More Than A Yearbook
How advising a school yearbook teaches students about leadership, responsibility, and the power of inclusion.
Learning to Let Them Lead
When I took on advising the yearbook, I knew there would be photographs, layouts, captions, and deadlines. I understood that we were making a book. I am learning how much else we are building.
A yearbook for a school of roughly 3,000 students is a substantial undertaking. We have portraits to schedule, clubs to track down, names to check, events to cover, and hundreds of pages to bring together (about 550, to be exact). There are reminders, followed by more reminders, followed by the kind of reminder that makes you wonder whether you should just walk around wearing a sandwich board. Somewhere in the middle of all that coordination, students are learning how to lead. And I am learning what it takes to let them.
When the Work Belongs to Them
In English class, I can design an assignment, explain the expectations, and help students work toward a finished product. Yearbook adds another layer. Their work becomes part of something an entire community will hold, read, and keep. It's not just a missed assignment that throws an M in the gradebook. A missed deadline here affects another person's next step. A name spelled incorrectly belongs to someone who deserves to be represented accurately. A photograph needs context. A page needs a purpose.
The decisions have consequences beyond a grade. That gives us an opportunity to teach responsibility in a way students can actually experience. They have to communicate, organize, revise, and follow through because other people are depending on them. Our three editors-in-chief help oversee a staff of more than 40 students. They are teenagers learning to manage a publication while also managing advanced classes, college applications, activities, and lives outside school. That is a lot to ask of anyone.
It is also a meaningful way to communicate that I believe they are capable.
Leading Your Friends Is Complicated
It is one thing to understand accountability when an adult is enforcing it. It is another thing to tell your friend that their work needs revision. Student leadership asks young people to navigate uncomfortable territory. How do you give feedback without making it personal? How do you follow up with someone who has already said, "I'm working on it..."? How do you acknowledge that a teammate is overwhelmed while still making a plan to finish the work? Adults spend entire careers learning those skills. Our students deserve opportunities to practice them, with someone nearby who can help.
That is where mentorship matters. Giving a student a title is only the beginning. We also have to help them learn what to do with it. Sometimes that means talking through how to phrase a difficult message. Sometimes it means helping them break a large task into smaller steps. Sometimes it means asking them to explain their plan before I offer mine. I want them to learn that leadership includes listening, preparation, and the willingness to have a conversation they would rather avoid. I also want them to understand that asking for help belongs in that picture.
The Part I Have to Practice
I like a plan. I like clear expectations. I like knowing that the thing with the rapidly approaching deadline is, in fact, being done. Advising a student publication makes those preferences very useful. It also challenges me to recognize when my instinct to help could take away a student's opportunity to learn.
There is a temptation to step in because I can see the next move. I can write the reminder, reorganize the task, or solve the problem. Sometimes intervention is necessary. But if I make every decision, students get very good at waiting for my decisions. I have to make room for their judgment to develop.
That can mean allowing them to propose a solution I would not have chosen first. It can mean giving them time to identify what went wrong. It can mean resisting the urge to answer immediately and instead asking, "What do you think our next step should be?" That question communicates trust. It tells them that their thinking belongs in the room.
Of course, trust needs structure. Students need clear responsibilities, realistic checkpoints, and feedback they can use. They need to know when to bring a problem to me and that bringing it forward will lead to a conversation and a plan. My responsibility is to create those conditions and stay available as they learn.
Who Gets Remembered?
Yearbook also carries a quieter responsibility: deciding how a school will remember itself. The most visible parts of a school are usually the easiest to document. There are teams, performances, celebrations, and familiar faces. But a school contains far more stories than the ones that naturally find their way in front of a camera.
Who else needs to be included? Whose contribution have we overlooked? What does this page tell someone about our community? Would a student reading this book feel that there was a place for them here? Those are editorial questions. They are also questions about belonging.
When students help answer them, they practice looking beyond their own circles. They learn to notice people, ask questions, and consider whose experiences might be missing. A publication becomes stronger when its staff understands that representing a community requires attention to the whole community. I hope that habit follows them long after the book is finished.
A Place to Grow Into Responsibility
I have put thought into making our yearbook room a place students want to be. There are snacks, comfortable places to sit, cute trinkets, warm lighting, and a whiteboard full of dates that seem to approach faster every time I look at it. I want the space to feel welcoming because I am asking students to do demanding work there.
I want them to feel comfortable enough to ask a question before confusion becomes a missed deadline. I want them to be able to say they are behind, need feedback, or do not yet know how to handle something. That openness gives us somewhere to begin.
From there, we can make a plan. We can practice the conversation. We can revise the page. We can figure out how to move forward. Confidence develops through those experiences: attempting something, receiving support, and discovering that you can do more than you could before.
What I Hope They Carry Forward
Eventually, the pages will be finished. The photographs will find their places. The deadlines will become dates we survived. Students will open the book and look for themselves and their friends.
I hope our staff looks at those pages and remembers learning to see beyond their own circles, to notice whose story was missing, question whose experiences were being overlooked, and do something about it. Years from now, I hope they remember that an adult trusted them with something meaningful while they were still learning. That their decisions helped shape whether someone felt seen. That including a person began with noticing their absence and caring enough to change it.
Helping young people develop a perspective they can carry into places I will never follow them to is one of the privileges of this work. When they lead a team, hire a colleague, or enter a room where the same voices always get heard, I hope they remember to ask, "Who are we missing?" And I hope they trust themselves enough to act on the answer.
We are making a yearbook. Along the way, they are learning that leadership carries a responsibility to people beyond those they already know.
Today, they are making room for someone in a book. Tomorrow, they could be the reason someone gets a seat at the table.
