The Yearbook Blog

Here's Julie getting her $100 American Express Gift Card for coming in 2nd Place in the Ultimate Sales Challenge. (*Excuse our dress. We were sorting yearbooks for distribution!)

When it comes to fundraising and book sales, Julie Fox–yearbook adviser at Central Middle School in San Carlos, CA–is a true guru. In 2009, as a first-year yearbook adviser, she won 2nd place in the Herff Jones Northern California Ultimate Yearbook Sales Challenge.

In 2009, the yearbook staff at Central Middle school not only wanted to increase sales, but they wanted students to buy early. So they motivated them by offering complimentary name stamps to all students who ordered books within the first 6 weeks of school. The price covered the cost of the name stamps and more. Each Monday during the sales campaign, teachers received a list of students who had not purchased. Homeroom teachers encouraged students who had not purchased books and new orders came in every Tuesday. The week the free name stamping disappeared, parents were notified of a last chance offer with order forms and personalized money envelopes in weekly mail folders. Increase in sales: 10%, and for the first time ever, the school was able to prepay, making them eligible for the prepayment discount.

How does she top it for 2010?

For her  2nd year as an adviser, Ms. Fox noticed that Central’s yearbook did not have a name, so she asked the school to help. At a school-wide assembly, the yearbook staff announced their Yearbook Naming Contest. They explained the importance of a yearbook name and shared examples of other schools’ yearbook names. They then opened it up to the entire student population to submit their ideas. The names started flooding in. With Principal Lynette Hovland’s help, the staff narrowed it down to 2 choices: Hoofprints or The Round-Up. (Their mascot is the Mustangs.) Instead of just having students vote on one of the final two names, the staff decided to turn it into a fundraiser. They placed two jars in the school office, one labeled “Hoofprints” and one labeled “Round-up.” They then asked students to vote for their favorite name by placing spare change in the jar.

Three weeks later, not only did Central Middle School’s yearbook have a new name, but the entire school was excited about the yearbook and being a part of creating a tradition that will stay with the school forever. Talk about great publicity! And if that wasn’t enough, the yearbook staff raised an extra $170 by simply placing 2 jars in the office.

What’s the secret to her success?

“The yearbook belongs to the students, not the yearbook advisor.  My role is to help the students create the book that showcases the entire student body,” shares Ms. Fox. “If I help them do a good job, then the students and staff will buy the book.  It’s all about talking the talk beforehand (through advertising) and following through with a great product.”

Mark's dressed up as a Care Bear for the "Run Wild For a Child" 5K race, which raised money and collected toys for kids during Christmas.

When someone is wearing a button that says, “Ask me about my mustache?”, how could I resist. So, of course, I had to ask Mark Hermano–Yearbook Adviser at Mercy High School in Burlingame–about his new facial hair. It turns out it’s all for a good cause!

Mark is competing against other brave Mustache-Growers across the country to raise cash for schools in need. It’s all a part of DonorsChoose.org’s “Mustaches for Kids” campaign. You can help Mark reach his goal by donating to one his hand-picked projects by clicking here:

http://www.donorschoose.org/donors/viewChallenge.html?id=26102

To learn more about the “Mustaches for Kids” program, or to find out how you can raise money for your own classroom project, visit DonorsChoose.org.

In 1987, President Ronald Reagan declared the week of October 4 (October 5th this year) National Yearbook Week! In his proclamation, he stated,

“School yearbooks not only chronicle educational achievement and school tradition but are a part of them. For nearly two centuries American students have produced yearbooks to commemorate the accomplishments of the school year and to compose a lasting record, written and pictorial, of campus, classmates, teachers, and school staff.

In later years, alumni treasure their yearbooks for the memories they hold of times gone by and friends of long ago. The students who compile yearbooks likewise treasure all that the experience can teach them about teamwork and about writing, the graphic arts, and business skills. The practical cooperation and specialization that students learn in yearbook production stand them in good stead when they enter college or pursue other opportunities.”

He then called upon all Americans to “observe this week with appropriate ceremonies and activities.”

So here are 5 ways you can celebrate National Yearbook Week:

1. Kick off your yearbook sales this week
2. Dig up the oldest school yearbooks you can find from your school and put them out on display.
3. Collect old yearbook photos of the staff and display them without names, so students can guess who’s who
4. Give a special discount for yearbooks bought this week and wear your staff t-shirts to spread the word
5. Have a special staff party “just because”

Whatever you do, take a moment to congratulate you and your staff for being such an integral part in creating your school’s memories!

We always knew yearbooks are better, but it’s nice to see that other people think so, too! Here’s an excerpt from the article “Luv U 4ever!” by Jay Hamburg:

High school yearbooks have survived with a very strange recipe that hasn’t changed much over the decades. That recipe starts with the idea that your school contains the brightest scholars or finest athletes. Or both. Next, it puts the grandest decrees about the future alongside the silliest sayings about study hall. Toss in some photos, a bit of verse, awful puns, local ads. Then charge a hefty fee and encourage buyers to scrawl all over their new merchandise.

