The Yearbook Experience

During my student teaching, I was able to help with a jr. high yearbook class who used HerfJones (who has a wonderful online program for the kids to utilize). While volunteering prior to my student teaching, I helped a teacher at a high school start up a journalism/yearbook combo class.
I majored in journalism, and was involved in yearbook class in jr. high; I was close friends with the yearbook editors at my high school. 

I thought I was fully prepared for teaching a yearbook journalism class.


...Well, we got through the year! We produced three issues our of school paper (including creating a name for it that will last for years), and a yearbook.

My students learned (very) basic photoshop skills, (slightly more than) basic inDesign skills, interviewing techniques, journalistic writing, and to take pride in their work.

I revised my grading system for this class multiple times, and went through so many different worksheets for peer evaluations, rubrics, etc...

My students failed to grasp the idea of deadlines, which only proceeded to stress me out, but in the end we created something wonderful.

And on top of all of this? We did it with 7 students, 2 computers, and no help from a yearbook company.

I am SO proud of my students and so excited that we sold 30 yearbooks at 50 pages.

I would like to recommend DiggyPod Printing if you have any need to print soft-cover books and have them bound.

We submitted our order on May 31st. On June 1st I had a mini-freak out after receiving an e-mail from them asking me to embed texts and bleed the pages (things I had never heard of before!) After googling those terms and questioning my computer-techy students, I called the company. They were so helpful! They explained everything, including how-to, and what would happen if we didn't. We ended up fixing the embedding issue, and skipping the bleeding issue.
The company sent e-mails for each and every step. I knew when our project was printed, was bound, and was shipped.

They shipped today, June 6th. That's a very fast turn around. And our yearbook should be here before school ends.
Yay!

I will never teach a yearbook class without a yearbook company rep again. But it was definitely an experience.