South San Antonio Independent School District issued the following announcement.
High school yearbooks are memory keepers. They capture magic moments of a Senior’s life.
Step in COVID 19, and those moments are going to have to be gathered with some creativity and determination.
South San High School Journalism teacher Dolores Garza is beginning her second year as the yearbook sponsor.
Gone are the days of stopping by events because everyone is in the throes of distance learning. Garza didn’t let that stop her or the yearbook staff last school year when Virtual Learning began for the remainder of the year.
“When COVID hit, I was left with about 90 pages left to fill and the students weren’t able to access the lab and use the software,” Garza said. “It became a teacher-led yearbook towards the end.”
Garza used Google forms and documents to get photos sent to her Google drive of students at home wearing their masks and taking selfies.
“Any little off-site things they were doing during COVID, they would send them to me,” she said.
While most yearbooks are mostly photo-driven, things are going to change for the 2020-2021 school year.
“It’s going to be a more personal book because it’s going to be about student-featured articles,” Garza said.
For now, Garza has armed herself with a telephoto lens and will attend some senior events herself. Recently, she stopped by the unsanctioned “Senior Sunrise” as the Class of 2021 welcomed the day and year ahead.
“I wanted to capture memories. Of course I had my mask,” said Garza. “Just the looks in their [parent’s] eyes about how they feel their students are getting robbed of special memories; I wanted to alleviate their concerns.”
Garza is working with a returning yearbook editor designing this year’s pages. The yearbook staff is going to rely on the arms of social media as a platform to get the word out about school events, as well as solicit pictures from their followers. The yearbook’s official Instragram page was launched Aug. 28 and they already have more than 200 followers.
Once athletics and activities begin this year, Garza will reach out to the partners she worked with last year--such as coaches and parents to provide them with pictures for the new yearbook.
“It takes a community to do this...It’s a collective project,” Garza said.
Now, it’s time for Garza and her students to take care of business and make this year’s volume even better.
“Any moment I don’t want it to go to waste,” said Garza. “I want to try and cover every single thing because we don’t know if we’re going back to campus.”
The 2021 yearbook will be distributed next Summer.
Original source can be found here.
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