Each year, the yearbook is carefully crafted and edited over the course of a school year by both peers and teachers. During class, students compile and edit pictures to ensure a better, more cohesive, and interesting yearbook each school year.
Yearbook is an elective class where students work over the course of a few months to take pictures, edit, and format a successful book.
“Students photograph every major dance, sports game, and other school events,” Tania Mason, Publications teacher at Shadow Ridge High School stated. “But that only includes about 30% of the student body. To get other students included in the yearbook we like to cover regular everyday classes to better showcase campus life.”
On average, yearbook class will compile thousands of pictures showcasing what it’s like to be a student, teacher, or administrator on campus. However, only about 1000 pictures will make the cut including student and staff portraits.
These pictures are organized and formatted digitally in order to be sent off to a publisher. During this process students will conduct interviews with other students, teachers, and staff. This is done to add a sense of liveliness to the yearbook. The yearbook contains small quotes from many people on campus often captioning or explaining an image or images. The layout is done digitally and each yearbook is over 200 pages.
During this process students have to be mindful of deadlines set by publishers. Following the formatting process the finished product will be sent to a publisher where each book is printed and bonded individually.
“This is a lengthy process that can take anywhere from 4-8 weeks,” said Ms. Mason. “Each book has to be individually bonded by the publisher”
That is not the only thing that makes the yearbook magical though, Ms. Mason is an extremely passionate teacher which translates into the yearbook. Ms Mason has worked on the school yearbook for 28 years! Her enjoyment and passion for the subject produces a more interesting yearbook each year. This is likely her last year producing a yearbook for Shadow Ridge so students can look forward to it to be the best one yet!
“I love that I can work alongside the kids, I’m going to events, photographing, working on the layout right there with them,” Mason states. “I feel it improves my work here and makes the class that much more enjoyable.”
The 2025-2026 yearbook prices go up as the year goes on, they start at $100 and max out at $110. Yearbooks sell out every year and they are on a first come first serve basis. Students interested in purchasing a yearbook can do this at yearbookordercenter.com.
