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