Surprised? Completely!

There's a saying used by doctors and crime scene investigators (if television is to be believed).  It says, "When you hear hoofbeats, you should think horses and not zebras."  It's a good way of narrowing your vision to the most likely cause of a problem, but because zebras do exist, occasionally something unlikely does occur.  If I hear hoofbeats, I never think unicorns because that's impossible.  Those do not exist.  This week, however, a unicorn knocked on my front door.

No, the isolation isn't getting to me.  Keep reading. 

I've been teaching yearbook for fifteen years, and every year, when we discuss who we should dedicate it to, my staff members joke, "One of these days, we should dedicate it to you."  I laugh and scoff, "Good luck surprising me.  That's pretty much impossible."  Apparently, this year, my editors decided that was a challenge they should accept.  They found a way to do what I thought was impossible.

While I was busy getting together pictures and information for the person I thought we were dedicating the yearbook to, they were twice as busy, making that page as a decoy and the real page on a system that our yearbook rep set up for them to work on separately.  They asked my art teacher friend how to contact my mom, who sent them information and brought them photos, not only from her house but from mine (she came to my house and took photos from my albums). 

The editors were frequently asking if they could go ask someone in the office questions for the page I thought we were making, and while I thought it was a little odd that they were going together when only one of them was assigned to the page, it didn't strike me as too odd because they were also working on senior pages together and enjoying their collaboration. 

A lot has happened this year, so the yearbook has covered a variety of stuff.  Thankfully, our final deadline was completed two weeks before we went into virtual learning.  (I even like that the Coronavirus won't be reflected in this year's book.  It's a nice way to focus on the positives of the year.)  I knew the stay-at-home order would change our book delivery and distribution.  I even found out recently that Jostens found a way to make virtual signing possible.  What I still did not know was that there would be a spread in the yearbook that I had never seen before. 

Every day since going into the virtual learning environment, we have had a morning faculty meeting.  We share devotions and prayer and make any announcements that need to be made.  On Tuesdays, it includes the faculty and staff from both of our campuses, and our head of school does the devotion.  This week, he asked me if there was a noise at my house because he thought he heard a knocking sound.  He told me that I should go answer my door because he thought someone was knocking on it.  At that point, I obviously knew something was going on, but I couldn't have been more shocked when I opened the door to see my yearbook editors standing on my porch.  In the yard were my mom, my principal and her daughter, our dean of women, and the mom of one of the editors with balloons and a yard sign that said 2020 Yearbook Dedication. 

It was only then that I found out all of this had been going on behind my back since August.  The editors read the lovely text of the page to me while I stood on my front porch.  We took some socially distanced photos (They are standing uphill from me).  They gave me a printout of the page given to them by our Jostens rep.  I struggled with my inability to hug them (just wait until I am allowed to).  And, all of this was being live-streamed to the faculty and staff who were still in the meeting I thought we were having.

After fourteen dedications of the yearbook, I've never been on this end of the sneakiness before.  It's amazing how many people can work behind your back and keep secrets from you.  People keep asking if I knew.  I totally did not.  They have asked if there as anything that I could have tipped me off in hindsight.  There really is not because when you don't believe in Bigfoot, you don't think a person walking down in the street in a furry coat might be him. 

The Value of Yearbook Dedication

I am sitting here with a brain so full that I'm not sure I can make coherent sentences.  This is one of the reasons why I blog.  It helps me sort out my own thoughts.  That said, if this seems a little rambling, there might be a good reason for that.

When I became the yearbook advisor for my school twelve years ago, a different teacher had been doing it every year.  That gave me a lot of freedom because there were no long held traditions that I couldn't break from.  I decided that if I was going to do this for multiple years, I wanted to establish some because traditions unite people.  One of the traditions I decided to start was to dedicate the yearbook to someone who had made a difference in our school and the lives of our students.  It had only been done once before, and I believed it was a great way for our students to see us honor each other for dedication and hard work.

That year, we dedicated it to our head of maintenance, Mr. Dale.  The book was presented to him and dedication read at a faculty meeting.  After that, I asked if we could dedicate them in front of the whole school so that our students could not only see us honoring hard work, but they could celebrate it as well.  Since then, our students have cheered for office staff, an art teacher, janitors, a high school science teacher, a fourth-grade teacher, an administrator, members of our IT department, a PE teacher, and a special needs teacher.

