Letting Go

I saw this online on Tuesday.  It hit different because this week was spirit week, which traditionally has been one of my busiest and craziest weeks of the school year.  This year, it feel remarkably normal.*

Let me back up for those of you who are not regular readers of this blog.  For 18 years, I was the yearbook advisor at my school.  Even in normal weeks, my afternoons were filled with games, events, play rehearsals, and band performances.  My weekends very often involved editing photos and uploading them for tagging.  Spirit Week, as you can imagine, was all of this on steroids.  Our school is on two campuses, so each day meant running from my classroom to the elementary campus for pictures.  The parade, pep rally, game, and court on Friday led to a Saturday filled with editing and uploading before heading to the dance where I took about 400 pictures in three hours.  Sunday was about dealing with those, and I was teaching again on Monday (I hadn't stopped teaching during spirit week).  Please don't read any of this as a complaint.  I did it for 18 years because I loved doing it.  But, loving it doesn't keep it from being a lot to deal with.  

In April of 2022, I approached my principal about giving up the yearbook and spent last year handing it off to someone else.  While some have worried that I would have mixed feelings or a sense of great loss, I haven't.  I figured out what I was getting from the yearbook that I didn't want to lose and created a role for myself that would provide that.  Mostly, I have been enjoying going to a volleyball game when I want to rather than when I had to, planning to see a play without having already seen two rehearsals, and attending fitness classes at the local YMCA (by the way, we are in our annual fundraising time, and I'd love for you to support the work they do for the community because it is amazing).  

As I did my lesson planning for this week, I was happy to see that I could keep doing whatever I need to in order to move forward in the curriculum.  Each day, I enjoyed seeing students in their costumes without needing to chase them down the hall with a camera.  I was able to participate in the parade, waving at the camera as I walked by.  I participated in the teacher lip-sync battle at the pep rally, something I hadn't been able to do in years.  I went to the game and didn't watch it because I was able to stand in the alumni tent talking to former students.  I chaperoned the dance last night with empty hands and left when the first shift ended, getting home at a perfectly reasonable time. 

Again, please don't hear any of this as a hatred of the last 18 years, simply as a comparison to show that I let go of this at exactly the right time.  I loved doing it, and, because the timing was right, I am able to love not doing it without having negative feelings about it.

When it is time to let something go, I encourage you to put thought into why you were doing it in the first place and then figure out how to keep the positive aspects of that thing in your life in a different way.  The time invested is worth the emotional payoff.  

*There is no such thing as a normal school week.  

Thanksgiving 2022 - 18 Years of Yearbooks

The call came during the summer of 2005. "Keep an open mind while I tell you this," said Kathie Thompson.  She told me that she wanted me to take over the yearbook.  "Does it bother you that I don't know what I'm doing?" I asked.  She felt confident I could do it, and I promised two years before we would revisit whether I should continue with it.  That year, I learned more about computers, organization, planning, and guiding students than I had in the rest of my life before (or since).  

At that time, GRACE had about 342 students and only 14 athletic teams.  We did not yet have regularly scheduled theater productions or any clubs to cover.  With a graduating class of 7, every senior got their own page. We had a limit on how many photos could be stored on the Jostens website.  If I recall correctly, it was the number of pages in the book times 14, not including portraits.  That was okay, though, because I could only upload one photo at a time.  The yearbook that year was 84 pages long.  The dedication was read in a faculty meeting.

This year, eighteen years later, we have an enrollment of over 850.  We have 27 athletic teams, two theater productions each year, more fine arts classes, more clubs, an active student council, and bigger graduating classes.  Last year's book was 176 pages long.  During that time, we also developed the ability to track who was placed in the yearbook, which led to my biggest goal - getting each student K-12 pictured in the book a minimum of three times.  Others appear more, of course, because they may be involved in many school activities - (The record remains Alex Dolwick.)  After several years in the high 80s and low 90s, Harrison Huntley said we should try to get 100%.  I declared that to be impossible, but then we did it.  We've done it every year since, even the hybrid year (well, we were 2 people shy of 100% that year).

