Yearbook Heroes

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

As a staff member at Sycamore Academy, an online school, Yearbook Hero Lisa Ward had yearbook experience. She’s a self-proclaimed pro at the literal cut-and-paste, handcrafted memory books. As a first-year Treering user, she was excited to see students come together virtually to craft and sign each other’s books. With her daughter, Eden, she spent hours looking through templates and art in the Treering library to spark an idea for her own custom pages. The end result was the winning combination of mother-daughter talent, as Eden Will (“She’s the artist,” said Lisa) stepped in to help her mom create an entry for the People's Choice Custom Pages Design Contest.

Traditionally, custom pages put an additional spotlight on one child. Tell me about putting the spotlight on your support system. 

Eden: Mom asked for help.

Lisa: Eden drew out the layout.

Eden: It was a snapshot of the family for the year since we don’t have albums. My cousin just had a baby and now we have a record of this moment in our lives. We have family from CA, to MI, NC, different parts of TX, and OK. After it was finished, we ended up editing it for the participants to include their families so they had their own version. They’ll print for their families.

Why do you think the message of “Family Forever” resonated with hundreds of people on social media?

Eden: That was pretty awesome. The resonating thing is that we reached out to family we don’t always get to see. And they were all interested in being a part of this. It is so hard to get everyone together. The last time I saw everyone together was at my wedding. It was cool to collaborate virtually and make something that will last. Other people found that touching. We live in such a spread-out world.

Lisa: You get the occasional family settled in one place. Technology brings us together.

Eden: We participated in it, even though we weren’t physically together. It’s like we worked together to be together.

What value do custom pages give you?

Lisa: It’s especially helpful for our school. As an online school, we try to get pictures of people during spirit week wearing hats or different colors. We don’t have pictures of kids interacting because we are online. The custom pages help each parent take each and make it their own. 

Eden: Even though she’s not a parent of a student, she was able to make it a memorable for this moment in time to make it personal for her.

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

In March, Treering Yearbooks announced its 2022 #TreeringMemoriesMatter Design Contest for yearbook advisers, coordinators, and editors to share their unique perspectives from their campus community. It’s time to meet the winners and glean their best practices for yearbook spread design.

Jazmine Richey is a student editor from Grandview High School in Grandview, WA who was nominated by her editor-in-chief Lilly Kassinger for her basketball spread. This spread caught our eye and became the one to beat for several reasons: it shows basketball season from the fans and team’s POV, it’s modular, and there’s a highlight reel produced by Jazmine linked to the QR code.

Jazmine, what all went into creating this spread?

I wanted to create a spread with not only the sports players included but the huge student section our school held. I created a highlight video for our boys' basketball team and wanted it to be included on my spread to show parents, students, or anyone who buys a yearbook. I took a picture of our own basketball hoop and wanted to incorporate each of our boys by giving them their own basketball.

It was an exciting year for you: national recognition for your yearbook staff, basketball state tournament playoffs, a crowd in the stands, and a new campus building!

They're pretty excited, especially because it's everyone's first year in the yearbook class. We're all really glad our hard work has paid off like this. More than anything, this yearbook spread represents both the creativity of our yearbook team and the passion our school showed during the winter sports season. 

Lilly, please describe your relationship with Jazmine and why you nominated her.

Jazmine is one of our spread developers. In addition to creating her spreads, she does photography and edits videos to create content for our school. My role as editor-in-chief is to edit the spreads made by our team to make them fit together and take care of the rest of the book's loose ends.

How does your team design the book?

Our team makes all our spreads in Adobe InDesign and everyone creates their own layouts. As the editor, it's always nice to see the way each person on the team likes to design their spread, because once they make a couple you can see what their style is. Then I get to make the little tweaks to tie them all together for our book

Explain the big tie-in: the red line.

The spread is built around what we call the Red Line of Equity, which is a red line that is on our hallway tiles in real life. As this is our first year in our new building, we decided to incorporate it into our yearbook as a design element featured on every page, tying back into our theme of "Paving The Way" as we take the new parts of the school and turn them into traditions. The line represents not only the presence of the Red Line of Equity in our everyday lives but the beginning of the creation of traditions here at GHS.