Why is this important?  There are probably many reasons, but I'll speak to the ones that matter most to me.

1.  We Honor Work
Our culture spends a lot of time honoring people for beauty, musical talent, and athletic talent.  We have people who are famous for being famous without actually doing anything and people who are famous because their parents are famous.  We have an unhealthy obsession with people who "speak their minds" whether or not they have anything to say.  This yearbook dedication shows that we honor people who work hard at the thing God has called them to do.

2.  We Unite in Honor
One of my favorite parts of the day is the reading of the first paragraph of the dedication.  Students try to figure out who we are reading about before the last sentence when we say the name.  Then, there is a roar into the room when that person makes their way to the front, we let their family into the room, and the entire school cheers and stomps the bleachers and celebrates.  It is a moment when our school is unified.  This year, our school has outgrown the space we have traditionally used to have our dedication.  We would violate fire code if we tried to put our student body all in that place, so we are having to split into two events.  I'm a little bummed about it, but I can't insist that we break the law.  I'll just miss hearing everyone all together in this moment.

3.  We Shower A Person With Love
Every year, the staff chooses the person we do because we love them.  That love is obviously already there, but it is not often expressed on a daily basis.  As James Taylor advised us, you should "Shower the people you love with love.  Show them the way that you feel.  Things are gonna be much better if you only will."  We do.  We usually make them cry.  We invite their families.  We explain why we love them in detail.

4.  We Show A Real Person
I don't know if you ever thought about the life of your teachers outside of the classroom, but I know I didn't when I was a kid.  They were a teacher, not a person.  In the process of our dedication research, we find out who this person was before they came to our school.  Some of our people have had really interesting jobs.  We tell the story of how they met their spouse if we can find it.  We share funny or touching stories.  I want our students to know that their teachers are human beings with childhoods and adolescent embarassments, and love stories, and hobbies, and all those things other humans have.

As long as I am the yearbook advisor, this will be an important part of our yearbook.  That's why it's right up front, just after the title page.

Yearbook Dedication Day - Post 2

As I have mentioned in previous posts, this year marks my 10th year doing the yearbook at GRACE.  We have grown from an 88 page book that was passed out in classrooms with dedication read in a faculty meeting to a 144 page book with a fine arts pep rally style event in which the dedication is revealed in front of our entire student body, faculty, and staff.

Order forms kept arriving right up to the last minute, and some were sold AS we were distributing books.  I survived this one, but it takes a team of people so I can end up.  A sub is assigned to my classroom for all of the day's class time.  There is no way everything could get done if I also had to be in class (although I used to do it that way).  The kids are in final exam review time, so I feel okay leaving them with their study guides and quizlets and notes for the day.

I start about 6:30 moving tables into "the cage" in our cafeteria.  The yearbooks have been sorted during the week into boxes for each grade, so it makes the set up a little faster.  This year, we had an NHS induction in the cafeteria at 7:15, so I stayed for that.  Then I had door duty (which is my favorite, so I didn't want to miss it).  At 8ish, I finished setting up all the middle and high school books and then ran down to our other campus to pick up any last orders from there.  Our two wonderful receptionists then take over by only e-mailing me the name and grade of anyone else who brings in an order (no need for the check at that moment - just get the book in the box).

Loading the boxes of books for the other campus was much easier this year because I traded cars with my mom the night before.  I don't know why it took me 7 years to realize that this would be easier with her SUV than my Buick, but it did.  Lifting the books off of the science department cart into the back of an SUV makes so much more sense the trying to slide them across the back seat of my car.  Getting them out of the SUV is INFINITELY easier than getting them out of the back seat of my car.

While I am doing all of this, my wonderful friend and technology genius, Diane Scro (who I may have mentioned a few other times) is setting up the gym with everything we need for the pep rally.  At one time, this consisted of one microphone and a speaker.  Now, it is a whole production with a theater backdrop, risers for the chorus, seats for the band, and a piano.

About 12:30, we start shipping the kids from the upper school campus to the gym.  We no longer fit in the gym, so it has been suggested that we split this into two events.  I can't do it because I feel that yearbook is a unifying force for our school.  It is one of the things that makes us "one school on two campuses" rather than two separate entities.  However, we do end up with about 800 people in our gym.