The yearbook is more work than I ever knew was possible.  From photographing events to assigning pages to emailing senior parents and teachers for the photos we need to guiding students in page design to marathon proofreading sessions to sorting books for distribution, the book you hold in your hands is much more than paper and ink.  There's love in those pages, and there has been for the past 18 years.

Last spring, I started feeling that it was time to pass The Torch to someone else.  I emailed Mandy Gill and told her what I had in mind (more on that in a future post), and she replied, "Sounds great. I'll start working on it."  That was at the end of April.  At the beginning of May, the fine arts department was having a meeting, and Wendy Warlick said, "I'd love to the yearbook someday, but I'd never take it away from Beth."  Because the fine arts chair, Elizabeth Walters, is my friend, she knew my plan and said, "You're going to want to go talk to her right now."  It's funny how God just lines things up like that.

Throughout this year of lasts, there are a few things that I'm happy to give up, thinking "Whew, I won't have to do that again."  There are also some more melancholy moments, in which I think, "Oh, man.  I guess I won't get to do this again."  There are definitely some mixed emotions, which will only increase as the year goes on and I get closer to my last distribution.  But my overriding emotion is thankfulness.  I'm thankful for what the yearbook has given me over these last 18 years.  Here's a short but very incomplete list.

• Connection with teachers and students from TK through 12th grade - I sometimes creep out students when they come to the meet and greet before their 8th-grade year r I already know their names.  "How did you know?" they ask, and I have to stop myself from saying, "Do you know how many hours I have stared at your face in order to match your name to it?"  There are students that I look forward to teaching from the time they are in kindergarten because they have been fun to photograph for so many years.  I had a girl come in one year, look at me, and say, "Finally."  I knew exactly what she meant.  I've had very young kids approach me in public, to the confusion and apprehension of their parents.  Trust me when I say it does not bring down their alarm level if I say, "Don't worry.  She knows me because I've taken her picture a lot."
• Tangible contribution to legacy - Teachers sometimes don't get to see their legacy.  The seeds we plant can take a very long time to grow.  Sometimes, we see the fruit, and sometimes we just have to trust that seeds will grow eventually.  The day the books arrive and the day they are distributed, I get an immediate sense of gratification that this work we have done is in our hands.  Sometimes, I walk through the lobby and see prospective parents and students in the lobby, looking through a yearbook to get an idea of what the school is like.  It always makes me smile to see the work I have done meaning something to someone else.
• A complete picture of GRACE - It's easy for teachers to get tunnel vision about their schools.  I teach 8th-grade science and physics, so it would be easy for me to lose sight of the fact that there are younger kids and other subjects and that kids have extracurricular involvement if I hadn't been the yearbook advisor.  Everyone knows how much I love GRACE Christian School, and one of the reasons I love it is that I know it so deeply from top to bottom. 
• Jostens Staff - I know there are other yearbook companies out there, but for me, Jostens is the only one.  I began this job with no idea what I was doing, and Jay, my Jostens rep was so kind as he walked me through everything.  He even asked me for suggestions for changes they could make to the site like I wasn't as green as grass.  When he came to visit, we would always end up talking for an hour or more after school got out.  At that time, my plant rep was Anissa (now married to Jay), and she was so good about helping me solve problems after a page was submitted or emailing to say they had put a page on hold because there was something they found that they thought I might like to deal with before it went into production.  I have different reps now (as Jay and Anissa moved at the end of the hybrid year), but they remain the high-quality partners I've come to expect from Jostens.  My relationships with them aren't just business relationships; they are part of my community.
• My yearbook staffs - The first year that I took over as advisor, the majority of my class didn't really want to be there.  They had signed up for electives late and gotten their third or fourth choice. I did, however, have a core of people that I knew to be responsible and creative.  Those four met with me on separate days and ended up being my first editorial team.  Every year after that, I have been able to recruit great staff members.  I have had people join as freshmen (even 8th graders back when our electives met all together) to prove themselves dedicated and insightful and become editors by their junior or senior years.  It takes something special and quirky to be great at yearbook editing, and of course, quirky is my defining quality, so these students have often been those I developed the closest relationships with during their time at school.  I have loved getting to know them and seeing what they pursue after high school.  Some have stayed in touch long after they left me.  Part of me wants to list them here to specify how thankful I am for them, but I fear I would leave someone out, and I don't want to do that.  

