Taking the skills and vocab learned within the course, the journalism staff created individual themes to explain what they think next year’s yearbook should center around.
Veronica Edeburn creates her theme surrounding the fact that the number 25 is a quarter of a century.
“It’s one of my favorite parts of the year. It lets us show our creativity and contribute to the next year’s yearbook even if we won’t be there,” Veronica Edeburn (11) said.
As the teachers of journalism, Erin Martin and Danielle DeFelice, take in the theme proposals, they put students with similar ideas in groups together. The groups work together to create slideshows of the elements, colors, fonts, and layout ideas to make their theme original. The groups created have students that normally would not work together, so collaborating and learning the ideas of other students is another part of the project.
“I love being able to be creative and collaborate with people to create cool ideas,” Sawyer Strine (12) said.
Within this project are learning opportunities on how to present themes with confidence and enthusiasm. After presenting the slideshows, the students will work on bigger slideshows with their theme ideas for select students and staff of the district to come and give their opinions. The teachers will then take the ideas and opinions of students and staff to give their final decision on what theme to go with. Over the summer, certain students in journalism will meet with members of Jostens and the teachers to help create the cover and sections of the yearbook.
Making a theme that has never been seen before is incredibly important, yet hard. Collaborating with the other members allows for the open exchange of opinions and help.
“I like being able to participate with a bunch of my other classmates. I also like being able to come up with ideas and pitch them to one another, and I like coming up with new themes that no one has ever done because I want to make an impact on the yearbook for next year,” Lainey McCulloh (10) said.
Themes for the yearbook determine the layouts, elements, colors, fonts, headlines, and the title. Coming up with all and certain spreads within a timely manner has proved to be difficult but beneficial for next year’s book.
