‘This one takes the cake for crazy.’ How Modesto area yearbooks will reflect coronavirus
Update: Modesto High School’s response was mistakenly omitted from this article. It now is included in alphabetical order below.
Academic year most likely to end in a pandemic? No one could have seen that coming when high school yearbook staffs began work last fall.
But when the outbreak of the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19 closed schools statewide in March, some students still had deadlines to meet. Other books already had gone to their publishers, who have offered inserts of a couple of pages of general coronavirus coverage.
We asked advisers if and how their yearbooks would reflect the pandemic and its effects on the school year, including the canceling of spring sports seasons, arts performances and academic competitions. Here’s what we heard back, with responses edited for length and duplication of content.
Beyer High School
“We were about 10 days from our deadline when we found out that the schools might close,” Beyer adviser Alissa Collins said. Still missing were pictures from a few clubs and a couple of the spring sports. The spring play was canceled the day it was to begin, the robotics team didn’t get to go to its final competition, the dance production team’s final performance was canceled.
Unable to shoot additional photos, staff contacted families to ask if they had pictures from spring activities, yearbook editor in chief Nolan Cawley said. “We have been trying our best to not cut any spring sports or events from the yearbook, but in some cases it was unavoidable.”
Said Collins: “There are a few pages that were meant to be used for activities the last few weeks before the school closure that we are now using for COVID-19 coverage. During the last three days of school, when many students opted to stay home, most of my yearbook staff was there working on yearbook each day. They were able to take pictures of empty classrooms and do interviews with students who were trying to stay busy as there was no new work to do.”
Ceres High
“We were able to get the yearbook finished before school was suspended,” adviser Steven Tomao said, noting his staff had a deadline of March 23. Consequently, the students were able to get nothing in the printed edition about the pandemic, but the yearbook will include an insert from the publisher.
“We do have a Google Site that we try to add supplemental material that doesn’t make the print, but we are still working at adding to it,” Tomao said. “I do have a few staff that are currently documenting this time and they are trying to create something that we can either print and insert or just add it to the GS.”
Students lost so much this year, he said, but “it makes me so happy that those students who were able to order one will still get this piece of school history when it is finally over and can be printed.”
Davis High
“Because of the printing plant closure, my staff and I were able to take a little extra time before submitting the book,” adviser Justin Smith said. “This allowed me to include more content specifically for our seniors, in addition to reopening Senior Ads for parents who still wanted to do something special for their students in the wake of the closure and cancellation of many traditional year-end events. It also allowed us to address the coronavirus issue.”
Given the historic nature of the pandemic, yearbook staff quickly decided it had to be covered in the book. “We chose to forgo the inserts from our publisher in favor of creating our own spread. We wrote copy describing the outbreak and its effects, and then enlisted our family and friends to take photos of empty shelves, long lines at supermarkets, and virus-specific signage posted at various businesses around town. ... Finally, we reached out to students and staff for pictures of their quarantine activities, which added a much-needed positive, lighthearted section to an overall somber yearbook spread.”
Downey High
“We were only a few weeks from our final deadline, but the final weeks are the most necessary and productive,” Downey adviser Rene Guevara said. “We had to compress our spring section. Games were canceled just as our photographers and writers scheduled their days to capture and collect their content. ... Our spring section is now dedicated to the outbreak. We are inserting some content created by our publisher but we have also added pages of our own. They cover canceled events, students’ feelings on their canceled sports, and how students are spending their time at home.”
Because the yearbook pages and software were on the computers in the school lab, Guevara said, publisher Jostens “converted our pages to an online design program. It took about two weeks for the conversion, so we were unable to work on any of our pages during that time. We spent that time meeting on Zoom and then later Microsoft Teams while trying to gather as much content as we could. My editorial staff is pretty amazing.”
Enochs High
“Our publication was due April 6, but with school closing March 19 and many students not returning after March 23, we were not able to meet that deadline,” Wingspan yearbook adviser Tama McCarthy said. About 44 pages had yet to be done.
“We had to figure out how to continue production remotely. That was a challenge because our entire spring sports season had not yet been covered”
The staff did a spread on the COVID-19 timeline and its impact through April 20. A second spread was on the pandemic’s impact on students, “so we sent out a survey to gather responses from students about how they are coping, how they are using their quarantine to stay sharp or creative or connected, etc.”