If you had told me at this time last year that I would be thinking of giving up the yearbook by the end of the school year, I would have thought you were crazy.  But I am excited about the things I will do with the time this frees up in my life (I promise, I'll post about it in the spring).  I am happy to watch the new advisor take the yearbook to a different place than I was taking it and to support her in any way that I can.  I am grateful to my principal, Mandy Gill, for reading my rambling email in which I nervously approached this idea and saying, "Sounds great" rather than resisting change.  I'm grateful to know this is my last book, so I can feel all the feelings of each last time.  And I'm grateful to Kathie Thompson for that 2005 call in which she encouraged me to "keep an open mind."

Most of all, I'm thankful for how God has used the past 18 years to develop something in both students and in me.  

Commitment to a Value (and the Value of Commitment)

Yesterday, I submitted the last page of our school's yearbook for publication.  

As you can probably imagine, it's been a strange school year in which to produce a yearbook.  There have been few events that we would normally have had.  No Grandparents' Day in the fall, the day in which I usually take the bulk of photos for chorus, band, and elementary school students (and obviously, no Grandparents' Day page in the book).  No homecoming dance for which I often get coverage of the high school students who aren't athletes or theater kids (and obviously no homecoming dance pages).  No field trips that usually provide an opportunity to get variety in photos.  When the school year began and yearbook planning started, we weren't even sure if there would be sports to cover or clubs that met in person.

When this happens, you have to re-evaluate your practices, but if you have been operating from a set of values, you have a place to start.  For our yearbook staff, the primary value has always been coverage of people.  Events give pages a theme and a structure, but we don't cover events; we cover people.  Jostens has helped with this for the past 15 years or so by tracking all of our tagged photos as they are placed.  (The coverage report is the greatest tool I have.)  For years, I have driven into my students that our primary goal is trying to get as many people as possible to have a minimum of three placements in the yearbook.  When I grade their pages, they lose points if they have left a member of the team out (assuming we have a photo of them, which we work hard to get).  At the end of each class, I tell everyone to save their page at the same time, so I can announce our current percentage.  We celebrate coverage milestones by coloring in a chart on my bulletin board.  

As this year began, we knew this would be a challenge.  It is difficult to tag pictures of students in masks.  Facial recognition relies on several structures of the face, including cheekbones and chin, so it was less reliable than usual.  Smaller class sizes this year mean more classes and schedule changes made finding the time to take photos more difficult.  

Because we are committed to the value of covering each student, we had to find ways to make it happen.  I spent a day going from classroom to classroom on our elementary campus getting teachers to identify students.  I emailed list after list of names of students still needed, and teachers responded by taking photos of whatever they had going on that day.  Students attending class virtually means some photos were of faces on a computer screen.  There are a number of photos of an iPad with just a smiling face and even photos parents sent me of their students working on their computers at home.  My staff conducted interviews with students to replace some of the pages we would normally have with "profile" pages.  They emailed me when someone was present in-person who had been virtual or came and got the camera to go take a shot of that one kid we hadn't been able to get.  Our vocal ensembles had strict restrictions on in-person signing, so we didn't have lovely group photos of singers in formal wear (or at the Christmas event at the governor's mansion), but we do have a statement from every member and a QR code that links to the videos of their virtual songs.  It's been . . . a lot, but because they were committed to the value of coverage and the help of dozens of people, we ended the yearbook at over 99%!   I cannot say 100 because there are three students on the coverage report that are not at 3 placements.  Two left the school during the first semester (and I guess it would be creepy to follow them to get another photo).  One virtual student simply would not answer my emails, asking for one more.  She has her reasons, and we are all doing our best right now.  

For all the reasons listed above, I would have cut my staff enormous slack if we had not been able to reach this goal this year.  But because they are committed to a value, there is value in their commitment.  I hope that someday, when they are adults and this COVID year is a memory, they will hold onto the idea that commitment to a goal based on a value means they can meet challenges and do hard things.  I hope they will remember the value their commitment had and what their hard work meant to others.  I hope they carry the value of commitment with them and that it is especially meaningful when that commitment is to something they value.

