Authentic activities with yearbook hero amy windsheimer

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

Yearbook Hero Amy Windsheimer transformed a yearbook program on the chopping block into a thriving journalism class. After a year of co-creating Brush Middle School's book with a colleague, they opened it up for students. Windsheimer wanted the class to focus on both visual and oral communication skills. And she nailed it.

You truly collaborated with your whole community. Tell us what you did.

We used some of our yearbook fundraising money to purchase two cameras, and a local photographer came in and showed the kids how to use them. The kids really got into it.

At the end of the school year, I reached out to news and media outlets because I wanted to take them to a newspaper printing place. We toured Townsquare Media, which has three different radio stations in Windsor, CO. The kids recorded a radio intro and outro. They played with the green screen.

A couple of the DJs taught us how the morning show works and shared their career path. We learned about their college experiences and about radio advertising, which was a cool 360 because that’s how we started the year: Our secondary school sells ads together. For a field trip, I took my yearbook class out into the community to do in-person sales.

How did you make selling ads in-person less scary for middle school students?

One unit of my yearbook class focused on public speaking. We talked about professionalism and public relations. The kids spent a week crafting and practicing an ad pitch for local businesses. 

First, they went around and told any adult in the building who was interested in listening and sold them yearbook ads. Then, we had some simulations to prepare them to get turned down. I actually had one of the principals tell them, "Nope, I'm not interested," or “Well, I don't want to go as high as that route. What about this route?" 

When we went out, they had matching T-shirts. There was a process for receiving and depositing funds in the activities account. The kids also worked with the business to create the ad.

We have a restaurant in town that purchased an ad from a pair of girls and said, "Well, do you guys want a cinnamon roll?" They had cinnamon rolls the size of a small plate. A family-owned bowling alley gave the middle and high school staff an hour of bowling to close out the day.

How many pages of ads did you end up with?

We filled nine pages. Our town has many awesome businesses, and they are so supportive. 

How else do your students create the book?

It took us a while to decide on our the theme of our yearbook. They came up with five options, and they had to limit it to three, and then they finally decided on one. I told them to choose whatever style they wanted to make. Make it fun, make it creative, make it their book. And they really took off. 

We broke the ladder down into fall sports and activities. I assigned two kids per page. One kid would sit there dictating, and the other kid would be working. 

I rolled out a big touchscreen TV on a cart daily. Somebody would use it to work on their page. The best part about that TV was that it was big enough to see the layout easier, and it was more kid-friendly. 

We’d also use it at the end of our deadline: I would make them all go through and proofread and edit and make sure that there weren't any pictures with inappropriate signs or anything that could not be school-appropriate. Then, I would see if there were any other pictures that we could add to it.

We had four mini deadlines: October 31, another one at Christmas, at the end of the third quarter, and then, of course, our yearbook had to be in by the end of April. It was a mad rush in April to get everything done.

I don’t see many middle school books with captions. How do you do it?

Creating captions is really hard, especially when the yearbook kids don't know all of the other kids. I'd encourage them to go speak to a specific teacher and see if they can help out. We used all our resources. 

You equipped your students with public speaking, design, and sales skills. What else?

We have these big screens around campus that play a slideshow. I shared the Google Drive folders our students use to compile pictures of each activity. It’s as much real-time as we can possibly get. I watched kids stop and watch the pictures, and it's huge. 

They're like, "Oh yeah, that was a fun picture to take." Or, "Oh, yeah, that was a fun activity that we did. Oh, that was funny." And there are these moments somebody posed and didn't know they were posing, and we got it on camera.

Adding marketing to the list.

When they go into high school, I feel like many of them who wanted to be in the yearbook class will take what we learned and take it to the next step of what the yearbook looks like.