Students continue to work on yearbook production, McCarthy said this week. “Some of my staffers have other obligations at home, helping care for younger siblings or assisting parents in some way or another, so finding time to focus on their journalism responsibilities has been challenging, but our goal is to finish the book by the end of the month.”
She doesn’t yet know when and how the book will be distributed. “All we can promise is that the YEARBOOK WILL BE DONE and every kid who ordered a copy will get one.”
Gregori High
Adviser Deanna Williamson said the yearbook was finished on schedule, and staff was able to cover all topics, including spring sports, though the season was cut short.
“Herff Jones, our yearbook company, will include a current events spread in each yearbook, which will cover COVID-19, school closures, etc.,” she said. “We also included two photos at the end of the yearbook. One photo is of staff, and one is of seniors, all practicing social distancing, in the quad on the last day of school. We included these photos to cover this unprecedented event and to celebrate those present on the last day.”
Modesto High
Yearbook deadline was the final Monday school was in session, adviser James Jeans said. “We usually beg our publisher for an extra week to get spring sports coverage done,” he said, but there was nothing to cover this year. The staff had some team practice photos to work with, but “we actually cut spring sports back by about 25 to 30 pcercent and added more band pictures and other articles we did. ... We did write one article on the girls softball team because they were 10-0, their best season start ever. And we did mention that the virus probably would cancel the season.”
The last few days of production were rushed, with student editors working a lot of hours after school, Jeans said. Because school year activities were cut short, the yearbook includes some content usually not covered, or covered very little. “There were extra photos of the color guard and band, and a little extra on theater.”
Jeans said he expects to get the yearbooks sometime in May. “It’s a great yearbook, one to be proud of. I think seniors will really appreciate it to grab hold of these memories” in a time they lost so much, he said. “There was some mention of the virus in some of the last articles we did. At that time, we thought we were going to be back in school in a couple of weeks.”
A fourth-quarter assignment for seniors in yearbook, he said, is to write a journal piece on the coronavirus experience that might be used in next year’s yearbook or in the Panther Press.
Oakdale High
“I have been the adviser for eight years, and this one takes the cake for crazy,” adviser Jaime Hammond said. “Our book was due March 23, so we were able to submit with little impact on the school events that we normally cover.”
When Elk Grove Unified School District, the largest in Northern California, announced March 7 that it was closing schools, at the same time sports began to be impacted, “we made the decision to finish the book as quickly as possible,” Hammond said. “My staff of 15 gave up lunches and time at home to make sure the book was submitted before we left campus on Wednesday, March 18.
“Since our program is an online platform, it is pretty easy to work from anywhere, and we took advantage. We used social media to contact students we still needed to interview and went to practices if we needed any last-minute photos. My amazing staff pulled off a complete 2019-20 yearbook in the midst of chaos and I am so proud of them for that.”
Turlock High
“We learned years ago to go to the first games of the season in fair weather, since you never know when you are going to have every game rained out,” adviser Virginia Barr said. “So we had candid pictures ready for the pages. However, most coaches look to take their group pictures midseason after all the cuts are complete and the team is more solidified. So the last three days of school saw my staff and I come early, stay late and work every lunch pushing to complete the yearbook” to meet the late March deadline.
Events that were canceled included the school’s spring blood drive, a page of prom proposals and a page for athletes who complete in sports outside of THS.
As for production, “we did not know how much we would be able to do from home,” Barr said. Many students don’t have computers powerful enough to run the necessary design programs or have guaranteed WiFi connections, she said. And some kids were going to be stepping up as primary caregivers for younger siblings.
“My general manager, Macie Coelho-Johnson, was tightening up design, while my editor-in-chief, Jennifer Perry, and sports editor, Ben Carroll, worked with less experienced reporters to get pages out. Meanwhile, I was working with parents to finalize senior tributes and the memorials for the three students we lost this year. ... We submitted the book with very few alterations.”
Barr added that seniors “are coming to grips with the fact that they are losing all the special events that make up the end of their year” and their high school experience.
“All that they planned for, worked for and had dreamed about was disappearing before their eyes,” she said, and her students “were determined that seniors would at least have a yearbook. That was not going disappear with the rest. They willed this book into being.”
This story was originally published April 23, 2020 at 1:19 PM.