A sneak preview of our cover

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. 

Not the Day I Thought I Would Have

"Come now, you who say, 'Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit' yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, 'If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.'”

 - James 4:13-15

As teachers, we make a lot of plans.  This is a good thing.  Teachers who go into the classroom every day and wing it do a disservice to their students.  We must plan the day, the week, the quarter, and the semester (while still remaining flexible), or we will never teach our students as well as we could.  As a yearbook teacher, I have to plan photography schedules (from classes to athletics to artistic events), and I must teach students to plan for the meeting of deadlines.

There is perhaps no day of my year that is more planned out than the day we distribute the yearbook.  This was how it was supposed to go this year:

- The weekend before, the yearbooks are sorted into grades and labeled with student names.  

- The day of distribution, I have a substitute.  I arrive at school 6AM to get everything I will need for the day out of my classroom before the students start arriving at 7:45.  

- We distribute our books from several locations to ease traffic congestion, so I move boxes on a hand truck to different rooms.  At least one of those rooms also has AP exams going on in the morning, so I try to get as much done in there as I can before they get started and then work as quietly as I can afterward.  

- My school has two campuses, so when I have finished setting up in one place, I drive boxes of elementary students' books to our other campus, unload them, and deliver them to classrooms for the teachers to distribute as it works into their day.  

- I then go back up to my campus to prepare for our distribution event, a pep rally celebrating the Fine Arts programs of our school.  

- The final part of the rally is the reveal of the dedication of yearbook.

- The remainder of the day is yearbook signing time.

That's what was planned, but this day certainly didn't turn out the way I had planned.  The first few items went as planned, but when I got to the elementary campus, I was getting far more tired and weak than usual.  One of our maintenance crew helped me load the books into the lobby.  When I went to park the car, I felt a little sick.  I went to the bathroom and threw up.  You know how weak and shaky you are after that, so there was no way I was going to be able to deliver boxes to classrooms.  I went to the front desk and suggested a change of plan.  Our receptionists said, "You look terrible," gave me a bottle of water, and let me sit in the corner for a few minutes.

For some reason, all I wanted to was to get back up to my own campus.  I can't really explain that except that is the same feeling you get when you just want to be home.  Had it been any other day, I would have gone home at that point.  That's my only go-home rule:  You vomit; you leave.  But I really didn't want that to happen on this day.  There's a Walgreens next door to my campus, so I decided some caffeine might be helpful.  I bought a drink, and as soon as I got back in my car, it started again.  People of Walgreens, I apologize if I scared any potential customers away while leaning out of my car, vomiting in your parking lot.  I really couldn't help it.

Since I wasn't delivering boxes to classrooms, I had an extra 90 minutes or so to attempt recovery.  I wanted someone to know what was happening, so I went to our art teacher and told her I would be in my car and to come and check on me if she didn't see me by noon.  Then, I had an experience I've never had before - napping at work.  It took a while to figure out how to recline the driver's seat (why is that even a thing?) and get into a reasonably comfortable position.  I slept for about 45 minutes, woke up feeling like a human being again, looked in the mirror to see that I was a human color again (I had been the green of a Mt. Dew bottle before), and continued with the events of the day.  

I believe you should reflect and learn something when things don't go as planned, so here's what I learned.

1.  I may not be as necessary to the process as I previously thought.  All the yearbooks were distributed, despite my illness.

2.  Sometimes, you have ask for help.  I would have rather had no one know what was happening, but it simply wasn't possible.  People rallied and took over what I couldn't do.

3.  Even when you don't have the day you planned, things turn out okay.  Some even told me the next day that they thought it went better than ever.

Love Your Yearbook Staff

Tomorrow, I will submit the final pages of our school's yearbook for publication.  This is the fourteenth time I have done this since becoming a yearbook teacher.  Because Jostens understands the power of simple gestures, a fun thing will happen when I hit the last submit button.  Little fireworks will appear on the screen. 

