narrative copy. (By the way: You should definitely compile all the key dates and coverage needs into your planning timeline and assign responsibilities. If there are any gaps in coverage, you’ll be able to spot these early on, and fix them.) For those assigned to cover teams, though, the survey results are far more than just a planning tool. That person will learn a ton about the makeup of the team, the coach’s expectations for the season, and which players to keep an eye on. That’s great information. Use it when preparing for interviews.

Tracking Down the Coach

When you send out your survey, do it by email. It’s the easiest, most efficient way for someone to respond, and it lets you set yourself reminders to follow up. Also, let your coaches know why the survey is important, how you plan to use the information they provide, and how much their responding will help you give them awesome coverage in the yearbook. Some coaches will fill out your survey immediately. Most others will wait until the deadline. And a few will forget to turn it back in. So, make sure you build some extra time into those deadlines. Give all your coaches a few weeks' notice about when their responses are due, and establish a relationship early with your school’s athletic director. That’s a good person to have on your side, if the information never shows up. (It usually does, though.) When you get that filled-out survey, you’ll know you’re on your way to telling the right story for the right team. Use that information to guide your coverage, and you’ll be putting together seriously good sports pages for your yearbook.

Your yearbook committee is a wonderfully inclusive environment, where students of all experience and skill levels can come together to learn, collaborate, and produce something meaningful. And that’s a wonderful, beautiful thing. As you welcome in all your new committee members for this year’s book, however, you may find yourself needing to teach a lot of skills to get these new members up to speed. Teaching your students the right lessons, and giving them valuable skills, helps make the yearbook process run easier, smoother, and with far fewer problems. So here are our tips on which are some of the most important lessons to start their education.

Knowing What To Teach

Your time is one of your most valuable resources, and while you’d love to spend every day in deep mentorship, you won’t be able to do that. There is, after all, a yearbook to create. Here are the important areas you need to make sure your staff is trained on. Interviewing techniques. A good interview is much more than just asking a few questions. Students need to know how to make people comfortable and how to elicit the best answers.

• Lesson #1: Focus on asking the right kind of questions. Open-ended questions create the best answers, so teach your class how to avoid leading questions. “What was the final score?” is boring; “What strategies were employed to lead the team to a win?” is an example of an open-ended question that allows the interview subject to think beyond cliches.
• Lesson #2: How to make an interview subject comfortable. Not everyone feels relaxed when interviewing, but focusing on getting the subject in their comfort zone makes for the most relaxed and genuine quotes.  Letting the interviewee talk, and actually listening, are both skills you’ll want to teach.

Writing. Not everyone knows how to properly structure a yearbook article, and even the best natural writer might struggle with the format. Writing an article that quickly brings out the heart of a story is closer to journalism than creative writing, which your students might be more used to.

• Lesson #1: Headline writing. Teach students how to pull out what makes a story unique, and how to sum that up in one phrase, while still giving a nod to the theme.
• Lesson #2: Writing killer copy. Students are going to want to really show off their skills, so you need to teach them how to be brief, how to tell the story, and how to focus on the subject. Sometimes writing simply actually packs more of a punch.

Photography. Similar to writing, students have to know what makes a great yearbook photo, how to find it, and how to compose it. Lessons in camera operation, photo composition, and other photography techniques are important here.

• Lesson #1: How to take candid shots. It’s more than just pointing and shooting. Students have to know how to compose on the fly, and how to spot great photos before they are gone.
• Lesson #2: Using the camera correctly. Composition, the rule of thirds, how not to over-or-underlight, and how to avoid annoying imperfections are all important techniques to learn. Students can have a great eye, but improper camera use makes that moot.

Editing. There are two sides to editing: spotting mistakes, and understanding what can be cut (and what can be left in). Both are equally important.

• Lesson #1: Teach them the layers of editing needed for any piece. Editing is about getting a lot of eyes on any piece, so a lesson about how to progress a piece through the editing assembly line can help prepare them for when copy really starts rolling in.

• Lesson #2: Reading out loud. Demonstrate multiple proofreading tips, including how reading out loud can help people find errors that reading to yourself can’t always uncover.

