Yearbook curriculum

As you complete all of the spring sections for this year’s book, there are likely a bunch of leftover photos that didn’t make the cut. While many of these images are totally amazing, there just isn’t enough room for every picture you nab to wind up on the pages of your book. When this happens, you have options. One of my favorite yearbook ideas to get a little extra mileage out of your committee’s hard work is to use these photos for a fundraising campaign. Below, I’ll walk you through exactly how you can use these images to raise money for your school, and how to to make sure your fundraising campaign doesn’t impede on your yearbook sales goals.

Find the Right Photos

When you’re using your extra images for fundraising, your best bet is to go simple, Select just a few of the most fabulous leftover pictures to promote to the students at your school for best results. This helps to limit the amount of work your committee has to dedicate to the project, and makes it easy for students to select a few images to purchase. To start, narrow down the photos you’ll share to no more than five images per group, team, or club. Look for pictures that offer a unique perspective--something the students couldn’t have taken themselves. Make sure you get a range of photos to include everyone from each group, as students like pictures of themselves. When your campus has an opportunity to get professional photos with their friends, doing what they love, they’re more likely to buy and support your campaign.

Package Them Well

To make this a successful fundraising effort, you need to package your photos to sell. Once you’ve selected a few of the spring activity images to share with each group or club, make it clear how they’ll be available. For example, will you be printing them in a variety of sizes, or only one? Will they be available for digital purchase, or only print? My personal recommendation is to offer each image in one size for print--either a 5x7 or an 8x10. Then make the photos available for digital purchase, which would allow students to print their own copies. By limiting the options, you’re able to share those fabulous photos with a wider range of the student body, but limit the amount of work that this type of endeavor creates for your committee.

Make it a Yearbook Special

As you’re out talking with the students who would be interested in purchasing these extra shots, make your pricing model clear. Bring an example of each printed photo to show off the quality of your print job and get students excited to buy their own copy right now. To ensure that students don’t replace the purchase of a yearbook with a few photos from your fundraising campaign, promote your extra photos as a yearbook special. Once students purchase a copy of the yearbook, they have the exclusive opportunity to get a few of these extra awesome pictures as an add-on! Make sure you also communicate to the students that purchasing a copy of these images goes to support your school. Bring along order forms when you meet with each group, so that the excitement of seeing the images translates into fundraising sales. Bring along a tablet or laptop to make it easy for students to get their yearbook order in immediately, if they haven’t purchased one yet. Also, include a note about how they can order from home, in case they don’t have a way to purchase from school. Not only will this make sure that their priority is on getting a yearbook, it gets more orders in before the end of the year sales deadline. The benefits of this idea are twofold! Also, reach out to the parents or coaches/advisers of each team or group, to spread the word--family will definitely want to get in on these frameable photos of their children in action!

Putting Yearbook Ideas into Action

Your committee has taken some amazing photos throughout the spring months, and it’s just not possible to include every single shot on the pages of your publication. This is one of the best ideas to make sure that those stunning images don’t go to waste, while also raising money for your school at the same time. And since students get access to a little something extra with their book purchase, this will be one of your more successful yearbook ideas yet!

As the school year begins to wind down, you might be wondering how to keep your yearbook committee occupied once the book is finalized. After all, isn’t all of the work done, outside of distributing the publication to the masses? In some ways, yes--which means you can all breathe a sigh of relief and relax. But it doesn’t mean that there’s nothing left to do this school year! Below, I’ll walk you through the three things you should consider doing with your committee before the end of the year, from prepping for next fall to ensuring no great idea gets left in the dust.

Note Successes and Failures

As your yearbook committee worked to implement all of your fabulous ideas this year, they built out some awesome content. They also had some serious learning experiences along the way that contributed to making your publication great. Once you send your book to print, set aside a day or two to talk with your committee about what went really well, and what challenges they encountered. Outline the steps they took to make their role within the yearbook committee efficient, and how they worked well with the group as a whole. Focus on what they did to overcome challenges, and how you can utilize these ideas to help the yearbook committee start off on the right foot next fall. From concepts that weren't implemented properly to inconsistencies with project management, this is a great way to learn more about what your committee’s experience was throughout the year, and how you can take your team, yourself, and your publication to the next level in the future.

