Yearbook help

[Clara Ngo]

I’m going to be taking on our middle school yearbook next year. This will be my first time and was looking for insights to see how other schools run their yearbook. I have some questions…

1) Is it fully student produced? If so, what are the meeting times and responsibilities?
2) did your school go away from yearbooks? If so, why and did they replace it with something else?
3) is there a modern day version of a yearbook?

If you run it, I’d love to hear from you. If it’s someone else at your school, can you connect me to them?

Thanks in advance!

Clara Ngo (she/her) Director of the Hub and Student Council Advisor Hillbrook School A 300 Marchmont Dr. Los Gatos, CA 95032 E cn...@hillbrook.org | P (408) 356-6116 Be kind. Be curious. Take risks. Be your best.

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[hele...@isomers.com]

Hi Clara,

I moderated yearbook at my old school for K-8 and we used Lifetouch and worked with 8th graders who signed up for the Yearbook Club. For the cover, I had the entire 8th grade class work on it (they used Canva) and that gets submitted earlier than the entire yearbook. We all took photos throughout the year of different events, put them on shared drive account organized by event/grade, and then they signed up to work on the pages they were interested in, picking photos they liked. Made sure they were inclusive of everyone so it wasn't like just one kid being showcased but everyone in the class. I also verified each students' name and photo because those could be misspelled or missing flowing in from Lifetouch. Based on the pricing, we got a certain number of pages that included each grade's spread (one side of all the student's individual portraits and the opposite side a collage of whatever the kids wanted to put to showcase that grade). After that, the kids also wanted to showcase different events and field trips. Some events had a full spread while other spreads had like 6 events with subtitles. The students used fun but legible subtitles and clipart but it's also important to emphasize graphics design principles like contrast, spacing, alignment and not making photos too small. 

We met Fridays after school for 1.5 hours and they did the work on their own time with required check-ins as we got closer to their deadline. Once they were "done", I looked at each page and gave feedback for changes before we submitted the entire project. The yearbook vendor has a timeline for what parts need to be submitted and when. 

As a parent, I made an end of year "yearbook" photo book just for my kids' classes as a "fundraiser" using Mixbook. Mixbook provides a pretty nice group discount that made it affordable as a fundraiser.  Each student had one spread with one nice portrait of them and then casual photos I take throughout the year when they went on field trips or did special projects (I was also the STEAM teacher so it was easy to do that) and a drawing/writing project depending on what grade they were in.  I also included group shots and fun pictures like the school yearbook but for their grade only. 

Hope that helps! 

Helen