Photo editing. Figuring out the best arrangement, what to keep, what to lose, and how you can manipulate photos is both an art and a science.

• Lesson #1: Adding text to photos is a great way to spice up and add depth to a normal picture. A lesson here can be about the proper use of it and how not to overdo text.
• Lesson #2: Editing student submissions. You’ll probably be doing more and more crowdsourcing of photos, so learning how to adjust for color contrast and brightness can help enhance student photos without changing what the submitter intended.

Page layouts. Combining articles, headlines, photos, and captions in a way that makes sense, is aesthetically pleasing, and has a natural flow is not an inborn skill. This is where training might be the most important.

• Lesson #1: How to play with font. Using different kinds of fonts not only enhances the texture of a page, but it can help fit in things that a uniform font might not. You’ll probably want to deliver a lesson on how to do it without overdoing it.
• Lesson #2: The Golden Ratio. There is an aesthetically pleasing pattern that is produced both by humans and in nature,  that draws the eye and produces a sense of balance--and repeating it in your yearbook is a solid way to ensure your layout is easy on the eyes.

These lessons are not just important for your yearbook, but is a great way for students to develop skills for the future and grow more confident in themselves. It’s the heart of being a mentor, and one of the great joys of running the yearbook.

When you get a bunch of parents willing to help you make your elementary school’s yearbook the best it’s ever been, you’re bound to run into some … err … hiccups. After all, your volunteers will have their own ideas of what will make the yearbook great. To harness all those great ideas (and, let’s face it, all those not-so-great ideas), you need to do one thing really, really well: Follow the Golden Rule. Do that and you’ll have your elementary school yearbook committee running like a well-oiled machine.

9 Handy Reference Tips for Building Management Skills

OK, so “Follow the Golden Rule” might be oversimplifying things a little bit. To be more specific, here are nine tips you can use when you’re managing a yearbook committee composed of adults:

1. Be transparent. Explain to parents the reasoning behind your decisions--understanding where you’re coming from will help them be satisfied with your arrangements.
2. Actively listen. Don’t just hear what people are telling you--actively listen to what they’re saying. Empathize with them, and try to understand their perspective. Truly relating to someone else will take you a long way.
3. Be accountable. Everyone messes up. Everyone. It’s OK if that happens, so long as the person who made the mistake takes responsibility for his or her actions. And the best way to have that happen is to act the same way. If you make a mistake, own it.
4. Learn from your mistakes. As noted above, taking responsibility for those mistakes is important, but it’s even more important to learn from them.
5. Build relationships. Connect with everyone involved, including your staff, parents, teachers, administrators, and even the publishing company. Doing so will ensure everyone is on the same page when it comes to the yearbook and the committee’s plans for it.
6. Have patience. Yes, you have deadlines. The layout isn’t finished, the photos are blurry, and three members aren’t able to make it to the next meeting. Understand that things come up, and if you feel pressured, don’t be afraid to ask for help as needed. Also, building a bit of a buffer into your calendar can keep minor setbacks from becoming major holdups.
7. Trust your staff. While you might have a vision of the perfect yearbook and are trying to micromanage everything to create this vision, step back and let your staff do their jobs. Make yourself available for questions and concerns, and only step in if someone asks for assistance or if you are truly needed.
8. Use good judgment. If you’re approached with a staff request that doesn’t fit the book’s vision, it’s okay to say, “No.” While it’s important to hear any and all requests and keep an open mind, don’t be afraid to toss out any ideas with which you’re not comfortable.
9. Be proactive when solving problems. Don’t wait until the last minute to tackle issues. In many cases, issues left unresolved will snowball, and you will find yourself facing an even more complex problem than before.

