Journalism 1 students combined with yearbook staff due to smaller class size

Photo by Cary Chen

Freshmen Timothy Leung and Beverly Xu collaborate to work on a yearbook spread.

When yearbook editor-in-chief (EIC) senior Savannah Lin was first informed by journalism adviser Michael Tyler that the Yearbook class would be combined with Journalism 1 this year because of low enrollment, she was extremely nervous. Never before had a group of untrained freshmen been directly funneled into an advanced publication class. 

“The numbers this year fell off a cliff in a way that I’ve never seen,” Tyler said.

In previous years, freshmen couldn’t go directly into publication classes due to the high number of students in newspaper and yearbook coupled with the fact that Journalism 1 teaches concepts that are crucial to the quality of the yearbook and newspaper. 

However, enrollment has been on a decline: 10 years ago, Tyler would get around 90 signups for Journalism 1; last year, there were 40; this year, only 18. Additionally, there were only 12 returning students in yearbook instead of the usual 20 to 30. If this trend continues, Tyler speculates that the school will be down to one yearbook staff and one newspaper staff within the next two years. (There are currently two newspaper staffs: periods 3 and 4.)

“I think journalism has great value, and it’d be really sad for a school not to have a place for kids interested in writing and current events to express themselves,” Tyler said. “Students are the ones who are documenting what goes on here on a daily, weekly and yearly basis. And if you don’t have that going on, then what happens here doesn’t get documented nearly as well. So, it’s puzzling to me that more kids aren’t interested in being storytellers.” 

 Tyler attributes the dwindling journalism enrollment to the low attendance of the online Electives Night last year and growing student interest in primarily STEM subjects.

He has also noticed far fewer students willing to try new things that don’t align with their strengths, which has contributed to smaller class sizes for non-STEM electives.

“[Exploring interests] is really a valuable thing at the high school level,” Tyler said. “The pre-professionalism that this school is going toward isn’t the direction I would choose. I think there’s time for some of those things in college and beyond.”

The first-year yearbook students (traditionally called yearbies) are currently working on their second story cycle, and freshman Divya Vadlakonda said even writing one story already has given her some experience to fall back on. 

Still, she said she would’ve preferred taking a Journalism 1 class beforehand. According to Vadlakonda, learning the journalism concepts and difficult design programs in depth before jumping straight into the fast pace of publication assignments would have been easier. 

Although she has found herself constantly relying on her peers as the yearbook concepts were only taught briefly, having other yearbies in the class has provided a sense of comfort.

“I think I would feel more unprepared if I was in a class with people who already had prior experience, but the class is mainly comprised of freshmen who are in the same boat as I am,” Vadlakonda said. “It’s less scary knowing that I am not the only person confused or feeling overwhelmed because they aren’t used to this. Knowing that we’re doing it together makes it easier because we know we have each other to lean on.”

Nonetheless, she said veteran staffers, EICs and Tyler have displayed great leadership in pointing the yearbies in the right direction.

Freshman Timothy Leung, on the other hand, said he has enjoyed going directly into the publication class. Because Leung has been video editing with Adobe After Effects since third grade as a hobby, he is more acquainted with the Adobe applications the class uses.

“I kind of like going straight into yearbook, because I feel like I went in with some prior knowledge, especially with design,” Leung said. “I don’t mind it going really fast because even though it’s challenging, it’s fun.”

Leung said that a problem he, along with the other freshmen in the class, has faced is a lack of knowledge about the school.  Despite being completely unfamiliar to the campus, staff and school traditions, yearbies are sent out to cover every aspect of the school for the yearbook. Still, he said he’s had a great time on the yearbook staff thus far.

From the EICs’ perspective, Yearbook has been going better than initially anticipated. Lin was surprised to see that their journalism crash course worked well, and how self-sufficient the new staffers have been.

“Of course, there is difficulty because the yearbies are new, but the EIC philosophy is to just throw them in shark-infested waters so they can learn by themselves,” Lin said.

However, Lin has faced a few challenges as EIC. Before, she just had to focus on carrying her own load and finishing spreads; now, she has to teach yearbies, help others in the class, design the yearbook and facilitate the entire process.

Lin said she and the three other EICs — seniors Emma Foley, Isabel Lee and Alissa Doemling — have been lenient on deadlines so far, but as yearbies get accustomed to the yearbook environment, they will begin to push for tighter deadlines.

Tyler said that although it is too early in the year to be sure, he’s optimistic about the yearbook’s success. 

However, he is hoping to go back to a separate Journalism 1 class next school year because it provides the foundational concepts for future publication classes. Because this year’s yearbies didn’t have the opportunity to take Journalism 1, those who decide to go into the newspaper staff next year may lack the skills to write opinion stories or ambitious feature stories, which are aspects of journalism that are covered in traditional Journalism 1 but aren’t needed for yearbook.

 With the staff starting to work on deadlines and  spreads that will be used in the actual yearbook, Tyler expects the first couple of cycles to be a big learning curve before seeing improvements.

“The editors are still very motivated and ambitious, and we’re wanting to produce another great book, which I’m confident that we will,” Tyler said. “The yearbook is really all about hard work, so it just depends on how much work they’re willing to do.”