Gather Unused Ideas

With all the brainstorming you did with your team, there are sure to be some leftover ideas that could be totally workable within next year’s book! Work with your yearbook committee to build out a list of these concepts in Google Docs, along with a brief description of how you see each one being executed. This will add context to jog your memory next fall, if the concept sounds a little nebulous in nature. Make a note about this document on your calendar for the fall. This will remind you of your pre-prepped ideas, and ensure that you remember to use them in your first brainstorming session next year!

Prepare for the First Month

We all know that the first month of school is one of the most hectic of the year. The best thing you can do to make this month run smoothly is be totally prepared in advance. Which makes right now the perfect time to lay out your first month of activities for when classes resume in the fall! This allows you to plan the rest of the year’s activities when school starts. Work with your yearbook committee to create a timeline based on the successes you had this year. Outline what features should be started right off the bat, and when you need to have your theme determined by. Set up a full schedule for your first month of meetings. This gets you super organized to immediately get next year’s committee focused and on track.

Celebrate Your Yearbook Committee!

After you've completed these three end-of-year tasks, it’s important to take some time to have a little fun--and celebrate all of the hard work your yearbook committee put in this year! Plan a fun ice cream sundae party to show your committee how much you appreciate their hard work. You could even move your class outside to enjoy your sundaes with a little fresh air, to boot! Whatever you choose to do, setting aside some fun downtime will make your committee feel totally loved and appreciated. Plus, ending the year on a positive note prepares everyone to come back in the fall ready to make the yearbook committee even more awesome than it was before!

As a yearbook coordinator, your job is twofold: to help your students learn the publication process and to produce a fabulous yearbook. But as a role model, you also have a responsibility to lead them down the path towards an amazing future. One way to do this is by helping them develop superior critical thinking skills. The yearbook committee is a way to engage the creative talents of your students, which encourages them to become better problem solvers in general. This is something that won’t just help them today, but supports their success later on in life. Today, I’m examining a TED talk, "Design Thinking--Maximizing Your Students' Creative Talent," that focuses on how you can maximize your students’ creative talent as a gateway for their future and offering applicable lessons for you to use with your team.

Problem Solving vs. The Right Answer

In school, children are often taught to create work that represents what a teacher wants to see--to 'jump through the hoops,' as it were. Instead of thinking outside the box to come up with unique--and possibly better--solutions to problems, they’re told that there’s only one right answer. This builds a learning environment that stifles innovation. When challenged with coming up with creative solutions, many children don’t even know where to start. Teaching them to unleash their imagination will support strong original content for your yearbook, and also teach your students how to change the way they approach everyday problems in their schoolwork and beyond.

Design Thinking is a Process

To infuse creativity into how your students solve complex problems, they have to start by asking the right questions. After identifying a problem, challenge your students to get out into the community to look for answers. This will help them to understand the full scope of an issue and ultimately identify the best solution for a problem. At the beginning, your students will need your guidance to develop questions that get to the root of their story. As they practice, they'll hone their skills to be able to ask awesome questions right off the bat.

Don’t Be Afraid to Fail

To apply this line of thought to your yearbook, have your students act like journalists to uncover unique stories for new features within your yearbook. Help them formulate and track questions and responses on a notepad that they can refer back to. As they review their notes, encourage your students to come up with five creative story topics that could result in an extraordinary article for your book. After gathering their data, encourage your students to test out some of the yearbook ideas they came up with. Use a storyboard to lay out what each concept would entail. This style of prototyping will help them make the connection between a great concept, and whether they have enough data to implement the idea. By showing your students how to test concepts out before committing to one, you teach them that it’s ok to fail a few times before they find success. Over time, this inspires them to think outside the box on a regular basis--which creates a more innovative student body as a whole.

Creative Yearbook Ideas Go Beyond Today

Developing broader critical thinking skills that inspire kids to go beyond just finding the answer their teacher is looking for does more than support great yearbook ideas. It teaches your students how to be passionate about the work they do. Beyond this, when students are given the creative tools to solve complex problems, they develop a more strategic thought process for approaching their work. This supports their ability to not just succeed, but to thrive after they’re sent off into the real world. Work with your committee to use this concept and come up with unique yearbook ideas that shine. You’ll teach them to have fun with problem-solving, while giving them valuable tools for the future as well!