If you were to put this into a real-world example, it might look something like this: Say you have a bunch of parents who want to take pictures at sporting events, but no one has volunteered to edit photos or lay out the sports pages in the yearbook. You could tell some of those volunteers that you simply have too many people who want to take pictures and that they need to do something else. But that wouldn’t really be following the Golden Rule, would it? Remember, these are parents who are eager to help, so it might be better to approach the situation a little different. If you do, you’re far more likely to get all the help you need. (You catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar, right?) A better approach might be to tell all of your volunteers that you simply have too many people who want to take pictures, so you’re going to divide the role into specific sports or times of the year, but that it’d be really awesome if they could also help you with other aspects of the yearbook’s sports coverage, like editing the photos or laying out the pages, because you have no one to help with that. Another approach might be to talk with people who volunteered for similar positions, explain the situation to them, and ask if they’d shift over, instead. In essence, help everyone do what they’re wanting to do, but also be clear about why you need the other help. It’s the best way to make sure everyone is involved in the way they’ve requested, while also having all your roles evenly distributed across the committee.

Go With the Flow

Any committee comes with a diverse group of people, each with their own creative juices, ideas, and dynamic personalities. Interacting with and managing these personalities is an integral part of being the yearbook adviser, but keeping them on track to create a successful elementary school yearbook doesn’t have to be stressful—especially if you follow our handy tips.  

As you begin to prepare for the first day of school--and all of the yearbook content that comes along with it--you want to make sure you capture all of the most important moments on film. To do so, you'll want to identify and develop a list of these opportunities up front, to ensure that none are forgotten. This list will also help you plan for moments that are taking place at the same time, at opposite ends of your school, making sure you've got coverage for everything. Below, I’ve chronicled my own top five moments that I feel any adviser should strive to include in their content. Take these, and use them to jumpstart your own list of moments for your committee to capture.

Kick Off the Day

One of the first memories you want to nab for the pages of your book is when students come into school for the first time this year. Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, they’re ready for what the year has to bring--eager to see all of their friends again after a long summer break, and a little nervous to meet their new teachers and classmates. This translates to excitement for the first day of school--and that means super photogenic kids who are going to shine on the pages of your book. This is a moment you definitely don’t want to miss.

Pep It Up

Many schools have special events on the first day of school that are perfect for fresh yearbook content! This includes anything from an all-school pep rally to a parent breakfast after the first bell rings. Prep for these moments by getting a list of all the special first day of school events on your campus from your administration, and coordinate to have a photographer and/or writer from your committee present to capture all the fun for your publication.

Locker Stalker

The time of year when your students’ lockers are the cleanest--and look closest to those locker idea photos we all love to check out in the magazines--is on the first day of school. If you plan to incorporate a locker feature within your book, now is the time to cover it! Try to get some photos at the beginning of the day or at the very end, when students have a few more minutes than they do between classes. And make sure you have your question prompts laid out well in advance. Getting your pictures and interviews early also leaves your options open for turning this into a 'before and after' feature, revisiting these lockers to see just how messy they might become!

Walk the Catwalk

The first day of school also happens to be when the majority of your students look their best. They’re wearing their fresh back-to-school clothes, their hair is done, their shoes aren’t scuffed. Take advantage of this photo op with a fun first day of school fashion feature! You could even turn it into a cute pop culture piece, showing what kinds of clothes--styles of jeans, colors of tights, types of shoes, etc.--were popular at the start of the school year. It’s something fun for them to look back on (and maybe cringe at) for years to come.

Capture the "New"

Summer is generally the time when the school district can make some changes to the facilities. Maybe it's a new basketball court, or a new jungle gym. Perhaps classrooms have been rearranged. Whatever it is, the first day of school is your best chance to capture students' genuine reactions to the new element gracing their campus. So station a committee member there, and take photos and get quotes. While you may have so many ideas later in the year for special features that this one might not appear in your book, you'll never have another chance to document it--so remember that old adage of "better to have it and not need it..."

Plan the First Day of School Right

The first day of school is a big one for your yearbook content. It’s important to kick off the year right, and capture all of the best moments for some cool features in your publication! So start planning out the moments you want to capture, and what you’ll need to make that happen. With a little foresight, you’re sure to get all the best snapshots for the pages of your book.