Our school's yearbook's main strength is our theme and the way it is present in all aspects of our design. Our Red Line doesn't run through every page just because. We gave it a meaning. Just think about what story are you trying to tell about your school and dive right into making it into a reality.

What advice would you give to another student who is just getting started?

The most important thing is to have a vision.

QR Code is a registered trademark of DENSO WAVE INCORPORATED.

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

In March, Treering Yearbooks announced its 2022 #TreeringMemoriesMatter Design Contest for yearbook advisers, coordinators, and editors to share their unique perspectives from their campus community. It’s time to meet the winners and glean their best practices for yearbook spread design.

Grace Montemar is the Yearbook Club Adviser from Edison Regional Gifted Center in Chicago, IL. Her team earned first place in the middle school division for their “Aesthetic” spread. The reporting and design distinguished this spread.

Tell us about this show-stopper.

While we like to include several recurring spreads that appear in our school’s yearbook each year, we still like to introduce a few new features as well. This fresh feature allowed Yearbook Club to spotlight classmates from various grades whose fashion sense stood out from the crowd. The students who were invited to participate enjoyed answering a brief questionnaire that helped to illustrate their distinctive style.

How does Edison RGC design the book? 

I typically like starting with a general template but then customizing it to suit the needs of the specific spread. Some of my yearbook students prefer creating a layout from scratch, which takes much longer. But if they’re committed to doing it this way (and time allows for it), then it’s totally fine. 

I also try to manage expectations upfront so they understand that there will usually be a lot of polishing involved before their spread is fully ready for publishing in the yearbook. One thing that my yearbook students love is seeing their names attached to their work. It gives them a sense of pride to see their byline displaying their name and grade on any spreads that they’re involved in.

What does your role look like as a club adviser?

My responsibilities include recruiting and training the 6th-8th graders who join Yearbook Club, running the weekly meetings, empowering the students to help build the ladder and decide content, art directing them in designing their layouts, and helping them to proofread, edit, and write copy. 

I also handle the marketing aspects––sending announcements to key channels for sharing with the intent of promoting sales with parents, as well as encouraging photo submissions.

How do you gather photos?

Pre-pandemic, the majority of photos were taken by myself, and/or I recruited parents who had an eye for photography to cover events that I couldn’t attend. With in-person events slowly starting to happen this school year, I’ve been able to resume taking some photos but we’re still relying more on community submissions than we have in past years. In order to keep the submissions coming, we periodically request specific photos throughout the year (to avoid receiving an onslaught of images too late in the production timeline).

What advice would you give to another person who is just getting started?

Congrats on accepting your role with the yearbook! It can feel overwhelming to take on this endeavor but you’ll do just fine. Here are some tips to help you: 

1. Take things one step at a time––but don’t wait. If you work on the yearbook little by little, regularly, and continuously, it’ll be much easier to produce, as opposed to cramming and rushing everything all at once at the end. 
2. Ask for help from your community when you need it. Need more photo submissions? Be sure to ask for help from the room parents and PTO in spreading the word. Still trying to recruit students? Ask for help from the principal or certain teachers in drumming up interest. You’d be surprised who’s willing to help (and how) if you just ask.

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

In March, Treering Yearbooks announced its 2022 #TreeringMemoriesMatter Design Contest for yearbook advisers, coordinators, and editors to share their unique perspectives from their campus community. It’s time to meet the winners and glean their best practices for yearbook spread design.

Last year, Elyse Martinez from Del Norte Heights Elementary School in El Paso, TX submitted a face mask fashion spread for the inaugural #TreeringMemoriesMatter Design Contest. The spread won second place. Fast forward a year, and her design earned the top prize among the elementary schools. 

Congratulations, Elyse! 

I believe that two years of national recognition tells the community that our yearbook is timely and a great representation of current events. It lets the community know that much love and intent goes into the creation of a book that they can cherish as they look back on the memories of their child.

I am very competitive and I'm also very proud of the work I put into the yearbook. I also love to win stuff! The option to win additional free yearbooks allows us to provide books as an incentive and a reward for students who otherwise might not have the opportunity to purchase the yearbook.

Tell me how your school community responded.

