Columbia Scholastic Press Association

Advanced Yearbook Leadership

This course will prepare experienced staff to become editors of their 2009 yearbooks. Whether a section editor, an assistant editor, or an editor in chief, this class will give you tools to improve the production of your next yearbook. The course will begin with an overview of all the basics of yearbook writing, design, and production with a focus on learning to train and teach the staff. The sequence will also provide strategies to motivate your staff and build your team.

Students will:

• Learn the importance of having a staff mission statement that reflects the purpose and goals of your staff
• Review the principles of yearbook design and create mocked-up layouts that reflect those principles
• Analyze professional publications and adapt design elements into yearbook spread design
• Lead the production of the school workshop theme packet that will provide a foundation for your coverage and design
• Learn techniques for writing copy with stronger detail and voice
• Brainstorm new coverage ideas
• Develop a yearbook training and production calendar
• Analyze page usage of the 2008 yearbook and develop a ladder for 2009
• Learn effective methods to organize your workflow and page production to maximize editor and staff productivity
• Work in maestro teams (photographer, designer, writer) to create layouts utilizing a team approach
• Learn and practice techniques to build your yearbook team and motivate your staff

Sequence assignments

• Develop a staff mission statement that reflects the purpose and goals of your staff
• Develop a ladder for the 2009 book after analyzing the content of the previous year’s book.
• Create and mock up contemporary yearbook designs that reflect design principles and incorporate ideas found in professional publications
• Create a usable theme packet that will be the foundation of the development of your 2009 yearbook and reflect all you have learned at the workshop
• Write a personality profile rich in detail that has a strong student voice and reflects strong information-gathering and interviewing techniques
• Create and mock-up a layout in a Maestro group (photographer, designer, writer) based on information gathered during the Camp Broadway experience
• Create a six-week training sequence calendar for the beginning of the year
• Develop one staff training lesson to be shared in class.

Highly recommended: Laptop computer.

Required: Scissors, straight edge, glue sticks, construction paper, magazines to cut up, colored pens and/or pencils, at least one magazine that contains designs you admire that can be adapted into a yearbook.

Sequence Instructor

Jim Jordan is in his 26th year as yearbook adviser at Del Campo High School in Fair Oaks, California. His students’ yearbooks have won consistent Columbia Scholastic Press Association Gold (13) and Pacemaker awards (13) from the Columbia Scholastic Press Association and the National Scholastic Press Association. In 1996 he was selected as the National Yearbook Adviser of the Year by the Journalism Education Association. He also has been awarded the Gold Key by CSPA, the Pioneer Award from NSPA and the Medal of Merit from JEA. His greatest joy though comes from watching his students grow as they create and produce a beautiful book that captures the essence of a school year.

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