Part of the fun that comes with helping to create a great publication is bonding with the rest of your committee. In my experience, this is the thing that really draws new members to your team: the opportunity to join a fabulous circle of friends. But in order to guide your members towards working as a team, and really spread the word that your yearbook committee is a great group to join, you need some exercises that get each of your committee members on the same page. This means you need to find a way to help them bond as a group, thus creating a positive, enjoyable working environment for all. Positivity exercises are something that I love using for this type of task. They’re uplifting, and build up each of the individuals you work with, which helps them to recognize their strengths. And to help you get started, today I’m going to walk you through one of my favorite exercises that does just that!

Start the Positivity Flow

After you’ve been working with your yearbook committee for a few weeks this fall (so they've already gotten to know each member a bit), devote some time during a meeting for a team-building exercise. Tell them that you want to talk about each individual's wonderful contributions to your committee. To start, have each person come one at a time, and sit in front of your whiteboard at the front of the room. Then have every other person on your committee write positive things about that person on the whiteboard around them! They can write great characteristics about the person, unique skills that they use to bring something special to your team, or even just little notes about their general attitude. The point is to focus on what each individual offers that’s great!

Use the Exercise for Success

To make this kind of positivity exercise really stick, take a picture of each yearbook committee member smiling, surrounded by the positive notes that the rest of your team just shared with them. Create a bulletin board in your room to post the photos, and give each individual a copy to keep. It’s a great exercise to build up trust and excitement among your team. And it’s something that you, and everyone else on your committee, can look back to for inspiration when they're facing a tough day in the yerd world.

Drive Your Message Home

The first goal of setting up a positive environment is to enhance your committee’s work productivity and camaraderie, but it’s also a tool you can use to recruit more members to your team! Make sure you’re sharing the fun photos you take during this exercise on social media and on your Treering community pages. Although the members of your team will naturally talk about how much they enjoy being part of the yearbook committee, this is an extra way to get the message out to a wider audience of students and parents. And that’s one more step in the right direction to attracting the best new members to your team!

Build Trust in Your Yearbook Committee

Part of your role as the adviser to the yearbook committee is to help create a sense of team and trust among the rest of your crew. Exercises like this one are a simple way to spread some positivity, which translates to a more productive and energized team. Not to mention that the more your team thinks about all the things they love about their fellow committee members, the more they’ll enjoy the experience of working with you all! So put this particular exercise to work, and then seek out a few more that will help your yearbook committee bond. With a little help from their fearless leader (you!), each of the individuals you’ve recruited will be working together like a well-oiled machine in no time!

The first day of school is just around the corner. And that means you need to get prepared for your first big photo opportunity of the year! Each fall, the first week of school is a bit of a rush--and it  definitely goes by in the blink of an eye. Preparing now for what you’ll need to capture the best images for your yearbook as students arrive back at school is essential. Below, I’ll walk you through the three biggest steps you need to take over the next week or so to prepare for that first day of school. And they’ll definitely leave you ready to start the new school year with your yearbook committee on the right foot!

Get Brainstorming

To capture those awesome first-day-of-school shots, you need to have some cool ideas in mind before the big day arrives. If you can, get your yearbook committee together in the weeks before school starts to brainstorm some of the most important memories that are made on that first day of school. Those are exactly the moments you want to nab, so that they can be commemorated on the pages of your book! Often, there are traditions that your school has on the first day of school--perhaps a parents' breakfast, coffee and donuts in the atrium for the students, or a fun welcome back celebration. You’ll also want to grab some candid shots of students as they enter the school, or perhaps grab some quotes about what students are excited for at the end of their first day back. When you have a list of photo ops in advance, you’ll be much more likely to grab the best shots for the final pages of your book!

Lay Out Your Props

Like any photo shoot, your first day of school picture opportunities can be made even better with a few props. When you get your committee together to brainstorm photo opportunities, don’t forget to include some time to think about any props you’d like to include on the big day. This could be a small, stuffed version of your school’s mascot, a chalkboard frame that you can write a student’s grade on as they’re entering the school, or even a giant pencil to depict their return to academics. Then gather those props and bring them to school before the first day arrives. This way, you won’t be running around trying to gather everything up at the last minute, potentially missing great picture opportunities on the first day of school because you’re running late or frazzled.