We are excited and proud! As I began sharing with students, they cheered—especially the class that was key in planning the Sept. 11 tribute. They were the ones who read special excerpts to commemorate the event. One wrote a poem she read out loud, and our Music teacher played a special musical selection. We invited our local fire department as well as the JROTC unit from our high school, Bel Air High School. It was an exceptional morning that didn’t leave a dry eye on the field.

What does your position as Campus Reporter entail?

My role is to document the activities on our campus that celebrate our students and then I post them on our social media accounts. Because I take copious amounts of photos, I have an ample supply to use in the yearbook. I have learned that it is important to create folders for each event and drop them in as soon as possible. That makes it so much easier to create the pages as I already have the pictures grouped by event.

Once you have the photos, how do you begin the design process?

I start with the Treering Yearbooks templates to lay out the photos. Then I add or adjust as necessary to fill it up with all the pictures I’ve taken. When I design my yearbook, I try to include as many events that happened on campus as possible. Because when families look back at their yearbook, I want them to have fond memories of their experiences.

What advice would you give to another yearbook coordinator who is just getting started?

If someone was just starting out on their yearbook, I would tell them, “You can never take enough pictures!” 

It is so easy to snap a photo with our digital cameras (especially our phones!) and you can easily cast aside those that don’t come out. You can never recapture a moment that has already passed.

Secondly, although seeing and capturing your students engaged in an activity is easy and fast, parents can not resist when you capture their child looking at the camera and smiling as they enjoy whatever it is they are doing. Those smiles—they are priceless!

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

When the yearbook adviser left St. Francis, a new teacher inherited the job. Then another. And another. Then, it was Tina Schumacher’s turn. She inherited unsold books and a program that was in the red. School leadership charged her with getting the yearbook program out of debt.

What did you discover when you became the adviser?

With our previous publisher, you had to sell a minimum number of books. And we weren't always selling that minimum, but we had to buy that many. In a closet at the school is anywhere from eight to 15 yearbooks, depending on the year.  And then the kids would sell ads to go in the back, which didn’t make up the difference.

How did you turn things around?

I started hunting. I thought, there's gotta be a different way. When I found Treering, it was too good to be true. Those are the words that I said to the principal. I told her I found a way we can make our yearbooks and make money doing it. 

Our first year we did a tiered sponsorship for local businesses. We just made platinum level, gold, etc. donor levels and put a list of names of supporters rather than ads to save on pages. I told them it would probably be the last time we would ask them, and we have been out of debt ever since. I was able to buy a new camera and a couple new lenses. 

We are never in any kind of a money crunch, which is great, but on top of that we have really great books.

You create an elementary yearbook, a secondary one, and a book for the One Act. How do you balance multiple books at once?

When we started using it, the kids knew more than I did. They showed me around and taught me how to do things. I'm not necessarily the one making the high school yearbook: it's theirs, so they can do with it as they see fit provided as long as it's acceptable by me.

For eight years, I’ve made a book of still photos from our One Act; I moved that over to Treering. It's got pictures of the cast and crew working on things. It's mostly a book of the story of the play.

I think this is my fourth elementary book. Parents loved it. It started because I had too many students in journalism class and they needed something to do. I really kind of handle that book myself now.

How does Treering Yearbooks support you?

It is nice to be self-sufficient. If we continue to use this company we will not have to worry about being in debt.

Also, if I don't know what to do or forget how to do it, I contact support and they walk me right through it and ask if I need additional help, No one acts like I should know this by now.

Our guest expert is David Burns, President of Color Portraits - a longtime Treering school photography partner servicing Illinois and Wisconsin. He's been framing perfect team shots since back when "post-game snacks" meant a chocolate bar with nougat and parents weren't yet reading ingredient labels.

After 20+ years and thousands of school photo sessions across the Midwest, I've seen it all—from squinting soccer teams in harsh sunlight to last-minute makeup photo scrambles for absent students. At Color Portraits, we've mastered the art and science of school photography, turning potential chaos into seamless operations that produce stunning results. These battle-tested strategies will transform your yearbook from good to unforgettable—without the headaches, delays, or disappointed parents. 

Efficient scheduling strategies

For group photo days, we recommend scheduling one group every five minutes. This allows photographers to:

• Set up each group while the next one arrives
• Arrange students in height order for quick positioning
• Maintain a smooth flow throughout the day

For larger groups (school plays, entire grade levels), allow 10 minutes to prevent scheduling backups.

