by Jamie Demeter, yearbook adviser
Ft. Zumwalt South High School, St. Peters, Missouri
It’s a mystery. What goes on in that room? No one gets it. Wait a minute. There are people who understand what a yearbook adviser does. Other yearbook advisers!
Ft. Zumwalt school district yearbook advisers. L-R: Becky Bubenik, Ft. Zumwalt North High School; Jamie Demeter, Ft. Zumwalt South High School; Loran Marquez, Ft. Zumwalt West High School; and Brooke Ladevito, Ft. Zumwalt East High School.
During the past seven years, we have moved from being isolated yearbook teachers in our individual high schools to a powerful, collaborative force in our school district.
The change sprang from that common complaint that “no one in the building really understands my challenges.” So, when we saw one another at conferences, we started talking about yearbook, students and life in general. When our yearbook representative got us together to discuss what we wanted a summer workshop to offer, it gave us a common, non-threatening project to work on. This was the beginning of our relationship.
Soon after we started working together on our own to plan units and create final exams, quizzes and other projects. Recently, our school district has started giving us two hours to collaborate twice per year (WOW!), but we meet more often than that, even during the summer. Sometimes we commiserate and encourage one another, sometimes we discuss a problem which leads us to create a unit for yearbook class, sometimes we teach one another how to do something with technology, and sometimes we just visit and catch up.
o We sell our books/add-ons at the same cost to the students.
o We have the same deadlines, marketing strategies, etc.
o We’re an awesome think tank and we’re constantly sharing ideas/advice with each other. It’s less work for us because each of us is in charge of creating something specific and then sharing it with the team.
o We all sell our books during registration. The parents who come to register start out with a printed sheet to fill out (that has all of the information on buying the book) and then they hand that information to a yearbook staff member to input online (via SmartPay). Our staff members have laptops set up during enrollment and they key in the information after receiving the forms that the parents fill out. Parents pay for the yearbooks with cash/check at this time. Our high schools have a huge buy rate during enrollment and a very large buy rate overall.
o We are doing a spring workshop in April with the newly chosen 2015-16 Editors-in-Chief and all of us. At this workshop the editors from all four schools come prepared with several theme packets/cover ideas. Our rep. and two yearbook gurus vote on these ideas and then focus on the chosen theme during the rest of the workshop. We start designing layouts and developing theme concepts. It’s very hands-on and the we all get lots of one-on-one attention from the professionals. We do team building exercises, order pizza for lunch and then we (the advisers) go to dinner with our rep. and the speakers afterward.
We know we are better yearbook instructors thanks to our collaboration. And just as important, we have developed a friendship stronger than many we have with teachers in our own buildings whom we see daily. This friendship has become invaluable to running a successful yearbook program.
Excerpt from Elements magazine “How’d You Do That?: Join An Amazing Team.”