Prep Interview Prompts

Finally, make sure you have your interview prompts ready to go if you plan on conducting any interviews for the content in your yearbook. These prompts could include:

• What students did over the summer: include a feature that covers how much fun the kids at your school had on summer break.
• What they’re most looking forward to: at the end of the first day back, interview students to ask what they’re most excited about in their new grade.
• What they’re wearing: create a fun mini-fashion feature, since students are often dressed their best on that first day back in the classroom.

If you have your prompts ready to go before the first day, you can create unique and interesting features that go beyond the normal back-to-school questions, like “what did you do to get ready for the first day of school?” And when you create interesting content that students aren’t expecting to see, you build more interest for your book as a whole.

The First Day of School

While there are many important days throughout the year that you want to capture, the first day of school is one of the biggest. Students look forward to reconnecting with their classmates, and getting back into a routine. By thinking about the content you can create out of this  big day at your school in advance, you ensure that you cover all of its most important aspects. From traditions on your campus to just checking out what students did over the summer, it’s the perfect time to kick off your school year, and your yearbook, with a bang!

We know that sometimes it takes a little convincing to get yearbook committee volunteers to sign on for the extra work a yearbook committee position involves. So we’re here to help you give your team members the gentle nudge they might need. Here is our handy, free Yearbook Committee Sign-up Form. It includes descriptions of the positions that will help your committee succeed, plus the time commitment each requires. And, of course, space for people to sign up! Because, as anyone who has been part of a yearbook committee knows: It’s one thing to join the committee. It’s another to take on major responsibility. How should you use this sign-up form template?

• Customize it, print it out, and pass it around at your first yearbook committee meeting.
• Keep it in Google Doc format, and link to it in a back-to-school email that promotes your yearbook sale--with a reminder that there won’t be a yearbook without community support!
• Set up a yearbook table at back-to-school night. Have the Editor-in-Chief (or another representative) there to answer questions and prompt attendees to sign up.
• Hit up your PTA/PTO meeting, and use the form to recruit new committee members.

You’ll be surprised by the impact a little guidance--and peer pressure--can make.

  It’s almost August, and that means it’s time to start preparing for the upcoming school year--including for your yearbook, where you'll need to start planning out what you’ll include on the pages of your book. Then you can start getting your top tasks in order, which will help your committee stay organized in the fall. While this might sound like a ton of prep work, remember that everything you do now will make the projects you tackle with your committee during the school year go much smoother. That means you’ll need less time for yearbook prep--and be much less stressed--when the first few weeks of the school year roll around. And with a little help from your favorite Treering expert, you’ll have your projects laid out and organized, and be back to summer fun before you even know it!

Identify Your Features

To start, lay out the major features and articles you want to cover throughout the year. This doesn’t need to be a detailed account of what you’ll include, just a basic list of your sections, and the major features you absolutely must include in your content. You can begin by using last year’s yearbook as an example. Go through and make a list of the sections you definitely want to include in this year’s publication. This will make up about 90% of the features you include in next year’s book. And for that remaining 10%? Well, that can be brainstormed with your committee once everything starts, and can be solidified as events and unexpected stories arise during the school year. This process helps ensure that none of the basics fall through the cracks once you get started on all the exciting special features. It also helps you dole out tasks to your committee from day one, ensuring all the big pieces get apportioned fairly.

Organize Your Thoughts

Now that you have this list, you need to find a way to get--and keep--your yearbook sections super organized from the first day of the school year. As I often recommend, a Google spreadsheet can be the perfect way to do this. Not only is it easy to access on the go, but you can share it with your committee without constantly sending files back and forth, keeping everyone on your team in the loop with content ideas, next steps, and a reminder of who’s tackling each project. To start, just create a tiered document (or use ours as a template) to track your ideas for each of your yearbook sections. Columns for the article status, deadline, and who is responsible for the content will help keep you organized once the season kicks off. Remember, you don’t have to fill in each of the columns now. This spreadsheet simply creates an organized direction for your content that you can work from in the fall. This tab may look very similar to your master calendar, and feel a bit redundant. But it serves an important purpose--by grouping articles by topic, rather than timeline, you're providing yourself with an overview of all your content, in similar sections. You can see the status of all class pages, all sports pages...and make sure nothing gets left out (a friend of mine has their Speech and Debate team completely left out of their published, finalized yearbook this year--an oversight that could have been caught with a spreadsheet like this!).

