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Leadership and the Real World

Uniting the themes of recruiting new staffers and taking on challenges, here’s the second installment of EIC Live.

 

Meet the amazing Casey Medlin, who was a three-staff student journalist at Cape Fear Academy in Wilmington, N.C. You read that right — newspaper, lit mag and yearbook.

She’s a student at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and has some awesome things to say about how her former life as a student journalist gave her people skills and leadership experience that really does translate into her real-world career direction. She shares how she has applied her journalism skills in internships while attending college.

This one is a gem, not just for your current staffers but also for your future recruits.

 

 

 

Need to rewind? All of our Adviser Assistance emails are available on their own page.
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Superstar Editors Have the Best Advice

Learn how great editors get the best coverage

If you or your staffers were unable to join our adviser or editor roundtables this fall, you missed some great conversations.

We hope you got our invites to our roundtable series this fall, but if you missed them, no worries. We are happy to share some of the highlights from the Editors in Convo series.

Our first installment on coverage comes from Edward Garcia, a former Coverage Editor from the Cayuse yearbook at Walnut High School in Walnut, California. Edward shares some great advice for tracking student coverage and ways to generate new story ideas.

 

 
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Start Shaping Tomorrow’s Leaders Today

HOW TO YBK

Start empowering next year’s leaders now

One of the most rewarding parts of advising is fostering leadership in young adults. It’s even better when you can convert a student who doesn’t see themself as a leader into a force of good in your yearbook space.

As your deadlines come and go, you are probably seeing some of those students move to the front of the pack and start to shine. Some of them will simply show you that they are organized and can keep cool under pressure. Another may raise her hand and tell you she is interested in a leadership position. So, take a minute and look around the room. And, while it’s your job to inspire and empower, your current leadership should also take on this noble calling. What a great set of leadership skills for them to learn, as well.

 

 

How do you make this happen? Here are some ideas:

1. Have your current, returning staffers fill out applications for the positions they want. You can use the resources in our curriculum in the Welcome section, including the Staff Interview Form and Job Application.

2. Plan interview appointments with every member of your staff. Start with returners and talk to them about their potential for advancement in their yearbook careers. For seniors and non-returners, treat them as exit interviews, where they have the opportunity to give you feedback on every aspect of the program. This is such an important career-readiness skill.

3. Treat the process of advancement as a business manager would. As homework, consider the EIC video series as a starting point for reflection — as deadline assignments ebb, these are a great way to get a grade in the gradebook.

4. Once new positions are chosen, make the training process part of your graded assignments. Mentorship sessions between outgoing and incoming leaders are an easy way to build relationships and teams.

Communication is key

This week’s Editors in Convo video features Madge Lister, a former editor from Casady School in Oklahoma City. She provides some great insight on maintaining open lines of communication on the yearbook staff. We can all take notes on Casady’s class organization and workflow, too.

Give it a few minutes.

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Typography in yearbook design

Tell your school’s story with type 

Self-appointed font queen and all-around outstanding yearbook adviser Carrie Faust gets pumped for letter forms. After starting with “wooooh” she defines the terms surrounding typography.

Make sure to stay tuned until the very end of the video for some very cool inspo spreads.

Typography is by definition artistic. Faust says type should be designed just as much as other elements of the theme.

Spend time with it. Convey the message. Speak to the content.

Parts of type

Faust says to find the font poster in your kit and teach it to your staff.

  • Ascender
  • Baseline
  • Cap height
  • Counter
  • Descender
  • Set width
  • X-height

Types of type

It’s all about that serif. Carrie really breaks these down in the video.

  • Oldstyle
  • Sans serif
  • Modern
  • Slab serif
  • Script/Handwritten
  • Decorative/Novelty

She recommends locking down the “punk freshman” with only a couple font families. And, Faust talks about choosing contrasting type for display and mod headlines.

Fonts can make or break your book. You’ll be able to distinguish the different types of fonts, learn theories about how many fonts should appear in your book, and see how typography can drive your design. Watch the video. (Don’t miss out: Link expires on Oct. 15.)

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