Location

Oak Hall School
8009 SW 14th Ave. Gainesville, FL 32607

Jacksonville– I-10 west to Baldwin, U.S. 301 south to Waldo, S.R. 24 South to 53rd Ave. (First stop light in Gainesville), right on 53rd Ave. to 43rd street., (about 7 miles), left on 43rd street to Newberry Rd., right on Newberry to 75th Street., left on 75th to 14th Ave. (look for the Oak Hall School sign), right on 14th Ave.

From Ocala — North on I-75 to Exit 387 (S.R. 26/Newberry Rd.), left/west on Newberry to 75th St., See above.

From Lake City– South on I-75 to Exit 390, as above.

Times

Monday’s registration and Tuesday’s and Wednesday’s sessions will begin promptly at 8:00 am. Dismissal Monday and Tuesday will be at 4:45; dismissal Wednesday will be at 12:30. Lunch Monday and Tuesday will be at 12:00 pm. Wednesday’s dismissal is early, so lunch is not provided.

Check In

Check-in begins at 8:00 a.m. Monday morning. Please be sure to arrive promptly so that we can complete check-in on time. Our first session for Monday will start at 9:00 am.

Attendance

Students are to attend scheduled classes unless they are with their adviser. Some schools choose to take some time to work together, which is fine as long as the adviser is in attendance.

What to bring

•Trip permission slips for each student. Simply use your school’s form or make copies of the YBC form found in the registration material (see previous blog).
•Swim suits for free time pool-side if staying at the Fairfield Inn.
•Layout ideas that you have seen or thought about already.
•Your school calendar to plan deadlines and events for the school year.
•Your yearbook and possibly extra yearbooks to exchange with other schools.
•Money for snacks.
•Advisers should bring specific ideas to exchange for the Adviser only sessions. Suggestions on grading, organization, hints for new advisers, anything that works for you, etc.
•Art and theme ideas to discuss with a Creative Arts designer at the workshop.

Oh, yeah. It’s time to start planning for the summer workshop! No joke, starting early is one of the best ways to manage the upcoming year: focus or re-focus, get training, learn some of the latest design trends, bond as a staff. Three days at Oak Hall School in Gainesville will provide ample opportunities to work on theme, layout, ad sales and book sales.

The goal of making yearbook cool again gets a great boost when staff members attend the workshop, interact with other budding journalists and get loads of training from our team of experts. The workshop runs from July 20 through July 22. Check out the brochure and registration material for details, or contact Steven or Thomas.

peace-love-yearbook-brochure1

workshop-registration-material

Let’s face it, staffs need to reflect the diversity of the school to better reflect, represent and capture the many student voices telling the story of the year. Advisers have some control over this, though they are somewhat at the mercy of Guidance and schedule conflicts. Nevertheless, taking charge over staff recruitment can give advisers an edge in a number of ways.

Recruit for quality, too. Ask other teachers for recommendations of strong students. Build your staff your way by seeking out good writers, good workers and self-motivators. Some advisers require an application to be on staff and even letters of recommendation. Others work with their guidance departments to put together a short list of students with higher level reading and writing scores. The point is to be proactive. It helps to get an administrator on your side, too. Explain to them that you want to put together a high quality staff so that the yearbook can be a more effective public relations tool for the school. The subtext here, of course, is that a higher quality staff has the potential to promote the school and its leaders more effectively than a mediocre one.

Next, invite the recruits to a yearbook reception. Feed them. Talk to them, or invite us to talk to them, about how cool it can be to be the historians of a year, the photographers of greatness, writers of dramatic stories, and designers of groovy spreads: talk the experience up! If you had a strong staff this year, or at least a couple of strong editors, get them involved. Let success sell success. Recruits need to know that yearbook is not only a commitment, but also a class that will give them opportunities in business, design, writing and, most importantly, in the telling of the only published chronicle of the year.

The diversity, energy, commitment and skill of your staff are major factors to increasing the quality of the book, the rest of the school’s perception of the book, and ultimately the success of the program. Don’t overlook them.

National Awards. The National Scholastic Press Association (NSPA) awarded Herff Jones 10 Pacemaker Awards this year, its highest award. These accolades again put Herff Jones in front of any competition for producing the most award-winning yearbooks in the nation.

ColorPlus. Herff Jones is the only yearbook company that enhances each of your photos so that you don’t have to. Other companies correct photo quality by taking an average color balance per page, and they don’t do any photo correction when pages are created with an online page creation program. Herff Jones applies industry-leading ColorPlus to each individual photo regardless of how your pages are created - and there is no additional charge for this service. The photos in Herff Jones printed books look better in side-by-side comparisons with any competitor books.

The bottom line: Herff Jones is tough to beat. Once you see what we can do for you, it will be hard to pass us up. From best service, to best technology, curriculum and quality, we’ll keep your program at its best.

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What if parents and students, coaches and spectators, teachers and staff could get photos to the yearbook crew quickly and easily? Now they can, with eShare, a Herff Jones internet site to which school stakeholders can upload their pics. Advisers gain full control of the photos through a secure adviser log-in and decide which to make available for use in the book.

We’ll provide a flier to photocopy and send home with students, a school code for community members to use, a website banner and a link to put on your school’s website. You’ll provide the cut-off date for photo submission. To the plant, you’ll also provide “up” dates and “down” dates for site activation, and will learn the easy steps for downloading or using the photos.

Now, imagine growing the  culture of your school in which EVERYONE can help  tell the story of the year. The magic just got easier.

Contact Steven or Thomas for more information and to sign up for this powerful new tool.

Tip #1. Despite all our technological sophistication, no sales drive works better than having the yearbook staff ask, face to face. Identify the students in school who have not purchased a book, divide their names among staff members, come up with a cute handout, and make personal contact an assignment with a grade for each of the students. Prior to the sales push, have them practice their approach with each other. Help them with a script, if needed. For a real nice touch, make sure you let the unsold students you are approaching know they are in the book. If your  staff members can jot the page numbers on the flier on which their assigned students are featured in pictures, captions, or stories, even better. Include ordering info on the flier, and the suggestion that students share the info with their parents. Advisers, consider having an incentive for the staff member who makes the most sales this way.

Tip #2. Same as above, but target faculty. It’s much more effective to have students divide up the administration and faculty who have not purchased books and approach them personally - much better than a cold email.

Tip #3. Use your principal. A well-delivered and enthusiastic phone-home or letter home from the the school’s leader can be very effective. Be sure to include pricing and deadlines. Principals, perhaps more than anyone, want the book to be a financial success.

Tip #4. Yearbooks make a great holiday gift. Let parents know they can purchase the book as a present. They obviously won’t get it until late May, so print up a “gift certificate” that purchasers will get now.

Mancini completed her 9th year as yearbook adviser and 7th year as newspaper adviser. She has a passion for photography and has developed an interest for all things related to journalism, especially graphic design and technology. In 2007, she was chosen to participate in the Reynolds High School Journalism Institute by the American Society of Newspaper Editors. Doing freelance work, she has been published in Budget Travel magazine, the Star Banner and the Riverland News. She is a Club Herff mentor and has been a regular fixture at workshops. Congratulations, Julie!

Contact Steven or Thomas to get more information about becoming a mentor, or getting some help from one or more of our talented advisers willing to share their time and knowledge.