Each year, working behind the scenes, a group of high school students put together the Thomas County Central High School yearbook.
Journalism students work all year long to create the 300-page book.
“It’s a big job,” Journalism teacher Laura Parkerson said. “It takes a while to get all of the information and pictures together before you can even begin to design the page.”
Students are assigned certain pages to complete at the beginning of the year. After the pages are assigned, students are given deadlines to have the pages completed.
“Usually pages are due around every two weeks,” junior Haley Keyton said. “It just depends on whether or not the event has happened yet or not.”
Students are graded on their ability to meet their deadlines and the quality of their work.
“A lot goes into designing a page,” junior Avery Barrett said. “You have to find a background, gather pictures, and get information on the topic.”
Students are graded on how many business ads, senior ads, and yearbooks they sell. The students are given deadlines on how much they should have sold by the specified times.
“This might be the hardest part of the whole thing,” senior Keri Corbin said. “Sometimes businesses are unwilling to purchase ads or students do not purchase yearbooks. You really have to be proactive and stay on top of your sales.”
The students work tediously all year long to put together a book to help document the school year.
“Yearbooks last forever,” Parkerson said. “It is always nice to go back and look at your yearbook. That is why we work so hard to make sure students have a good place to store their high school memories.”
Yearbook sales have ended but Journalism students will be working to finish the 2016 yearbook before the end of the school year.
When not working on the yearbook, students write school news stories. Once a topic is assigned, students conduct interviews and gather information to write their draft, which is then reviewed and edited. They also take photos.
Students are required to write two stories per nine weeks and are graded on their effort, participation and final drafts. These submissions are usually featured in “The Jacket Tracker,” a page in the Thomasville Times-Enterprise dedicated to school news. Some student stories have been selected for page 1A, or the front page of each issue.
“Learning to write a proper news story, or learning the difference between taking selfies and action shots suitable for publication, are important for any journalist,” TCCHS employee Teresa Williams, a former Times-Enterprise staff writer and current freelance journalist who assists students in creating their stories, said. “Through the class’s newswriting requirement, these students are not only learning tips of the trade and improving their writing abilities, but they also are gaining unique, first-hand experience. Not many high school students can say they’ve had their writing or photographs published in a newspaper.”