It’s like working nine months to build a splendid monument in the hopes it will last forever and that people will tag it with graffiti at the unveiling.

Somehow, it works.

While newspapers and magazines struggle for breath, trying to keep up with Twitter and Facebook, one of the slowest, most static and least portable of periodicals—the lumbering yearbook—just keeps plodding along.

Granted, some colleges have dropped their yearbooks and some high school annuals are declining in popularity as electronic distractions grab attention and yearbook prices top $80. But many Central Florida high schools say their sales remain steady, even in a slow economy.

Apopka High student Shana Rhodes says she and her friends enjoy social networking sites in cyberspace, but she wanted to work on the Darter yearbook precisely because it marks their rite of passage with a tangible record.

“Twitter will go away,” says Shana, 18. “But a yearbook will never perish.”

Maybe that’s part of its ongoing appeal. Lift some of today’s 400-page volumes and you sense that those hardbound, five-pound tomes will endure even as memories fade. They’ll still be around long after hard drives crash and one technology displaces another.

You can’t use big floppy disks from the 1980s with today’s computers. But you still can open up the 1924 Echo yearbook of Orlando High School and hear the Therons, Thelmas, Ottos and Lotties issue a verdict meant to distinguish themselves forever: “It is doubtful if the fair city of Orlando will ever again witness such a brilliant, generous and all-around good class.”

You’re the best!

Nowadays the yearbook boasting tends to be more…

Click here to read the complete article at OrlandoMagazine.com.

I recently posted an article I found about how yearbook photos predict overall happiness in life. You can read that blog entry here.

In it, the author references a scientific study that he couldn’t find on the internet. Well, I think I found it. It’s actually a study of how smiling in their yearbook photo as a child correlated to success in their marriage as an adult. Here’s an exerpt:

“If you want to know whether your marriage will survive, look at your spouse’s yearbook photos.

Psychologists have found that how much people smile in old photographs can predict their later success in marriage.

In one test, the researchers looked at people’s college yearbook photos, and rated their smile intensity from 1 to 10. None of the people who fell within the top 10 percent of smile strength had divorced, while within the bottom 10 percent of smilers, almost one in four had had a marriage that ended, the researchers say. (Scoring was based on the stretch in two muscles: one that pulls up on the mouth, and one that creates wrinkles around the eyes.) …”

You can read the complete article written by Clara Moskowitz on msnbc.com

Here is yet another example of the effect yearbooks have on people’s lives…

After Ron Bogdan, a financial manager at AnswerNet, lost his 1976 high school yearbook in a flood, he “felt an emptiness in his heart he just couldn’t describe.” As he searched for another copy, he ended up finding many other old yearbooks instead. As a result, he has now started a Yearbook “Lost & Found” service for other people searching for their old high school yearbook. To find out more about, read his story at the following link:

http://www.nj.com/news/times/regional/index.ssf?/base/news-16/123614311829960.xml&coll=5

Holly Madison and Dmitry Chaplin dance in the first episode of season eight of "Dancing With the Stars."

Okay, the celebrity is Holly Madison, star of “The Girls Next Door” and “Dancing with the Stars” and the job was “playmate editor” for Playboy Magazine, but still…

Here’s her exact quote from an interview with The Oregonian.

“I used to kind of joke around that I ended up with a job where, I learned this job in high school — everybody, when they’re in high school, goes, ‘What am I ever going to use this for?’ — but I was on the yearbook staff. We used to have to lay out the yearbook on computer, and I never would have been able to jump into that job with no training if I hadn’t been on the yearbook staff.”

Click here to read the full interview.

I know. Your first thought to this headline is, “I run my yearbook program like a real-world business. How come I’m not getting recognition?”

It’s amazing how many people still think of yearbook as a “glorified photo album”. Many administrators still believe they can just throw anyone into your yearbook class because all your doing is “taking pictures and putting them in a book. How hard is that?”

Well, kudos to the yearbook advisers at Nauset Regional High School in Massachusetts for getting their local paper “The Cape Codder” to publish a story about their yearbook program. It probably helped that a yearbook staffer, who wrote the article, is an intern at the paper. You can read the article here:

http://www.wickedlocal.com/orleans/news/education/x844655140/Making-memories-Yearbook-run-like-real-world-business

Maybe if more schools got local papers to run stories about the “behind the scenes” in yearbook production, schools and administrators will start appreciating yearbook class as a program that teaches students much more than “scrapbooking” skills.

In my continued mission to convince yearbook staffs of the larger importance of yearbooks in our society, I am sharing this “feel good” story about a man, a class ring lost 20 years ago, and the yearbook that brought them back together…

http://www.delgazette.com/local.asp?ID=1600&Story=3