Middle school/junior high considerations

Middle schools typically schedule sports pictures three times yearly (fall, winter, spring). We recommend:

• Scheduling after school to accommodate parent-volunteer coaches and uniform changes
• Taking pictures during each sport's season for proper uniform distribution
• Capturing individual photos as athletes arrive in uniform, followed by group shots when coaches arrive

Composition tips for various group sizes

Create rectangular rather than square compositions to properly fill the frame. For optimal results:

• Utilize stairs, risers, or bleachers to ensure every face is visible
• Incorporate props for club photos to add character and personalization
• Consider photographing sports teams in their natural environment (soccer teams by goals, track teams on the track)

Lighting techniques: indoor vs. outdoor

Indoor photography:

• Provides consistent controlled lighting
• Allows for fixed flash distance and stable exposure settings

Outdoor photography:

• Cloudy days offer less light variation but muted skies
• Sunny days provide vibrant backgrounds but create shadows and squinting
• Position groups with the sun behind them and use flash to reduce shadows
• Avoid direct sunlight into the lens

Student identification strategies

Send digital images to coaches or club sponsors for proper student identification. Maintain basic row formations to facilitate easy identification.

Balancing posed and action photography

Our standard sports shoots focus on group and individual photos outside of game days. For action shots:

• Collect images from parents or yearbook staff taken during actual games
• Create collage pages featuring action shots from different grade levels
• Position these collages before or after formal group photos

Handling makeup sessions

When students miss the original photo day:

• Leave space in the original formation to add missing students via Photoshop
• This approach looks more natural than retaking group photos
• Retakes often create new absences, compounding the problem

File organization recommendations

Create an intuitive organization system:

• Establish separate folders for each team and club
• Request proper labeling (team grade level or club name) when parents submit photos
• Always back up all images to cloud storage or external devices

Accommodating photo restrictions

For students with privacy concerns:

• Ask parents if listing the child as "Not Pictured" is acceptable
• Omit names completely when parents request
• Prioritize parental decisions regarding their child's privacy

Timeline planning for yearbook deadlines

Plan your photography schedule strategically:

• Capture club photos early in the school year when groups form
• Take sports team photos during their respective seasons when uniforms are available
• Complete all team photography by February at the latest
• This timeline provides yearbook editors ample preparation time

This comprehensive approach ensures your school's sports and club photography will be efficient, professional, and ready for yearbook publication.

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

Meet Abby, Treering’s Community Advocate Team (CAT) Director. Not only does she advocate for schools and parents who need support, but she also advocates for the team she leads by creating a positive, proactive environment.

Do you have a yearbook story for us?

In 7th grade, I won the athlete of the year superlative. The photographer set up her photoshoot after a workout and expected me to do a chin-up. I was a swimmer. The resulting image showed me with my tongue out, hair in disarray, and shirt pulling from my shorts. It told people, “I’m a great athlete, but a mess everywhere else.” I always wondered why they didn’t photograph me in my element, the pool.

And thus, you began fixing yearbook issues! You’re in the midst of our busiest season because April through May are when our spring deliveries go to print.

Yes, this is my favorite time. I started hyping up the team in January by letting them know we are approaching the final stretch. It’s now, in the 11th hour, when customers are putting the final touches on their masterpieces and inevitably things are going to go wrong.

Last summer, we increased our permanent staff to better serve customers. We also increase seasonal help during this time and extended the hours phone and email support are available.

What other new initiatives have you begun?

We are constantly evolving. In fall, we started Welcome Walk-Throughs for new yearbook editors so they are ready to cheerlead their own book. During these one-on-one sessions, an advocate goes over page count, shipping, dates and deadlines, yearbook promotion, and how to engage the school community, set up folders/photo storage, complete portrait autoflow, and go print ready. It’s a lot! We really want to build confidence.

Every day, we learn from customers, and many updates to the app or new themes have come from them! 

How does it feel to see your ideas in motion?

We are just scratching the surface! Last year, I wanted to do something fun for our customers and recognize our community by rewarding them for doing a great job and for all the hours they put in. The #TreeringMemoriesMatter came from that. I’m excited to see how it expanded to the #YearbookHero and #TreeringMemoryMaker contests.