Prioritize Your Yearbook Sections

Next, prioritize what needs to happen first. To make this simple, there's a column in your content spreadsheet that lists out due dates for each of your features. This will give you an idea of what needs to be completed immediately. As you identify due dates, add each piece of content to your master calendar. As you complete each feature, make sure you highlight it, or make it glaringly obvious what's been completed and what still needs work (A 'red-yellow-green' color-coding system might help, as might strikethrough). This will ensure that articles don't slip through the cracks, leaving you in a rush to complete them just before each deadline. And if you don’t have due dates for all of your features, don’t fret: you can always fill them in once the school year starts!

Prep Now for an Easy School Year

While summer is a time for teachers to take a break and relax, you can make your school year go much more smoothly when you do a little prep work for your yearbook process in advance. A few hours of your time now can help you get in the right mindset, and also create motivation for your committee from the moment you step back in the classroom. And that will definitely translate to a more organized process for your content, and more inspired articles for the pages of your book.

To develop a yearbook that’s beautiful, creative, and well thought out, you need to cultivate an environment that helps your committee focus and produce innovative work. One of the best ways to spark creativity happens to be music. Bringing the right tunes to the table is one of the foundational pieces to building that perfect backdrop for your committee to come up with creative yearbook ideas. This is essential if your want to take your book to the next level of greatness. Science explains how music can be used as a tool for creative success, and a great playlist can keep your entire team on track.

Music as a Creativity Generator

There’s been a lot of research done on how music affects the brain, and one of the unanimous conclusions is that adding some fresh music to the background of your workspace can help you focus, and supports your ability to come up with innovative new concepts. It can be especially helpful when you’re stuck at a creative roadblock, and need some inspiration to get over the hump. This is most often referred to as the Mozart effect, referring to the fact that certain types of music can boost your ability to discover abstract solutions to logical problems. Over the years, this theory has been expanded. Researchers have discovered that classical music isn’t the only way to boost creativity. In fact,  listening to music in general can help people to boost their creative energy. To use music in a way that helps your team come up with more creative yearbook ideas, you need a playlist of songs that your committee can listen to at meetings, and while they’re working on their own. Different people respond to different types of music, so try to include a variety of song choices. This will help every member of your committee find the style of music that best helps them work. Expose your committee to a variety of music genres with the playlist you create. Once they’ve learned what kind of music fits their work style, they can either continue to use the playlist you provided, or create their own!

A Playlist to Use

To make your playlist most effective, you want to build in songs from a variety of genres--including ones that you might not listen to frequently. I’ve found that mixing songs with a variety of tempos that offer a somewhat calm listening experience is most effective. When you work on your own playlist, start with some calming classical tunes, add in some jazzier songs, and then throw in some modern hits for good measure. Below, I’ve added a fantastic playlist that you can use at yearbook committee meetings and circulate to your team for them to use when they’re working on yearbook projects on their own.

• Four Seasons - Vivaldi
• Girl from Ipanema - Stan Getz
• Mad World - Vitamin String Quartet
• Colder Weather - Zac Brown Band
• Bach Cello Suites - Yo Yo Ma
• Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien - Edith Piaf
• Rather Be - Clean Bandit
• I Need Your Love - Pentatonix
• Hallogallo - Neu!
• Jolene - Dolly Parton
• The Room of Requirements - Nicholas Hooper
• Mercy - Duffy
• Carry You - Restless Blues Band
• Comin’ Home - City and Colour
• Chasing Cars - Snow Patrol
• The Way I Am - Ingrid Michaelson
• Bach French Suites - Glenn Gould
• Problem - Pentatonix

And if you want to use this playlist for your committee, you don’t even have to go through the hassle of finding every song. You can just circulate the link to this pre-created playlist in Spotify! Just set the playlist to randomly select songs from the list, and get to work. If you find the variety distracting, and instead want to create thematic stations with certain songs as jumping-off points, you can right click on a song in this playlist, and select 'Start Radio.' Now, a customized radio incorporating thematic elements from that song is at your fingertips. Pandora, another free customizable music station, also allows you this flexibility. I often find, on writing days, that a playlist without lyrics works well--and for a modern twist on that, movie soundtracks, acoustic tracks, or artists like The Piano Guy can provide a respite from classical and jazz.

