Sunday, April 27, 2025
For over 50 years students of Turtle Hook Middle School have worked to create a yearbook to remember their senior year.
Students take charge and work on the yearbook most days of the week, coming in during lunch breaks and after school since September. Work is split between each student evenly with all members of the group acting as student leaders, ensuring the input of the rest of the class.
“We try to give them full ownership of what they’re contributing,” said faculty adviser Catherine Visconti. “They used to come everyday during lunch and I can’t stay in here all the time, and they give up all their time in or after school.”
This year the yearbook has three members. The trio of friends joined the yearbook to participate in the creation of memories and as a bonding experience. Hopefully, we’ll be able to do the yearbook when we’re in high school graduating, we’ll be able to look back on this, yearbook staff Delfina Salvador said.
The process of producing the yearbook starts with sending out letters to companies who send their congratulations to the graduating class.
The students are then responsible for page layouts, designs, and surveys.
“We look for the yearbook cover, because that’s a very important part too. We want it to be very appealing to people,” Salvador said. “We also put other people’s ideas into it, because it’s not just ours, it’s everybody else’s.”
While there are only three students actively working on the yearbook, they are dedicated to ensuring the inclusion of other students.
“One of the hardest parts would be organizing each page and making sure each page has a meaning and that every senior in our grade is able to be a part of it,” Salvador said.
The eighth grade class includes over 200 students that are sent surveys and asked for contributions. One such contribution being the cover.
“We send out emails and we let students design covers and then we would have them vote,” said yearbook staff member Helen Olivia.
Students look back on previous year books as examples and templates to start from for inspiration, but they prefer to come up with their own unique ideas. While they enjoy working together they most look forward to being able to see their finished product. “Working on this yearbook was really great and we’ll be able to cherish this moment forever,” Olivia said.
Working on the yearbook has allowed students great learning opportunities that provided them with skills that they plan to continue to use going forward. Salvador said that she learned to adjust her mindset and put in what she wants to get out of a project. They’ve had to make use of communication and design skills in creating the yearbook.
“They’ve also learned some technology skills,” Visconti said. “They’ve made surveys on Google, they’ve created documents, they’ve written business letters. As silly as it may sound, addressing envelopes, even went to one of our businesses that donated an item and picked it up so she was an ambassador.”
Businesses that would like to support the yearbook can contact Catherine Visconti at cvisconti@uniondaleschools.org with any questions.
