You’ve worked hard for half a year or longer to create this beautiful time capsule — the yearbook. You’ve sold advertisements, taken pictures, written headlines and captions, and included as many students as possible. BUT — what if no one sees what you and your staffers have created? That may be a little hyperbolic, but it is super important to have a strategy in place not just for creating the yearbook but for selling it as well. Here’s everything you need to know about how to sell the yearbook!

Our yearbook staff’s motto is “Everybody’s Story. Everybody’s Book.” That means everyone! Not just the seniors, the athletes, the staffers and their friends, certain cliques – everybody. Why does that matter? For one, if we are creating a book for people to purchase, they need to be reflected in it; or they won’t purchase it. But the bigger, more important reason is simply that we are telling the story of a year, and without every person represented, considered, and included in the yearbook design, we haven’t done our job: We haven’t told the true story of the year at all if we let bias or favoritism creep in or if we get lazy with coverage and choices. The yearbook must be an accurate time capsule with reflections of each person’s interests, styles, talents, abilities, and backgrounds. Therefore, you can make your yearbook more diverse and inclusive with these easy steps! Tips for your yearbook pages and beyond.

You’ve just been assigned the yearbook, or last year didn’t go so well, and you want your first days plans to be solid, effective, and fun! Does this sound like you? I’ve been there. The first week of school is a whirlwind, but in yearbook class, the first week back to school is even more topsy turvy, to say the least. You might have looked through my Tips for New Advisers post or How to Have a Picture-Perfect Start to the Year posts for adviser-facing suggestions, and you feel good-to-go from that side of things. However, now it’s time to decide what to do when students are walking through the door — AKA planning the first week of yearbook class! When I think about what to do the first week of school in my yearbook class, I try to think of it like one my English classes in some ways, and in other ways, it is completely different! In this blog post, I’ll share my student-facing plans for the first week of yearbook class.

The yearbook is complete, submitted, done. Now what? You have several months of school left, and you aren’t sure how to keep your students on task for the remaining days. Does this sound familiar? With spring delivery or even summer delivery books where students take yearbook/journalism as a class, it’s often difficult — and even daunting — to come up with creative and constructive ways to use that time. As we all know, doing nothing is not an option! In this blog post, I’ll share 5 ways to use class time after the yearbook is complete.

Creating and running a successful yearbook program does require a lot, but it doesn’t have to be a mystery. While this post isn’t designed to promote one specific yearbook publishing company, I am happy to share some expertise from my amazing Jostens representative. With 14 years in the industry, she has seen a thing or two and knows a thing or two about yearbooks. In this interview with a yearbook representative, I am happy to introduce my long-time yearbook rep and friend: Rebecca Kilday. Below she shares peeks into the industry and her job, insightful advice, and practical tips for new and seasoned yearbook advisers.

Yearbook distribution day is both exciting and worrisome for a yearbook adviser. There are so many things that can go wrong, but they don’t have to! I don’t have it all figured out, but over the years I have developed some methods and strategies to help make the day a success. I’m sharing those Yearbook Distribution Day Tips and Best Practices here!

The excitement is in the air, the carols are playing, the trees are going up: It’s Christmas! What a wonderful time of year for celebrations. If you are like me, though, you want to be sure that you are still keeping your class contained and working on something skills-based through the Christmas Holiday season. Here are the best Christmas holiday lesson ideas, activities, and more for middle & high school teens for all subjects.

We’ve all been in that situation where we had something come up and we didn’t know the answer. Or we’ve had the nightmare of feeling like we weren’t prepared with all the answers. It all feels awkward, uncomfortable, or embarrassing. When I first started teaching, I would have nearly died when I had to admit to students that I didn’t know the answer to something. I’d like to say that I handled those situations with grace instead of stuttering around – or worse, making something up. But, I can’t be certain. I just know I didn’t want to say, “I don’t know.” In the past few years, though, I’ve really begun to embrace the power of the statement “I don’t know.” I don’t view it as a “cop out” because I’d never in one-hundred years let my students use it as an excuse, either. If students tell me “I don’t know,” I say, “Tell me what you do know,” and we go from there. But, what I’m sharing today is something a little different – something I hope will offer a paradigm shift to alleviate maybe just one bit of stress