Pandemic year tough for yearbook staff
If you’re looking for a demanding job, try being a high school yearbook editor during COVID-19.
There are no pep rallies, concerts, plays or cafeteria antics to document for posterity. Most students are learning from home, including the yearbook staff. Hardly anyone is on campus to interview or photograph.
Still, a yearbook has to be produced, and the pressure is on to commemorate a year that provided some remarkable experiences in spite of a wicked virus.
Challenges plagued yearbook writers from the beginning. There was no one around to talk to for standard features on fashion, friendship and the best part of being a senior.
“We couldn’t knock on a classroom door to ask a question,” said Sean Delaney, yearbook advisor at Spanish River High in Boca Raton, where only about half of students are attending in-person. “It was extremely difficult to interview people. We had to spike an entire junior varsity sports spread because we weren’t getting any help from coaches, students or players.
“We had to become creative out of necessity.”
Sports teams did play this year, a bright spot for photographs to fill pages. At Western High in Davie, both the girls’ and boys’ basketball teams broke school records, recorded in detail in dramatic yearbook spreads.
“I hope the yearbook brings a positive light on the situation we’re in,” said Priscilla Renje, co-editor in chief of Western’s yearbook. “It shows that even though we’re in a pandemic, we’re still doing all these amazing things.”
Students in Broward, Palm Beach and Miami-Dade counties had the choice this year of learning in a traditional classroom or taking that same class at home on the computer. Most chose remote learning.
Only about 400 of 3,500 students at Western are learning at school this year. Seeing how challenging it would be to find on-campus stories, the staff decided to focus on individual tales of pandemic perseverance. They found a student who was injured in a car accident vigorously exercising each day and students who started their own businesses, such as custom shoe designing or baking.
Still, sales have been slow. Renje said the school has usually sold around 800 yearbooks by now, but only 400 so far this year. Cost for the 350-page book is $50 to $85, depending whether the buyer paid early in the year or near the end.
The widespread problem of lack of photo opportunities forced yearbooks to ask students and teachers to send in their own iPhone shots and selfies. These were often of poor quality and unusable.
The yearbook staff at A.W. Dreyfoos School of the Arts in West Palm Beach brainstormed how to handle their photo challenges and settled on making creative use of large headlines and text.
An arts-focused public high school, Dreyfoos in previous years flourished as a place where students danced and played their instruments in their classrooms, the cafeteria, in the breezeways and on the lawns, creating abundant fodder for yearbook photos.
But this year, only about half of students are on campus, and the school produced virtual concerts and plays without live
audiences. Some classes have only four students in person, said yearbook editor Isabella Ramirez, who has been attending her classes remotely.
“So much of the school experience at Dreyfoos is tied to the campus,” Ramirez said. “We are all like-minded individuals who are passionate about the arts. I was used to shuffling around the classroom and looking over people’s shoulders to check on pages. I would be at the computer with them and my hand would be on their mouse. Not being in that space makes you feel detached.”
At Coral Springs High School, this detachment became clear when underclassmen were supposed to come to campus for yearbook portraits. Although most seniors showed up at the designated photography studio, only 18% of underclassmen came to school for their individual shoots, said Bradley Lyons, the school’s yearbook adviser. Not surprising, since only about 15% of Coral Springs High students are learning on campus this year.
Yearbook staffers also had to figure out how to document the pandemic. Should it permeate the entire book, or be relegated to a few pages?
At Cypress Bay High in Weston, where about 600 of 4,800 students are learning on campus, the yearbook staff tackled the year chronologically and tried to make sure COVID-19 “didn’t overwhelm the book,” yearbook adviser Ashley Poitras said.
Pictures of COVID-related signs, warning students to keep their distance from each other, are especially prevalent in the beginning of the book, Poitras said. But as the months wear on, the chapters emphasize other aspects of student life, such as mask-less faces at lunchtime, when students can take off their face coverings to eat, she said.
Kori Ernst, co-editor in chief for Spanish River’s yearbook, said her staff considered a separate chapter on COVID but decided to incorporate it throughout the book. The emphasis, she said, is on how 2020-21 was a life-changing year that still had goofy, creative and entertaining moments that are typical of high school life.
“We wanted to make it as normal as possible,” Ernst said.