The pep rally involves performances and the announcement of awards, but it culminates with the presentation of the dedication.  This year, we finally dedicated it to someone I have been wanting to honor for a long time.  In a nearly unanimous decision, we decided to honor Zane Smitley, an incredible teacher and one of my best friends.  I can't believe we managed to keep it a secret.  Between kids on the staff knowing all year, his wife and children knowing since June, and him being right across the hall from me, it is kind of a miracle.  He even came into the lounge while I was sorting them and asked if he could look at one.  I thought I might have tipped him off when I told him he couldn't.

This was an emotional day because we have several people leaving our school that the arts department wanted to honor.  We bought some special engraved gifts and wrote letters to them.  We honored this awesome man.  We saw the last day of some of our seniors.  It is just a lot of emotion for one day.

After the yearbooks are distributed, the signing begins.  Several students asked me to sign theirs and I told them I would be happy to sign it tomorrow as I had no mental or emotional energy left.  I had to summon some emotional energy after clean up though because the first e-mail I received at the end of this day was from a parent who was "horribly disappointed" in the way her child's senior photo printed.  After addressing that, I came home and collapsed.  I was asleep when my mom called.  We traded our cars back.  Everything is back to normal for now.  Tomorrow will involve exam review, more signing, more errors being pointed out to me, and field day.  That is back to normal, which is what makes teaching kind of an adventure.

Yearbook Dedication Day - Post 1 - Anticipation

I am going to post twice this week - once in anticipation of the yearbook dedication and one after.  The after one may not happen until the day after because I usually go home and collapse into a puddle of incoherent jelly on the day of the dedication.

The feeling of this time is hard to describe.  It is both thrilling and terrifying at the same time.  I know there are mistakes because the job is too big for there not to be.  I don't know, however, how serious some of them are.  One year, there was a fifth grader left entirely out of the yearbook.  I didn't know it until her very upset mother called the day after her daughter brought it home.  That was six years ago, and I still can't figure out how it happened.  We do things differently now, so it shouldn't happen again; but I didn't expect it the first time.  Did I order enough yearbooks or way too many?  I won't know until next week.

I've made my first boneheaded mistake of the week.  On Sunday, I sent e-mails to everyone who has not yet ordered.  At least, that's what I thought I did.  It turns out I sent e-mails to the ENTIRE sophomore class, informing them that they had not ordered.  Of course, that was not true, so I spent a good part of Sunday evening replying to frantic e-mails from people who had indeed ordered.  There's no better start to your week than one big incompetent move.  Fortunately, I'm not also in charge of the education of kids this week. (Oh, wait - exams are next week, so . . . I am - Yikes!)

We dedicate our yearbook and keep it a secret until the day of distribution.  Somehow, we have managed to keep it a secret every year (at least, as far as I know).  This is not easy when you consider there are 15-20 teenagers every year who know the secret, and I have to enlist the help of the spouse or children or siblings of this person to get the pictures and information I need.  I get it from them during first semester.  With the dedication in May, that is a long time for that person to keep a secret.  I hope this year's dedicatee doesn't know, but he or she probably won't tell me if they do.  It is a big moment for me because our entire school is on its feet to honor one deserving person.  It is one of my favorite moments of the year, reminding me every time that one of the purposes of this book is to unify the student body, faculty, and staff.  There are very few things that do that, and I am happy to be part of one of them.

I have great student staffers, who are incredibly helpful on the day of distribution.  They make sure everyone receives their book before enjoying the signing time for themselves.  It keeps me from having to be in the room at the beginning, but it also makes me nervous because I am not in the room at the beginning.  (I apparently have some control issues.)  My school is called GRACE, and because of that, we often don't get people's yearbook orders until the last possible moment.  Yes, I do blame it on the name of the school; I really believe this would not happen if we were called JUSTICE Christian School or Get Your Paperwork In On Time Christian School.  This was made even more evident today when I went to the office to pick up the orders that came in Friday and Monday morning and was given an envelope that weighs 2 pounds.

My science students are taking a test right now.  I'm actually giving tests all day today.  It is their last one of the year other than their exam, so that gives me time to deal with the orders as I sit at my desk today.  It does mean I will have to grade them, but thank the Lord for Scantron.  I also have door duty this week as well as teacher devotions on Wednesday (oh, I need to get someone to cover the door that day).  We have a town  hall meeting tonight and field day on Friday.  Fortunately, I will be doing exam review with all of my students the rest of this week, so that will take on thing off the list. 

Believe it or not, I love this insane time.  It's when I know I am in an active, vibrant, place of learning and not a stodgy, dry institution.  I wouldn't trade it.