As we approach the last few weeks of the school year, you’re ecstatic to send your publication off to print. You’re also realizing just how much hard work your yearbook committee put into your project over the past few months. From how they covered school events to the way they carefully crafted every article, their diligence has definitely paid off. While you want to show them your appreciation, your budget doesn’t allow you to splurge on a big thank you gift. But before you feel defeated, let me offer one super cute way to show off your appreciation: a photo collage of your year together, using the custom pages of your yearbook! Not only is it a budget-friendly option, but it doesn't eat up much time to design at all! Below, I’ll walk you through what to include and how you can easily create this special gift without a big investment.

A Fabulous Yearbook Committee Photo Collage

The thing that I love about this concept is that it celebrates your big accomplishment (the yearbook going to print) while thanking your committee at the same time. And your team will love having something to remember all of the fun they had this year! As you start to select the right photos to use in your collage, remember that this particular piece should focus on the people who have been behind the scenes. Crowdsource selfies from your yearbook committee that were taken while out working on your book. Find silly images that you saved from some of your team meetings. Creating a stunning yearbook can be stressful, but you also had a ton of great times together. Remind your yearbook committee of those amazing, unforgettable moments with the images you choose for your collage.

Use Custom Pages

To make your collage a total surprise, use the free yearbooks that you earn through your sales to gift to your yearbook committee members. Before you place the final order, personalize the custom pages of these books with your photo collage! Our drag and drop software makes it easy to quickly add your selected photos to the spread. And since you're already familiar with how to build out pages in our system, creating this custom work of art will be a breeze! Add a few quotes throughout your collage about friendship, either on your own or through the pre-made graphics that are available within your Treering account. Include a lovely header to the top of your collage that thanks your team for their dedication to the project. Since you're adding the collage to the custom pages of the yearbook, you can even personalize this header with each individual's name! With a few minutes' effort, you'll create something that your committee members will cherish forever.

Personalize Your Yearbook Committee Thank You

Once you're ready to distribute the yearbooks, make sure you write a nice thank you note on the first signature page. This will always remind them of how hard they worked to help create something wonderful for your school. While they might lose a thank you card, you can be sure they'll keep this memory forever. Plus, this individualized touch will really resonate with your yearbook committee members. Within your note, make sure to:

• Personalize the note with specific contributions that each individual made. This will recognize how their efforts supported the yearbook creation process, and why they were a valued member of your team.
• Include a fun memory that goes beyond the work they produced, like a fun outing you had or a particular creative exercise that was memorable. Reference a funny joke they told or that time they let you take the last cookie. This will let them know that you value them for who they are, and not only for the great work they've done.
• End with how excited you are to (hopefully) work with them again next year. This reminds everyone that they can be part of the yearbook committee in the future!

Because there's no additional out-of-pocket expense, it's a totally affordable way to show your appreciation. It might be small, but a gift like this will really encourage your yearbook committee to come back in the fall. And since these individuals already have a strong understanding of how the process works, they’re the perfect fit for next year’s team!

Running a student-based yearbook committee is much different than an adult volunteer team. Your students are fast approaching adolescence, and long to be treated as adults, on the same level as you, but you need to maintain your clear-cut chain of command throughout the process. Because this younger demographic has significantly less experience with strict deadlines, project management, and creating a full-blown publication, you have to consciously assume the role of editor -- not peer. Everyone on your committee is deeply invested in the final design of your book, which makes it even more important for you to clearly define your leadership role. To set you up for success, below I’ll outline the top three tips you can use to bring out your team’s best work and accomplish all of your deadlines with ease!

Role of the Editor

As the head of the committee, it’s your job to set the strategic vision of your publication. Your team will offer input, but ultimately you have the final say on all of the content that is approved for your book. Within the role of editor, you will be the one setting the direction for your features, scheduling deadlines, and keeping the project on course. This also puts you in charge of reviewing content to ensure it fits with the theme or vision of your yearbook as a whole. Use the tools below to support your success within this role.

Delegate the Work

Your students joined the yearbook committee because they want to get involved in the action. So make sure that’s what you offer! Delegate the day-to-day tasks to your team. This includes taking photos for your features, writing the content, organizing the flow of each page and submitting ideas for approval. Once you receive content from your team, you (or a parent volunteer on your committee) should review the copy and send it back for edits and additions. This helps your students to take more responsibility in their work and better understand the publishing process as a whole. When the edited content is re-submitted, do a final review to ensure that it’s what you’re looking for before administering approval.