It's unreasonable how happy those little dots of light on the screen make me.  They are just little digital dots of light, after all.  Except, they aren't.  They are a representation of the time, energy, heart, and work that my staff puts into making this book.  In case you don't know what a yearbook staff does, let me give you a quick run-down.  The GRACE Christian School yearbook consists of:

176 pages
Covering almost 800 students and around 100 staff members
14 grades on two campuses
60 seniors
Every student pictured a minimum of 3 times
26 athletic teams across 3 seasons
Homecoming Dance
Spirit Week
6 types of fine arts on two different campuses
2 school plays

30 clubs on two different campuses
Multiple events like Grandparents Day, Hoops for Hope, etc.

I think I just realized why I overslept this morning.  When we began work back in August, every one of those 176 pages were blank, white sheets of paper.  Now, they represent memories, victories and losses, rehearsals and curtain calls, learning experiences, time spent with friends, senior fun, community service, and a hundred other things. 

Keep in mind that this is accomplished by high school students who have all of their other classes to attend and work on.  This week, take a moment to recognize that accomplishment, and give some love to your yearbook staff.

When Kids Sign Your Yearbook

I buy a yearbook for myself every year (I know students think I get it for free, but I pay the same price they do).  Even though I have access to many copies of it in the yearbook office, the library, and the school lobby, I buy my own because, just like the students, I like to have people write in it.

During exams, I put my yearbook on the whiteboard marker tray and tell the kids they can sign it if they wish.  Of course, I get some goofy stuff like HAGS (That's "have a great summer" for those of you who are not in the know).   However, I also get some of the things they would never say out loud.  Here are a few examples (I've blurred all names).

There are two things I love about this.  He thinks I made science interesting (how is it not interesting to everyone?), and he hopes to have me again in high school.  Because of the school in which I teach, that is a real possibility.  Some of the kids I teach in 8th-grade return to me in physics.  I happen to know something he doesn't.  All of his teachers here will make science interesting for him.  All I did was prepare him for them.

When kids walk into my class, I have a few that say, "I don't like science."  My response has always been, "We'll see."  Most kids think that if they aren't particularly good at memorizing scientific vocabulary that they are not good at science.  Of course, the ability to memorize vocabulary isn't science.  Continuously questioning how something happens is science.  As Richard Feynman said, "I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something."  If this girl can come to my class and love asking questions, I have done my job.

This one is my favorite of the three.  I don't know if you can see the second sentence, but it made me do a spit take while I was reading it even though I know she meant it as a compliment.  It says, "I admire the fact that you don't care what people think of you."  Here's the thing.  I really do care.  If my close friends suddenly stopped liking me tomorrow, I would be devastated.  When I got a mean email from someone who found a mistake in their yearbook and called me "careless," I cried while I was replying to her (a little awkward in the middle of a physics exam).  It's just that caring what other people think of you looks very different at 42 than it does at 13.  When you are 13, you think there are "certain people" that you need to impress so they will think you are cool and want to be your friend.  As an adult, I know that what I genuinely am will be cool to someone and that person will be my friend.  When you are in the 8th-grade, you think you have change who you are because you might get laughed at.  As an adult, I know that getting laughed at isn't the worst thing that could happen today (the mean email was worse).  When I tell corny jokes, make strange noises, and dance around in class, there are students who laugh at that.  If were in the 8th-grade, I might decide not to enjoy myself, but because I am an adult, I stand closer to the kids who are laughing and exaggerate the dance moves to let them know they are not the standard by which I live.

I didn't include the most profound things that were written in my yearbook because those are more personal.  Even though they are in the yearbook where other people can see them, it should remain limited to me and my kids and other staff members.  If you are a teacher, get a yearbook and let your kids sign it.  You will be amazed by some of their thoughts.

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.

Photography Geek Out

I have been taking pictures since I was a child and started really caring about it around the age of 13.  At that time, I was using a compact film camera, so it was really just about composition.

At 15, my parents bought me a Minolta SLR, and I became an addict.  My dad and I would take 8 or 9 rolls of film each during a 5-day vacation.  We had no idea, of course,  what kind of pictures we had until we took them to the drug store to have them developed.  All of this added up to serious money, and we would often end up with two or three pictures that we liked enough to enlarge and frame.