Spur Creative Yearbook Ideas

It’s no secret that the right resources and environment can spur more creative yearbook ideas. Music is a natural way to give your committee some subtle inspiration while they work. Whether you use my playlist or create your own, you can help each member of your team find their “work zone,” and stay focused while they build out your yearbook projects. This is extremely beneficial to the creative process, which will ultimately help you to create an exceptional yearbook!

As you’ve recently experienced, being the person in charge of the yearbook committee can be a slightly intense undertaking. This is never truer than at the end of the school year, when you’re working to get all of your content created, proofed, and added to your template before your delivery deadline. And that means summer break can’t possibly come at a better time. But while you’re relaxing and refreshing your mind during the warmest months of the year, don’t forget to take some time to engage your creative side! Below, I’ve come up with some fun activities that will help you have a great summer, and also give you some engaging new exercises for creativity that you can bring back to your committee in the fall.

Funny Videos

If there’s one thing that can get you laughing, it’s a compilation of funny videos on YouTube. So on those days it's too hot to venture outside (or too rainy), jump online and spend a few hours enjoying cute kittens, adorable babies or people pulling pranks on their significant others. As you find a few that really get you giggling, save them in an email or a spreadsheet that you can refer back to during the school year. While these videos will help you to relax after a stressful publication season, they’re also a great tool for breaking up or starting off a committee meeting with something hilarious when you all come back together in the fall!

Music Playlist

Music is a great way to spur creativity. It’s also an excellent tool to help you unwind. This summer, spend some time pulling together a great playlist of all your favorite music, past and present. Try to incorporate some artists that may be less well-known to your committee, as changing rhythms, tones and timbres have been shown to really engage the creative side of your brain.¹ Personally, I find that a playlist full of songs without words really helps when reading, writing, or editing. This summer, you can use this playlist at the beach, while you’re working on your house or mowing the lawn, or as you’re pulling together your class syllabi for the school year. Then bring your playlist to your yearbook committee meetings to share with your team in the fall!

Practice Exercises

Building creativity--both for yourself and among your yearbook committee--means accessing both the left and right sides of your brain. To really engage your ingenuity, you need exercises that work both sides of your brain at the same time. Here are a few great ones to get you started:

• Look for new ideas: To think outside of the box on a more regular basis, you have to train your brain to look for creative ideas when you’re living everyday life. To make this a priority, you need the right tools to capture ideas on the go. While a pen and paper will work fine, you can also use apps like Evernote and Backpack. Both are easy to access and offer sharing capabilities, making it simple to send new concepts to the rest of your team when you’re out and about!
• Use your non-dominant side: Giving yourself a challenge by using your non-dominant hand in normal activities can stimulate both sides of your brain. Practice writing, catching a ball and picking things up with your opposite hand to get those synapses firing!
• Practice your colors: One way you can start encouraging the right and left sides of your brain to communicate better is through a color exercise. Write down different colors on a piece of paper using a marker of another color. For example, write yellow in a blue marker, green in a purple marker, etc. Then practice reading the name of the color as written. While it may not be the most thrilling party trick, it’s actually much more difficult than it sounds!

Spark Creativity Within Your Yearbook Committee

Taking a break from your yearbook committee during the summer months gives you plenty of time to refresh your mind before coming back to school in the fall. These particular tips are excellent ways to stimulate your creativity and take a break from planning and scheduling, yet they can carry into fall and be tools your yearbook committee will use. So watch some videos, relax to some tunes, and exercise your brain in silly ways. Before you know it, you’ll have a bunch of new ways to get your committee off on an innovative foot in the fall, while also enjoying your summer break!   1. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/12/111205081731.htm