Ask Questions

Instead of just correcting the work your students submit, encourage them to dig deeper on their own. The best way to do this is by asking questions. For example, let’s say one of your students submits a piece on the funny things that go on in the lunchroom, and it falls short. As the editor, it’s your job to figure out what the piece is missing. But instead of just handing that information to the student, ask them basic reporting questions based on the old 'who, what, when, where, and why' adage to get their minds thinking. This encourages them to deepen their investigative skills and turn in their next story with full details from the start.

Stick to Deadlines

Getting your content completed on time is essential. When one person falls behind, it affects the entire team. To prevent an inadvertent domino effect, stress the importance of your deadlines on a weekly basis. Make sure you’re checking in on projects well before they’re completed to ensure that your yearbook committee is staying ahead of the content that needs to be created. When students fall behind, try to figure out why -- and how you can help them change their workflow to get subsequent assignments in on time. The more important you make deadlines, the more your students will adhere to them. And that can help them not only in yearbook class, but in their schoolwork from here through college.

Managing Your Yearbook Committee

No matter who is on your yearbook committee, it’s important to recognize that as a coordinator, you’ll be the last person to see content before it goes to press. Building the right leadership skills to take on the editor role helps your students present their best work, while also making your job a lot easier. Follow these steps to better manage your team and develop the best content your school has ever seen. I know that’s going to get you great results in the print version of your yearbook!

When you work with other teachers at your school to gather great shots for your elementary school yearbook, it’s easy to just turn people loose, and use whatever images they send in.  You might feel like you’re being bossy if you direct them to very specific photo grabs right off the bat: but in reality, most of your fellow teachers appreciate a little more direction when you ask them to submit some yearbook photos from an event. Below, I’ll walk you through some steps you can take to empower your volunteers and help them snap awesome images for the pages of your publication!

Create an Easy-to-Use Guide

To help your team, you need a quick-access guide that can easily be updated as new ideas and photo opportunities come to mind. Detail out simple photography tips that are applicable on the go. Your list should be short and to the point. While you want to offer pertinent information, you also don’t want to overwhelm them with too many details. Keep in mind that most of your teachers use their smartphone camera for images. Use our photography guide as a starting point to pull together some fantastic tips that your teachers can easily use. This type of guide is a situation where Google Docs can again be super handy. You can share and update your information without re-sending a new document with every change, and quickly share photo ideas when new events are coming up. Additionally, your Google Doc is accessible when your volunteers are mobile, which means they don’t have to worry about remembering all of your tips at a moment’s notice. This type of document is the most efficient way to provide the best information and keep your team --and the teachers working to support your content--informed.

Offer Great Photo Concepts

Offering direction in your quick photography guide goes beyond just giving your team tips on taking great photos. You should also include awesome inspiration on where to take the most fabulous shots! Think about this from the perspective of the teacher, and where they’ll be grabbing photos of your students. Then add some examples of where to watch for photo opportunities. This will ensure that you don’t just get random shots of students milling about, but build a base of images that contribute real value to your elementary school yearbook. You should make your ideas specific to the types of events and expeditions at your school, but here are a few of my favorites to get you started.

• Field Trips: Look for ways to grab shots of hands-on learning experiences that kids will love reliving. These are the types of events that show parents how their child learns, which communicates more value from the programming on your campus. These photo ideas could include participating in an experiment at the science museum, petting undersea animals at an aquarium, or even images of your class taking a snowboarding lesson together.
• School Fundraisers: A highlight for many kids, school fundraisers are an important part of your school-community interaction. Look for opportunities to grab group shots of students enjoying themselves at the fundraiser. For example, a school carnival is a great place to take photos of students experiencing fun game booths and enjoying cotton candy. This is also an excellent way to promote your school fundraisers--the more everyone can see the fun kids are having, the more people will want to participate next year!
• In-Class Events: Special in-class learning events make for fantastic yearbook content. Grandparents' Day, a historical wax museum, and class parties are all perfect places to get some fabulous photos. In these instances, showcasing the special day in story form is ideal. Grab a few shots of the event set-up, students participating in activities, and a final group shot of what your class created. This shows the full range of what went into the event, and is a lasting way to memorialize big happenings at your school.