When digital photography began, I was a little resistant to it.  Strike that; I was a lot resistant to it.  Strike that, I said I would never use a digital camera.  Early digital cameras were TERRIBLE.  You would have been better of taking a writing class so that you could vividly describe what you were looking at than taking a digital photo of it.  They were 2.1 Megapixels.   Even when I started teaching yearbook (12 years ago), I had a tiny 4 Megapixel camera that was more or less useless for volleyball and basketball.  It was difficult at dances, and it couldn't zoom in at a soccer field worth anything.  I found that I was still frequently using film and then having it developed onto a CD in order to use as a digital file.

My first yearbook camera ($110 in 2005)

Digital photography has come a long way since those days.  I now have a Nikon D3100 DSLR, a wonderful camera with 14.2 Megapixels.  While this isn't the highest end camera I could own (I will never be able to afford or justify a Hasselblad for instance, and the 24-megapixel cameras that are currently available are outside of my price range), it has almost seven times more pixels than that first camera!  Please also note that I am not a victim of the megapixel myth. I do know that a megapixel count isn't the only thing that affects photo quality; I use this simply to illustrate how far the technology has advanced in this short time.

The most important feature of a DSLR is the lens quality.  It is actually better to invest in a good lens on a lower megapixel body than the other way around.  The lens determines the stability of your image, the coherence of refractions, and the amount of light gathered.  This is why I always recommend either Canon or Nikon when people ask about cameras to buy.  Neither of those companies will put their name on bad glass, and the glass is important.

This leads me to my most geeky post.  During Christmas break, I bought a new lens specifically with light gathering in mind.   It is not about the zoom as it goes from 50mm to 150mm, but it has an f-stop of f/2.8!  My lowest f-stop prior to this lens was f/3.5.  If you are not a photo geek, that probably means nothing to you, but it is a big deal.  The lower that number is, the more light the lens can take in.  This means I can shoot at a swim meet without annoying officials with a flash (I'll get to test that out next week).  Today, I'll take it into our school gym and take pictures that I won't have to edit for exposure.  This is exciting for me.  I bought it used at Peace Camera in Raleigh, which made it significantly less expensive than buying it new from Nikon.  I'll post more after I've had time to play with it.  So far, I've only used it for pictures of my cat.

I may have to do some weight lifting to strengthen my hands
and wrist because glass weighs a lot!

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.

What We Learned From "The Dress" - A Yearbook Teacher's Point of View

"The Dress" has had its fifteen minutes of fame (extended a bit by the snow day effect) and is about to go away.  Before it does, I would like to take a minute to reflect on what it can teach us about pictures.

There are ubiquitous phrases in the world that are wrong despite their massive use.  "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger" might make you feel better when you are going through a hard time, but it just isn't true.  One of the most meaningless phrases is "Pictures Don't Lie."  I can tell you a a person who takes 20 thousand pictures a year that pictures lie all the time.  I'm not even talking about photoshopped, airbrushed, intentionally manipulate pictures; I'm talking about the pictures you snap and post to instragram without touching them.

The picture of the cute bird sitting in a tree in your yard makes it seem like you live in a Disney movie (or at least in a country chalet somewhere).  You don't.  What is out of frame in that shot?  Is it the trash can or the car?  I have students who will tell me that I shouldn't come and take pictures at a certain game because they are going to lose that one.  Are the shots I take of the batter at the plate really going to look different if they are winning?  Not unless I include the scoreboard in the shot, which is hard to do with it being on the other side of the field.  When I take yearbook pictures, I don't include the onfield injury, the student who is crying, or the mom who just had to dress up like a princess too because she made the kindergarten event about her.  Therefore, what you choose to include or exclude from a picture can make the picture lie.  Despite this, I still here "Pictures don't lie" about twenty times a year.

Enter "The Dress."  Everyone who viewed this picture was looking at the same thing.  They were perceiving it differently, but they were all looking at the same thing.  If you want to know the science of why different people saw different colors, click this link (http://www.livescience.com/49980-dress-color-explainer.html).  My point is this.  If people looking at the same photo can't agree on what they are seeing, how can we expect to believe all pictures?  The next time there is a tabloid photo, a picture on the evening news, or a photo that went viral, remember The Dress.  Ask yourself if you are absolutely sure that picture is telling you the entire story before you snap to an instant opinion.