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| The element abbreviations give you the intended message. |
“Next year I want everyone to be able to express themselves
with a quote by their picture,” he said.
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| The yearbook became a platform for this student. |
Which is a nice thought for a kid to have but we graduated
1,403 seniors this year and I am not even slightly interested in this project.
We went back a forth a bit (he’s a pretty persuasive kid – probably how he got
elected), but the bottom line is that yearbooks and kids have evolved.
First, yearbooks are much more than quotes now. Yes, this
was a popular concept in years past but now we have alternative story forms,
modular design, chronological coverage. What was probably once a necessary
inclusion to actually be able to remember a kid isn’t needed anymore. Yearbook
staffers are working hard to get kids in the books as many times as possible
and to cover them in interesting, pertinent ways.
Second, kids are smarter than me. I can look at a sentence
for 10 minutes and not notice the double entendre but a 16-year-old can spot it
in a millisecond. I don’t have the energy or desire to spend time looking for
ways kids are trying to sneak something inappropriate into the yearbook.
Third, I prefer for my yearbook staff to determine the
coverage and topics of conversation. They can shape stories and situations as
needed and I don’t want their product to become a joke or a platform for random
opinions.
Also, just no.
Kelly Juntunen
Allen High School
Allen, Texas
Ha! I can see your point. Our graduating senior class was only about 65 kids and getting quotes and future plans from all of them was excruciating! I can't imagine what you'd have to go through.
ReplyDeleteAnd some were... more for porn then a high school yearbook? Ugh! I had to go back and find these students and explain to them why their reference to phrases like "hard in the morning" and their use of the word "cum" for "come" was absolutely inappropriate. The scary thing is, while one snickered and knew he was busted, the other stared and me blankly. I'm pretty sure that to this day, he's still now sure what was wrong with his original quote.
We did senior quotes in our yearbook for the first time this year. There are several headaches that come along with quotes.
ReplyDelete1. While the seniors wanted it SOOOO much, a huge majority of them failed to turn in a quote. We send out reminders and made announcements, but still had only about 1/2 the senior class turn in a quote. This made designing pages difficult and the spacing with/without the quotes looked strange.
2. It's very stressful trying to figure out every little bad word, slang word, saying or silly thing they try to slip in. I think I looked over those pages 15 times, my editors looked over them more than than and we still found one or two bad quotes right before sending to print!
3. Collecting and storing the quotes is a pain! Then seniors would come in and try to change their quote...yikes.
I'm pretty sure my senior are wanting to do quotes again this year but I'm going to try to sway the other way. Good luck.