Make Your Elementary School Yearbook Brilliant

The more hands you have to take great yearbook photos, the better your content will be. You simply can’t be in all of these places at the same time, because your yearbook isn’t your full-time job (plus, there's only one of you)! Encourage other staff to get involved, and remind them how much excitement they’ll spur when their students see all of these memories encapsulated in the book at the end of the year. Then, offer them your great tips to make it easy to get the best photos possible. This is the perfect way to take your yearbook content from good to totally brilliant!

If you’re in the process of bringing together a new volunteer yearbook committee, I know your struggle. It can be hard to get enough parents involved to make the content creation process go smoothly. Taking on enough volunteers is an essential piece of your yearbook puzzle--it ensures you can spread the work around, instead of piling a heap of tasks on just a few people. To help you get the right parents on board, I’ve suggested some great tips below that you can use to get more volunteers for your program. And that extra help will guarantee that your yearbook committee has enough hands on deck to tackle all of the great features you brainstorm this year!

Satisfy Volunteer Hours

Teachers and parents alike overwhelmingly agree that parent volunteers are not only necessary, but they also create positive results in schools. Volunteering shows children that their education is important and worthwhile, and shows their parents care. As such, there’s a lot of expectation around volunteering at the school--and that can work in your favor. Work with your school administration to make the yearbook committee one of the volunteer opportunities that parents are offered on a regular basis. Remind parents that volunteering for your yearbook committee can be an excellent way for them to dedicate some of their time back to the school. The multitude of responsibilities ensures that there's something for everyone, and a somewhat flexible schedule can accommodate the parents that would otherwise have conflicts. As an added bonus, their work will help to capture the best memories throughout the school year--and that’s something that directly benefits every volunteer!

Build Camaraderie

Parents, especially those with young children, are generally looking to build a connection with other adults at their child’s school. Working with other parents on the yearbook committee is a great way for them to lay the foundation for new relationships and build a sense of community across your campus. These are the bonds that last for years to come, so as you’re telling parents about all the great things that come with participating on the school yearbook committee, remind them of all the new friendships they can make while building something great for their kids.

Have Reasonable Expectations

The role of yearbook coordinator isn’t one that switches hands frequently--which means you’ll probably be in charge of the yearbook committee again next year. Remember that the experience parents have working with you now will affect not just their own future participation, but that of other moms and dads that they’re friends with. This makes it important to have reasonable expectations of your volunteers. Make sure you split work up evenly, that you have a backup plan for parents who get too busy to commit a lot of time to your project, and that you make the process fun (including bringing treats to meetings!). It can also be helpful to encourage parents to work on different features and sections in smaller groups when they have free time. The more enjoyable the experience is, the more likely it is that parents will come back next year--and possibly even recruit some extra talent for your team in the future!

Communicate About the Yearbook Committee

Finally, it’s important that you let parents know about your volunteer opportunities frequently. Here are three awesome ways to connect with parents about investing some time with the yearbook committee:

• Include details about your open committee positions in the school newsletter. Parents read these items frequently; it’s one of the easiest ways to stay in front of the right audience on a regular basis.
• Host a table at the school entrance during conferences. This is a popular night for parents to check out everything that the school has to offer, and provides a tangible way for you to connect face-to-face.
• Send home notes in their take-home folder. Parents review this very spot in their child’s backpack on a nightly basis. It’s a great way to stay front-of-mind when you’re hunting for new volunteers on your committee.

The most important thing is to stay relevant. By keeping your message in front of the parents at your school on a regular basis, you ensure they know that there’s still time to volunteer. Keep your efforts going even past the midpoint in your school year--you never know who might join your team, or when they’ll have the free time to commit!

To build a standout yearbook, you spend a lot of time brainstorming ideas and crafting great content. But sometimes, keeping your ideas fresh and unique can feel like a bit of a brain drain. When you use your creative skills all the time, it can be exhausting for your mind. Communication breakdowns, mental blocks, and emotional distractions are all factors that can slow down, or even stop, your creative flow. And since this can happen to all of the individuals on your committee, there’s a lot of variables that can affect the creative process that are totally out of your control. If you want to work around those creativity barriers with your team, you’re in luck! Today, I’m going to give you three awesome activities that you can use with your team to bust through stagnant work and make your best yearbook ideas even better. Whether you're working with students, adults, or just yourself, use the tips below and you’ll be amazed at the improved quality of work that will go into your yearbook!