There are always things we can do along the way to help people smile. Whether it’s these large-scale contests or telling yearbook editors what looks great in their books—it’s about kindness. Our customers put hours they don’t have into their craft.

When people think of “support,” they probably envision a cube farm with a bunch of headsets and scripted responses. How is Treering Yearbooks different?

The work culture at Treering Yearbooks is what attracted me to the company in 2012. Our focus has always been on customer service. When most help centers have a “turn and burn” philosophy, Treering doesn’t monitor call times. Our advocacy team is trained to anticipate future needs and educate editors. I tell them, “Answer the unasked questions.”

Every year, satisfaction surveys consistently mention how much yearbook editors and parents appreciate the focused time they receive on the phone from our agents. 

If you could tell a Treering yearbooks customer anything, what would it be?

The CAT team is here to help you every step of the way in your yearbook journey and we are here to help you when you are overwhelmed. There’s no limit to what we won’t do for them (in the yearbook).

Operative phrase: In the yearbook. Visit/favorite/bookmark help.treering.com for more.

Not every yearbook coordinator is an Emmy Award winner, but Katie Parish is. The gold hardware on a shelf over her shoulder should be intimidating; after all, Katie knows the value of a quality interview. Two seconds in, and I’m completely disarmed as we talk about volunteering, yearbooking, and being WFH moms.

How did you move from the newsroom to the classroom?

I retired from my television job when my daughter started kindergarten, and I needed something to keep me creative. A lot of people shy away from the PTA, but I really found a wonderful community and was like, “Can I please help make the yearbook?” I started small, just helping with some of the pages.

A lot of people shy away from the PTA, but I really found a wonderful community and was like, “Can I please help make the yearbook?”
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When we moved schools, I was helping with social media, and the yearbook mom disappeared. I just jumped in and I instantly loved Treering so much. It was so easy to use I totally got it. While I had some previous experience, it just was so much better than the platform we had at my previous school. You have immediate access to photos when parents share them and there are a plethora of graphics and fonts. It’s super simple to lay out the pages and add graphics.

Over 80% of your school community bought yearbooks last year. How did you do it?

My community is a late adoption community: they upload pictures late and they buy books late. I actually leave holes in my spreads because I know I’m gonna be getting more photos second semester.
Over a two-week period, we promoted a class contest. We said whichever class buys the highest percentage of books the week after spring break will win a sweet treat party and the teacher will receive a $25 Target gift card. It’s really important when you have teacher buy-in. The winning class sold 100%, the next one was at 98%.

I love the idea of a marketing contest. How else do you involve the school?

On Halloween, our principal dressed up as Where’s Waldo. I mean, what was I supposed to do? I put him on 13 pages in the book and the kids had to find him. That was just a little interactive thing, and that’s something else that’s so fun about yearbook: it’s organic. During the year, you can build into the book and make align with your community in this specific moment.

We always do a cover contest. Students draw something school related and they have always had to include the name of the school, our key words—Ready, Responsible, and Respectable—and the year. The yearbook committee narrows it down to the top 20, and then the PTA narrows it down a little bit further. The teachers and front office staff, admin, everybody who helps run the school, gets to vote on the winner. I paste all the final covers onto some poster board and have them available to be seen in the office. Then, the winner goes on the front, and the six runners up on the back cover.

Next year is the school’s 20th anniversary, which is the platinum anniversary. So we’re gonna do some silver foil on the cover.

How does your experience as a yearbook coordinator help in your role here at Treering?

Because I work full-time as a Customer Success Manager and I have two kids that I have to run all over creation, and I still volunteer for the PTA, I know what a busy plate looks like. I can help editors prioritize and schedule their yearbook lives, and help them figure out what they should be working on and when so that we’re taking small bites out of the book at a time.

We start with planning out their ladders which translates into an accurate page count and shared photo folder organization. Do you know what’s so great about crowdsourcing? This could be a whole yearbook about your kid, but when you have that option for everyone to contribute, and you make it easy for them to access it, it just gives you so much more diversity in your book of faces.

