Jim Jordan's 40 Things To Do After The Yearbook Is Done

YOUR YEARBOOK IS DONE! 1. MEMORIALIZE THE MOMENT

Develop a staff tradition that memorializes the moment you finished the book and sent the last pages to the plant. It is the moment everyone has been looking forward to since the instant the last book was finished. Training in the spring; going to yearbook camp in the summer; working at deadline nights, sometimes on Saturdays and holidays while everyone else is out doing what they want to. All of this hard work and dedication have been building up to this moment — that instant when you press the button and the final pages take off to the plant. Create a sign that becomes a permanent fixture in the yearbook room. When I first started advising, to commemorate the moment we finished the book, we would make a large poster on poster paper, which would hang on the wall of the yearbook room for weeks. Then, in the early 90s, we started creating a more permanent sign. We used 11 x 14 legal-sized paper. I’m not sure why. It was just handy at the time. The most prominent part of the sign was the exact time and date we finished. And, of course, we all signed it. Sometimes, we included caricatures of the staff; and as the years went on, it became a hand drawn version of the cover including our fonts with the exact time and date we sent in those final pages. For the first five or six years, we posted the signs on the top of the cupboards in the yearbook room. When the cupboards were covered, I decided to have them framed. Every year, the editors and staff look forward to gathering together to sign this poster. If you are in the room when the book is finished and the final pages are uploaded, you get to sign. People come to work that day just so they can be there for the signing. Everyone loves the idea that all the hard work they have done in that room will be remembered long after they have graduated. When students return to visit, they always love to look at their sign with their names on it. Memorialize your year on a ceiling tile. Leland Mallet, CJE, and his staff at Legacy High School in Mansfield, Texas, commemorate the finishing of each book by painting a ceiling tile in their yearbook room. In the early versions, they painted the tile and all the editors signed their names on it. Over the past few years, they have not only signed it, but it has become a version of their cover design. Once you enter their room, all you have to do is look up to see the legacy of their leadership and hard work.

Memorialize the Moment. Decamhian “We Finished at” final deadline sign is created by Decamhian editor-in-chief Tayleigh Green and signed by editor-in chief Ashley Krause.

Look up . The editors at Legacy High School memorialize the completion of their book by painting and signing one of the ceiling tiles in their yearbook room.

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