Go Against the Norm

To come up with yearbook ideas that are outside of the box, you have to train your committee to think differently. Start by helping them open their minds to doing traditional things in new ways. Assign each person a task within the yearbook that’s totally outside of their comfort zone. For example, you could have a really great writer learn how to use photoshop, and practice editing the school band photos. Or encourage one of your photographers to draw a few illustrations that would compliment your content and your theme. While their work doesn’t have to wind up on the final pages of your publication, it will give them the opportunity to see the book from a totally different perspective. And that can be just what your team needs to get some serious creativity flowing!

Free Associate

Sometimes you need to get your mind refocused to create original yearbook ideas. Use this activity regularly--it would even be a superb warm-up at the beginning of each class or meeting! To get started, all you need is a dictionary. Open the book up and select a word at random. It doesn't need to have anything to do with your yearbook theme or content--you just want to engage your team's creativity. Now ask everyone to start listing off all the things they associate with that particular word. It could be thoughts, activities, phrases, colors, smells, memories--the sky really is the limit! The one thing to remember: no suggestion is a wrong suggestion. And don’t forget to write down some of the great ideas on the board at the front of your room, as this brainstorm could easily spur some unique content for your book. The more you play it, the more you’ll see their creativity start to shine through--and that will definitely carry through to their work on the pages of your book.

Get Outside for Great Yearbook Ideas

Sitting in the same room every time you work on the yearbook can be a little stifling to your committee’s creativity. To spur great yearbook ideas, you need to get your team into a fresh environment every once in a while. When you do this, it’s important to have a mission to keep everyone examining and absorbing their surroundings for new ideas. If you take your committee out to watch a football practice, have them come up with a list of twenty creative words that describe what they see--then work those words into a short poem that they can read to the group the following day, or use as captions within the football spread of your book. If you take them outside, ask them to find three nature-inspired objects that you can use as a team to create a fun nature collage. When you get them thinking creatively outside of the classroom, this can carry over to how they absorb the world on a regular basis. Before you know it, your team will be producing amazing concepts nonstop! While these types of activities may not directly create the final content that winds up on the pages of your yearbook, they will definitely help your team find a way to refocus their creative energy. And this is exactly what will bring out the kind of inventive yearbook ideas you’ve been looking for!

  Searching for great yearbook ideas takes more than just a few hours of brainstorming at the beginning of the school year: it’s a long-term process that requires a lot of thought and strategy. I know that sometimes, getting your team together for a quick idea session might seem like you’re doing your part to spark creativity and collaboration. In reality, there are some tricks and tools you can use to get your yearbook committee to produce some really stellar ideas for this year’s publication. And while they might take a little more work on your end up front, they’ll help you find the kind of ideas that will really set this year’s edition apart from the yearbooks of years passed!

Always Be Prepared

When you’re looking for the best brainstorming ideas to use with your yearbook team, the first thing I like to do is explain how great ideas don’t always come in the middle of a brainstorming session. They can really strike at any time of day - which means you have to be prepared to capture them on paper, lest they be completely forgotten an hour down the line. Encourage your students to always carry a little notebook and pencil to jot down quick ideas. Not only is this a great way to make sure you don’t miss any of those moments of brilliance, it can help them learn how to better brainstorm on their own outside of yearbook class!

Make Everyone’s Voice Matter

Some students struggle with big idea sessions not because they aren’t coming up with awesome concepts, but because they’re nervous about having their idea shot down by the rest of the team. To encourage everyone on your yearbook committee to contribute their thoughts, you need to set up an environment where everyone is heard and every voice counts. To do this well, don’t brush off any ideas when they’re being contributed. Instead, write everything down on your whiteboard or a giant pad of paper as you’re brainstorming ideas. This way, students can see their contributions being added to the list. And that can really help them to feel like their ideas matter - which can encourage them to continue contributing as the year progresses.

