The Yearbook Blog

On Tuesday July 20 at 11pm EDT/PT, MTV will premiere a new weekly series called “If You Really Knew Me” based on the Challenge Day program.  Each episode will be shown on MTV multiple times during the week and streamed on MTV’s website.

“‘If You Really Knew Me’ is an incredibly authentic and compelling docu-series that takes us on a 24 hour journey through a high school’s social transformation. It shows us what happens when kids from various cliques decide to break down the walls that divide them and commit to change,” said Tony DiSanto, President of Programming from MTV. “It’s an intense and dramatic experience, but ultimately uplifting and universally relatable for all of us who have gone through high school or are about to.”

Each episode takes place at a different high school with its own set of issues and its own unique set of cliques. In the series premiere, viewers go inside a Northern California school divided by race and cliques, a symptom of a newly-diverse student body that has grown from 500 to 2,400 students in just 10 years. As the season progresses; the show profiles a variety of schools struggling with everything from cyberbullying to small town rumor mills.

Discussion Guides (sponsored by Herff Jones) can be downloaded from the Challenge Day website at: http://www.challengeday.org/mtv/. 

What’s this got to do with yearbooks?

1. We all know that yearbook sales are directly related to school spirit. If your school is not participating in Challenge Day, maybe Yearbook could sponsor it! Visit the Challenge Day website for more info: http://www.challengeday.org/how-challenge-day-works.php
2. Teambuilding is key to an efficient yearbook staff. Try watching the episodes together as a group, and downloading the discussion guides. Download the discussion guides here: http://www.challengeday.org/mtv/
3. If your school is already participating, don’t forget to cover it in your yearbook! Make sure to interview the participants for their point-of-view!

Angela’s side note: I participated in a Challenge Day as a high school student (A LONG TIME AGO), and it was definitely worth it. Let’s just say a lot of tears and hugging were involved. I highly recommend it!

Yearbooks.biZ (that’s “biZ” not “com)is where you can find new ideas to keep your creative juices flowing. Just because this is our final card, doesn’t mean we don’t have more to share. At Yearbooks.biz you’ll find sample covers, endsheets, themes, spreads, divider pages, sales tips, writing lessons, and much more. Go ahead–take a look. Just tell everyone you’re doing “research.”

*This entry is part of “The Yearbook Ladies’ A to Zs of Yearbook”
project. If you’d like to download the “Z” card, go to the “Adviser
Resources” section of www.theyearbookladies.com

We’d love to hear from you! Share your questions, comments, and ideas below…

Did you know that Herff Jones has more award-winning yearbooks every year than any other printer? Obviously, we’re quite proud of that fact because we feel we have something to do with the highest quality printing. But an often-over looked factor is the leadership of the adviser running the program. Long hours, giving up summer for camps, and taking critiques to heart are just a few of the things that award winning advisers do to bring fame and glory to their yearbook programs.

Each year, JEA awards the “Yearbook Adviser of the Year” to one amazing teacher and special recognition to seven others. This year SIX Herff Jones advisers will be recognized in April at the JEA/NSPA Portland convention at the Saturday adviser luncheon.

DISTINGUISHED ADVISERS
Carrie Faust, MJE, Smoky Hill High School, Aurora, Colo…
Tim Morley, Inland Lake High School, Indian River, Mich
Nancy Y. Smith, MJE, Lafayette High School, Wildwood, Mo

SPECIAL RECOGNITION ADVISERS
Charla Harris, Pleasant Grove High School, Texarkana, Texas
Pat Hinman, Robinson Middle School, Fairfax, Va
Chad Rummel, CJE, Oakton High School, Vienna, Va

Meanwhile, congratulations go out to our Northern California Herff Jones books who were named as CSPA Crown finalists. Over 1,500 publications were sent in for judging and only 56 yearbooks were selected as finalists. The gold and silver crowns will be awarded at the CSPA convention in New York this March. We are so proud of:

Lion’s Den, Hyde Middle School, Cupertino

The Patriot, Harvest Park Middle School, Pleasanton

Rampages, Casa Roble High School, Orangevale

Titanium, Antelope Valley High School, Antelope

Herff Jones releases their new iPhone App for Yearbook. That’s right, an iPhone App for Yearbook! No, this doesn’t mean you have to start working on your spreads while you’re in line at the Supermarket. But it does mean that parents, students, and basically, anyone you want can upload photos right from their iPhone to your eDesign photo library. How cool is that!

Advertise this app to your entire school community to increase your coverage. Send out theme requests (i.e. “This week, we’re looking for pictures of your car/pets/bff…”). Have an iPhone photography contest and publish the winners. Run a strip along the bottom of each spread with iPhone submitted photos. The ideas are endless, but either way, you’re going to increase your coverage. And increased coverage = more book sales!

Best of all, it’s all free to Herff Jones schools. For more info, go to www.yearbooks.biz or search “Herff Jones” on your iPhone “App Store.”

Hopefully by now you all have seen a copy of “Ideas That Fly,” the compendium of covers, themes, inside pages, and more from schools around the country. This beautiful book comes out once a year and then an additional soft cover addendum follows behind. Schools love using them as a resource in the classroom and encourage the students to look through the books for new ideas.

The yearbook adviser at Kennedy Middle School in Cupertino, however, turned it into a full lesson for her yearbook staff. Here were the steps:

1. Everyone received a copy of  ”Ideas that Fly.” She explained what was in there.

2. The students picked out a spread they liked, read about the school, their theme, and any other pertinent information that was listed. Then the student listed things they liked about that spread. Why did they pick it? What ideas or inspiration can we get from the spread? What artistic elements were used? How did the graphics contribute to the theme?

3.  There was enough time for 8-9 different students to share their choices and answers in front of the whole class.

This lesson hit at just the right time. They finished their first deadline and are about to start designing their next set of spreads. Hopefully they will go into deadline #2 with more ideas and ready to challenge themselves.

KUDOS AGAIN… Herff Jones was recently named a 2009 Honorable Mention recipient in the Adobe MAX award competition! Judged to be a model of innovative technology, Herff Jones’ eDesign was noted to improve teaching, learning and enabling collaboration in the classroom.

This is the 2nd time Adobe has acknowledged Herff Jones’ eDesign as innovative use of technology. Click here to read our previous post when Adobe chose Herff Jones to be one of their “Success Stories.”