Yearbooks are an endangered species!

Back in the early 2000's, I was asked to consider taking on the Yearbook course at Barrie Central. Consider might be a little misleading ... I was volun-told ... but I will admit that it was something that sparked a little excitement in me. I am a closet "Yerd" (a Yearbook Nerd) who still has all of his high school and university Yearbooks carefully stored away for safe keeping. I embraced the challenge, and although there was a steep learning curve, the experience was memorable. I say was because, sadly, the Yearbook course and, subsequently, the Yearbook itself, have become an endangered species because the students are no longer willing to support the existence of a Yearbook class. I'm not sure that I understand their reasoning, but I accept their actions. I prey that it won't be a choice they regret some time in their future because the importance of a Yearbook, to me at least, increases with time and was up front and center when Central's closing was occurring.

Some of you who may be reading this have high school memories of Yearbook Clubs who shouldered the task of enshrining the year's memories forever in a book. I was never a part of the club at Central during those student years, but I had great respect for the job they did. During the closure of Central, I was actively involved with preserving its memories and a big part of that was preserving the Yearbooks by scanning them to create a digital copy. I have copies of the ones that I was involved in but the hard copies have all disappeared. Looking at their changes over the years, and counting in my bias, I would assert that they became better and better as camera and publishing technologies improved.

When I was asked to take over, I was initially worried whether or not I had what it takes to accept such an important task, but I quickly learned I was not in it alone as the Central students who enrolled were motivated to make each book a treasure. As it is with any class roll, there are superstars, dreamers, workers, and slackers, but I each year I have taught Yearbook there were always enough positives to ensure that we had a book to be proud of. Very often, the real go-getters were not readily apparent that first week, emerging later like butterflies after a slow metamorphosis. Easily the hardest part each year was the editing process since the students were full of great ideas that were much harder to engineer into something tangible. I have always struggled with spelling and grammar so being the final line of defense before submitting the copy to the publisher was fraught with pitfalls, some of which often meant there were typos that slipped by. Our group response to the few errors identified when the books were physically in the hands of the school was to accept the error, ask for forgiveness, and attest to doing the best we could. I still firmly believe that we achieved a pretty high standard considering all factors.

The most important function of a Yearbook, IMHO, is enshrining the memories from any particular year in a single place. I have had some previous Yearbook students share their opinion that Yearbooks are less desired these days because cell phone technology puts so many photos in their palms and social media spreads them far and wide. While I can certainly understand that argument, my rebuttal would be that it's also super easy to get buried by the volume of photos kids see and share, and the process of weeding out what makes the book ensures that the ones that get included tell the greatest story. I have long argued that technology will come and go ... Beta anyone? VHS anyone? CDs anyone? ... but a Yearbook will outlive everyone unless it gets lost, burnt or soaked. Those same students argue that comments about their photos are like their friends signing their Yearbook, but I would contend that the messages written in Yearbooks are of a far different, and more positive, nature. You couldn't pay me enough to part with my Yearbooks because they allow me to silently slip back in time and revisit parts of my life that are important to me.

One of the fringe benefits of "steering the ship" was the birth of my photography itch. As the students and I tried to improve our overall skills, the manifestation of those skills was the significant increase in the quality of the photos we had to choose from for the pages in the book. Being a Type-A personality, I felt strongly that I had to exceed the expectations I set for the kids, so improved ability quickly morphed into a full blown Shutterbug-itis. There's always a silver lining to every situation, and the extinction segued into a few years of teaching photography, something that I will be forever grateful for. As I am slowly slipping into the nether regions that is retirement, where my itch leads me will be an intriguing adventure.

Maybe there will be hope for the Yearbook ... maybe it will get saved from extinction.