Talk Through Ideas

Once you’ve spent some time brainstorming ideas, talk through each one so with your students to get a better idea of how they’d actually implement them with your yearbook. This can give everyone the opportunity to understand the full scope of a concept. Plus, creating a group discussion around each item can help you build out a really amazing idea from a concept that might have seemed like the wrong fit when you first heard it. At the end of your session, askyour students to help you select the top three to five ideas that will contribute towards a more cohesive yearbook. This way no one is excluded and you can wrap up your brainstorming sessions on a positive note.

The Best Brainstorming Ideas

Coming up with great ideas isn’t something that always happens in the blink of an eye - which is why hosting regular brainstorming sessions for your team throughout the school year can really help you integrate more creativity into the overall design and content of your yearbook as a whole. Fostering an environment that makes all of your yearbook committee feel comfortable contributing their thoughts is the best way to get great ideas from your team. Not only that, but you’ll find that doing this will help to build a stronger sense of camaraderie across your team, which can help your students to work together more naturally, become more adept at bouncing ideas off of each other and ultimately create an amazing yearbook for your school.

[caption id="attachment_4072" align="aligncenter" width="508"] Sometimes unforeseen circumstances might delete your photo files.
Photo credit: Flickr CC user Daniel Morrison[/caption]   These days we have the ability to take thousands of photos with the simple click of a button. With digital cameras and smartphones getting more sophisticated every year, everyone can now capture every magical moment a hundred times over. However, it can all come crashing down–literally–with one wrong click. Back in the day, we only had film negatives to fall back on if things went awry during production. I remember several late nights pouring over hundreds of negatives to try to see if I could hunt down the right one. Squinting and trying not to expose them to too much light, my fellow staffers, and I would jump for joy when we found the right batch. Thankfully students today will never have to experience this frustration. There are many different ways you can backup ALL your files–photos, word docs, everything–and not pull all your hair out in the process. To ensure all of your student’s hard work doesn’t accidentally get deleted forever, install a backup plan into each assignment. Make sure to teach your students how to save their photos and word documents in multiple locations so no one is freaking out when they’re up against a deadline, and they can’t find their photo files. Here are some ways you can backup your precious yearbook photo files and not lose any sleep in the process:

• Online backup – Saving photos to online sites like Flickr or Shutterfly means your photos are safe somewhere on the internet. You can set up a private account with limited access to the yearbook staff so outside sources cannot steal or use your images without your permission. You can also create a Dropbox account and store and share files that way as well. You can even create a special yearbook Facebook account and tag photos on there too–just make sure to adjust your settings to private so others can’t see what you’re working on.
• External drives – When in doubt, download your photo files to an external hard drive. You can download and save as many as you want, ensuring that the files aren’t just in the hands of one student. It’s quick, painless, and instantly takes the pressure off of one person. Make sure you clearly label all your photos on your computer before you download them to the external drive so whoever is working on the next feature knows exactly where to find them.
• Hard copies – Call me old fashioned, but I’m a big fan of paper. If you’re really worried about losing files, you can always print out hard copies of the photos in question and file them away. Visual prints can also help jog your memory when you’re physically laying out designs. You can print them out on your classroom printer or send your files to a company that can print them out for you.

What backup plan do you have in place for your photo files? Have you ever lost important photos due to a computer crash or other disaster? I would love to hear about your experiences in the comment box below.

[caption id="attachment_4026" align="aligncenter" width="586"] Create a system in your classroom to help organize assignments.
Photo credit: Flickr CC user Enokson[/caption] As the school’s yearbook adviser, you have a unique job--you get to create a yearbook. Not only are you a teacher, but you’re also responsible for publishing a giant book each year that captures every magical moment of the students’ school experience. Making sure the yearbook goes out without a hitch is a tough job, but you’re not alone–you have a whole classroom of students there to help you along the way. Although many of them might be a little green when it comes to interviewing, graphic design, and all the other aspects of putting a book together, they all bring a talent to the table. It’s your job to make sure these talents shine through on every page.