Teaching Yearbook

I never set out to teach yearbook, but it is now how most students know me.

When I was a kid I wanted to be an astronaut.  However, 3 inches over the NASA height limit, vision issues, and a complete lack of equilibrium took that off of the list of career options when I was 12.  To be honest, I would still jump on board any time someone would let me. When I took physics my senior year in high school, I discovered that I really wanted to be a physics teacher.  Five years into my career as a science teacher, my hobby of photography became one of the biggest parts of my work life.

For years, our school passed around the role of yearbook adviser from person to person.  This. is. crazy.  The learning curve in your first year of advising is steep.  To have a different person every year experiencing their first year means you never have a yearbook that reflects the lesson learned in the first year.  This was reflected in the quality of the yearbooks as well.  People did the best they could, but not having the benefit of experience definitely showed up in the product.

During the summer, I got a call from our principal, Kathie Thompson.  It began with "Keep an open mind when I tell you this."  This is hardly an encouraging start to a conversation.  She told me that they wanted me to teach yearbook that year.  I asked if it mattered that I didn't know what I was doing, and she said that no one else did either.  Since I believe you can't judge anything on its first year, I agreed to give it two years.  I thought I could re-evaluate at that point whether or not it would be a good idea to continue.

I learned more about the computer that year than I have learned in ANY other year of my life.  Second place would be the year we began our one to one laptop program.  I learned about folders and subfolders and network drives.  I learned about pop up blockers and editing tools and software.  I learned about managing a long term project in a way I had never learned before.  I was still shooting with a film camera back then (and a dinky little 2.0 Megapixel that wasn't good for much), so I would take the film to Eckard Drug and have them make a disc.  At that time, Jostens' online program was in its Beta phase, so we could only upload one photo at a time.  I also had a large number of students who didn't really want to take yearbook; they had turned in their elective forms late and were given their third or fourth choice.  You have no idea how much I cherished the few diligent workers I had that year.  I'm not sure I would have been able to continue if it hadn't been for the Clark girls, Amy Prall, and two of the three Edwards boys.

Here I sit, ten years later, a week after submitting my 10th yearbook.  Things have certainly changed.  1. First, a plug for Jostens.  I'm sure other yearbook companies are fine and dandy, but I wouldn't leave Jostens for all the tea in China.  Every year, they ask what your dream function would be for their system, and they implement most of them, often within the next year.  They are ALL about customer service.  I have gotten calls from the plant where the book is printed because they found an error and want to know how we would like to go about fixing it.  I have great relationships with both our local rep and the plant rep.  If you ever need to make a yearbook, use Jostens!

2.  I now use a digital Nikkon 3500 DSLR.  I have a 18-55mm lens, a 50-200mm lens, and a 70-330mm lens (great for soccer and baseball).  I take about 25000 pictures per year, which would have been very expensive with film.

3.  I have students (mostly) who signed up for yearbook because they want to be part of the excellence of the program.  They like the feeling of producing something.  I can usually tell who is going to be editor their senior year during their freshman year.

4.  The school has grown, grown, grown.  My first yearbook was 88 pages.  We had about 15 athletic teams.  Our middle and high school grades had only one section, and elementary grades had two.  We had fine arts programs, but we covered each of them in about half a page.  We did our best to spread out the coverage, but we had no way of knowing exactly how many times someone was in the book without physically counting them, which we did not do.  The book we just finished had 145 pages, including 24 athletic teams,  three sections of EVERY grade, and double page spreads for EACH fine art.  Due to an upgrade in Jostens system (Have I mentioned how much I love Jostens?), we are able to tag every photo and then run their coverage report.  We KNOW that every student is pictured at least three times in the yearbook.

Lots of other things have changed too, but these are the ones I can think of off the top of my head.  Yearbook has become such a central part of my life that I'm not sure what I would do without it.  What I like most is that it has kept me connected to the entire school.  I am in and out of all  classrooms across all grade levels, so I know what great things are happening in our classes.  I am at least two games/matches of every sport, so I know what is happening in our athletics.  I am at almost every theater, band, and chorus performance, so I can tell you the amazing work they are doing.  Yes, it is more work than I ever knew was possible, but it has embroidered GRACE on my heart as thoroughly as the logo is embroider on my shirts.

Thanks so much to Kathie Thompson for changing my life.  I love it and hope for ten more.