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

One of the 18 tornadoes crossing Kentucky in December 2021, an EF-4, the deadliest tornado in the Commonwealth's history, devastated towns in the southwest corner. Pennyroyal Area Christian Home Educators of Kentucky (PACHEK) students delivered food, assisted with clean up, and served with various faith-based relief organizations in Pembroke, Mayfield, Bremen, and Dawson Springs, KY. Yearbook volunteer, pastor’s wife, and homeschool mom Lora Farrell first caught our eye when she submitted her yearbook team’s spread, detailing both the devastation and the work to right it all in the 2022 Treering Design Contest. They won second place.

How does it feel to go from second place to first?

That was really shocking because I almost didn’t even enter. I really loved the spread we entered last year and I felt there wasn’t a spread this year (yet) at the same level of my personal satisfaction. It was such a fun surprise to be a finalist.

We are leveraging the free yearbooks we won from the contest to incentivize donations for our Beta Club fundraiser. We are partnering with Funds2Orgs for a shoe drive. We collect shoes, and they pay us per pound. The shoes then help micro-entrepreneurs in developing nations build their businesses and the money we raise will help students attend Beta’s national convention.

Let’s talk design. How did PACHEK choose Groovy for their 30th anniversary book?

The students really liked the design and we wanted to do something throwback. It’s not 90s, but the 70s seem to cycle back through every 20 years or so and it just works. 

On our divider pages, we used photos from previous years along with a paragraph with a little bit of group history. The team and I reached out to older members of the community. Because we are near Ft. Campbell, there is a large, transient military population. It was tough to get some photos as a result. Most are the ones I’ve taken over the previous 12 years. We did include interviews with older members of the community since digital photos weren’t the norm back then.

How do you build a 124-page book in a homeschool environment?

Yearbook is strictly a volunteer job. We currently have four students who build the book and two moms training to take over as sponsors. As part of our campus culture, there is naturally lots of photo sharing in the group: people share at the end of the day or after a field trip—it’s automatic.

During each co-op module, we meet twice a month. Between these sessions, it’s once a month. We break down tasks throughout the year to curb procrastination. I leave notes on the spreads in the Treering app. The students are intrinsically motivated and I like to give them a little extra with parties and food during work sessions. We also do a year-end celebration when the book arrives.

What tips do you have for someone just getting started as a yearbook club adviser?

Don’t be afraid: the software is user-friendly and there are resources available. With our previous company, I had to use a lot of outside resources. In Treering, I can set margins and page styles. I love the new folder features where we can add subfolders and share between folders. 

The biggest thing is to be consistent throughout the year by managing the workload.

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

Single-handedly holding down the office during the pandemic, Treering engineer Box Max is one of the most senior members of the engineering team. In honor of his fifth anniversary, we wanted to celebrate how he improves the yearbook creation process on the back end. 

His teammates say he is the perfect collaborator during the debugging process because his listening skills help other engineers work through their problems. They explain the code, line by line, to Box Max and therein discover snafus. He doesn’t pass judgment, just attends. 

Serving as the voice of restraint, he doesn’t commit to action quickly or make rash code decisions (which the support team appreciates). It’s this consistency and reliability that make him an exemplary employee. 

He’s also trusted with trade secrets as Treering builds and improves our robust design platform that serves both technical and emerging designers. Tight-lipped, Box Max is trustworthy and the perfect person to hold Treering’s secrets. 

Happy April Fool’s Day from your friends at Treering!

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

As a student 17 years ago, Chris Frost helped West Valley High School transition from orange cropping pencils to InDesign. He spent three years on the yearbook staff, and in his senior year became Editor in Chief. After working for guest relations at Disneyland, he returned to the Inland Empire as a SPED aid and moved into the activities assistant role he currently holds, splitting his time between ASB and yearbook.

Tell me how your students are creating more than just a visual book this year.

It started with an idea, really. They wanted to create a Spotify-themed yearbook and it was a reality instantly because Treering has the Wrapped theme. 

It’s all about the music: on sports spreads, we have codes for athletes’ amp songs and instead of doing senior quotes, we are doing senior songs. Being able to capture a moment in a song connects those dots you don’t remember, such as the song the homecoming king and queen danced to. We are capturing that moment, so in 10, 20, 30 years students can really flashback. That’s the point of a yearbook.

Were you worried about some of the song submissions?

The team gave students parameters ahead of time. Since this is a school-published book, the standard requirement is it has to be appropriate without any foul language (radio edits only). Because it’s also a student publication, we want to maintain students’ freedom of expression.