No Do-Overs on Yearbooks: The Importance of Getting It Right the First Time

Yearbook class is also different than other classes because the student’s homework assignments aren’t the same. If you forget to turn a piece in, you might not have a chance to redo it. Students have to go above and beyond to make the yearbook great by putting in extra hours outside of class and possibly on weekends. That’s why delegating assignments is so important. You’ll always have some students who are eager to take on EVERY assignment and story while others might only be able to handle one or two per quarter or are more interested in doing layouts. Yearbook is about participation and the finished product. The journey to this finished product could be an interesting one and things might not go the way you planned as a teacher, but that doesn’t mean they happened the wrong way. Like I said before, yearbook staffers are still learning and the lessons they learn will be right there on the pages of the yearbook for all to see. When you delegate assignments, make sure things are spread out evenly among the entire class. Assign the base stories first (the ones that have to go in the yearbook no matter what, like class portraits and quotes, facility photos, etc.) and give them to the kids that need a little more time to turn things around. Assign the more on-the-field stories (homecoming, assemblies, etc.) to a student who has proven to be reliable and can turn things around quickly. Don’t assign the entire yearbook all at once. Instead, put all of the concrete assignments on a giant whiteboard so everyone is always aware of what’s coming up and can check in at the top of every week to see if anyone needs to cover anything.

Checks, Balances, and Incentives: Delegating and Spreading Responsibility To The Yearbook Staff

Always have a backup plan and make sure every story has at least two people working on it as a sort of yearbook checks and balance system. You can also have incentives. Try offering extra credit to the students for assignments that are a tough sell like events that must be covered on the weekends or that go late into the night. How do you delegate all of your yearbook assignments? Do you find it difficult for students to stick to their deadlines and responsibilities? I would love to hear some of your strategies in the comment box below.

[caption id="attachment_3990" align="aligncenter" width="541"] The newspaper still goes out every morning even if someone misses a deadline--the same goes for the yearbook!
Photo credit: Flickr CC user Jon S[/caption]   Sometimes overseeing the yearbook and all of its moving parts is so fun that we forget that we’re advisers and not one of the student staffers. Let’s face it, preserving memories is rewarding on so many levels with the grand prize being the look of excitement on kids’ faces when they pick up their freshly-bound yearbook. However, it’s not always fun and games. Every once in a while you might get a student or two who isn’t as gung-ho about creating a memory book as you are and might casually brush off an assignment or two. That’s when you have to come in and enforce your deadline policy–no matter what the student’s excuse is this time around. Like all things in the publishing world, a yearbook must be a tightly run ship with no lazy crew members on board if it's to get it out to the printers and back in the students’ hands by the end of the year. With so many students and faculty to interview, pages to design, and events to cover, it’s crucial that everyone in the class carries their weight and follows through on their assignments. Missing their deadline doesn’t just affect their class grade–that missed assignment means other students miss out on their moment to shine in the yearbook. Sure, you might be able to reschedule an interview with your school football coach, but missing fans reactions to the big homecoming game? There’s no time machine to jump into to make things right again. That’s why it’s important to set realistic deadlines and abide by them, and that you’re ready to follow up with consequences if the deadlines are not met. Being able to weed out the passionate from the passive might be a little easier if your school requires certain benchmarks to be passed in order to participate in the yearbook elective. For example, at my high school you had to have a certain GPA and take an edit test to even be considered. But it’s a little harder if you have no say in who is on the team. To ensure everyone is held accountable for their assignments there are a few best practices you can put into place with your students.

• In the tech world many engineers and product managers hold daily SCRUM or stand-up meetings. These meetings are short and sweet (no more than 10 minutes) and everyone has a chance to go around and briefly discuss what they’re working on and what assignments they have coming up. These meetings let other teams know what productions are coming up and hold the person accountable.
• Depending on your class size, you might want to consider weekly or bi-weekly check-ins with each student. During this time, they can go over their deadlines, discuss any issues they have with assignments in progress, or let you know if they can’t cover an event any more.
• Have a backup plan. Make sure you have several students on call to cover an after-school event like a basketball game or school dance just in case the primary reporter can no longer cover it. It's probably best to look for the most dependable students for the on call team--the students who are looking to go into publishing or writing as professions would be good candidates for on call.
• If a student misses two or more deadlines, pull them from active yearbook duty. Instead, put them to work on projects in-house during the class period instead. You can also come up with ways for them to make up for the failed assignment and pitch new ideas in their place.

How do you handle student staff members who constantly miss their deadlines? I would love to hear your different strategies in the comment box below.