What does your design process look like?

Our students are very independent: for example, last year, we used the Not a Diary theme and a graphic artist on campus created hand-drawn doodles throughout the yearbook. This theme resonated with students because of the nostalgia and emotion. It was healing after returning to campus from the shutdown.

The thing Billy [Valenzuela, yearbook adviser] and I enjoy about Treering’s software is you can use bits and pieces of the design library or use 100% pre-done. We are able to scaffold based on the individual yearbook students’ needs.

What other methods do you use for storytelling?

Treering’s custom pages give our students more ownership and control of their yearbook, and because we can review them before they go to print, it gave us the ease we weren’t going to randomly publish something sketchy. Some of the creativity that goes into yearbook production is passed on to students outside of the yearbook program.

How else does Treering help?

The biggest benefit to West Valley is we produce great yearbooks at a cost our kids can afford. We don’t have to increase the cost of the yearbook, and because of Treering, our book is $20-25 below other schools in the area, making it more accessible. 

Yearbook is essentially carrying on and documenting the history of the school. The enormity of that task is what motivates our students. It’s important to create something that speaks to all students, not just one grade or one class.

West Valley was with another yearbook company for 30 years. Change became necessary when we could no longer pass on savings to our students. We would pre-sell 300-400 yearbooks and still be charged for overruns. We were storing books it cost $60-70 to produce despite selling ads and fundraising to meet the contract terms.

The relationship no longer benefited our school or the students. 

When we couldn’t host a year-end pizza party for the yearbook team because there is $20 in the activities fund and a $2000 final bill, we said, “This isn’t working for us.”

It’s freeing now to have no order minimums and worries about over-shipments. 

What advice would you give to someone just getting started as a yearbook adviser?

Let them struggle a little. This is one of the hardest lessons that I think we as advisers have to learn. Often we have the urge to swoop in and support our students when they start to get frustrated. This robs them of growth opportunities. Of course guide and suggest, but let them do the hard work of getting to the answer. Ultimately it will set them up for success in the future.

Treering Yearbook Heroes is a monthly feature focusing on yearbook adviser (and in this case, student editor) tips and tricks.

This year we at Treering called on all our schools’ parents, teachers, and students to nominate yearbook heroes in a first-ever peoples’ contest: #YearbookHero. The yearbook callout contest was prompted by our empathy and true appreciation for our yearbook editors.

Klamath Union High School senior Bailyn Amos won first place in the high school division; her team nominated her because she led them in problem-solving how to produce a yearbook in the 2020-2021 school year. From collecting photos from students to gaining valuable skills that will stick with her for years to come, Bailyn shares her experience leading her staff in creating a beautiful yearbook Klamath Union High School students will treasure for years to come. 

What does it mean to you to be Klamath Union High School’s  Yearbook Hero?

Being a Yearbook Hero means that I have the ability to give back to my school and express how the school year was and all the good times we had. 

How did you go about getting the photo submission for the yearbook? How did you motivate your peers to get involved, especially those that weren’t involved in the media design class?

I motivated my peers by making every minute spent working a fun experience. We turned work into a mini party and played lots of music and watched lots of movies! With some of my friends who weren't in media design classes, I spent a lot of time on calls with them working at home. Treering made it really easy to work on the yearbook anywhere and at any time.

What advice would you give to students for gathering photos from parents? In your opinion, what are some tips for talking to parents about yearbook needs as it could be viewed as intimidating for some students? 

The school sent out a lot of notices and emails to not only students, but the parents as well informing them on deadlines and such. Treering was a great tool to help gather as many quality photos for the yearbook as possible. We also leveraged social media to ensure we had plenty to choose from!

What kind of leadership skills do you feel you implemented during the past year when leading yearbook creation? 

Starting off, I felt like I didn't have much leadership skills other than being loud. But by the end, I picked up so many different skills. I learned how to better communicate what needs to be done and how it can be done. I also feel more comfortable being in a leadership position and am so much more confident in my work, which is something I struggled with in the past.

How has being involved with the yearbook inspired your career choices? 

Being involved with the yearbook inspired me to pursue a career in teaching because it showed me how much I enjoyed teaching how everything worked and how to build up skills. Overall it was a lot of fun and something I can see myself doing in the future.