Yearbook Education · Advisers who teach the elective · Free for schools · 2026

Run yearbook as a real class — student jobs, coverage they answer for, and skills a student can put on a resume

Yearbook Education is the school yearbook run as a graded elective, not a lunchtime club. Students get scoped roles — section editor, photo editor, editor-in-chief — that make them accountable for real work. Coverage tracking is the class’s accountability system: the section is done when the coverage is complete. The adviser proof-approval loop is the feedback-and-revision cycle, fail-closed so the standard is enforced. Version history lets students experiment and recover. Free for the school. The formal gradebook and rubric layer is in development — and we tell you so plainly.

Start your class See the year

Scoped student roleseach student owns a real section, enforced at the data layer

Coverage accountabilitya live gap list — the section is done when coverage is complete

Feedback that teachesspread-level adviser comments, revise-and-resubmit, fail-closed approval

Honest about gradingthe gradebook and rubric engine are in development — not claimed as live

The class, not just the tool

The production platform, used as a classroom — jobs, accountability, and a feedback loop

A yearbook is one of the few things a student makes in school that a real audience will actually read, on a real deadline, with their name on the work. That is why it teaches. Yearbook Education takes the same production platform that builds the book and runs it as a class: students are assigned jobs with scoped access, they answer for a defined section, and an adviser coaches the work as it is made rather than grading a stack at the end.

The teaching structure is the built platform: role-scoped accounts make a student accountable for real work; coverage tracking turns “cover the school” into a concrete, checkable standard; the proof-approval loop is spread-level feedback with a fail-closed gate; and version history lets a student try, fail, and recover — the way craft is actually learned.

What is not yet built, we name plainly: a formal gradebook, a standards-aligned rubric engine, and a skills-portfolio export are in active development. Today an adviser grades from the built parts — the section a student owns, the coverage they closed, and the approval history of their revisions. The platform is free for the school. No live checkout, no per-student fee, no billing.

Start your class What is built

The year

A yearbook class, term by term

The class runs on the production calendar: roles and a coverage plan at term start, beats and deadlines through the year, adviser review cycles, and a press-ready close — with the skills a student carries forward. Every stage is described as it is built today.

Stage 1 · Term start — assign roles, set the coverage plan, and establish the style

The adviser imports the roster and assigns student roles: editor-in-chief, section editors, photo editors, copy editors. Each role becomes a scoped account with access to its section. The class builds a coverage plan from the roster and the activity list — every team, club, and grade that must appear — and agrees on a style foundation (grid, type, palette). This is the syllabus made concrete: students can see exactly what they are responsible for covering.

Stage 2 · Through the year — beats, deadlines, and building the book

Students work their beats: shooting events, writing copy, and laying out spreads on the production editor. Coverage tracking shows the class what is done and what is still a gap, so a deadline is measured by coverage completed, not pages that look full. Photo editors work from the shared photo library alongside the section editors. The version history lets a student try a layout, evaluate it, and keep the better one. The adviser can check any section’s progress without collecting files.

Stage 3 · Review cycles — adviser feedback, revision, and the editorial standard

The adviser runs the proof-approval queue as a feedback loop: spread-level comments on the specific problem, returned to the student, corrected, resubmitted. A student learns to take an edit and revise, not to hand in a final draft cold. Approved spreads lock; the approval history records who approved what and when — the class’s editorial record and the adviser’s grading evidence. The fail-closed gate means the standard is enforced by the platform, not a reminder.

Stage 4 · Close — press-ready export, and the skills a student carries forward

When coverage is complete and every spread is approved, the book exports to a press-ready PDF the school submits to whichever lab it uses. Beyond the book, the year’s work is a genuine skills record: a student ran a section, met deadlines, took editorial feedback, and shipped a real publication. The structured skills-portfolio export that packages that for a resume or application is in development; today an adviser can point a reference letter at the student’s actual, attributed section in the finished book.

What is built — and what is coming

Five pillars, labelled honestly

Every capability is labelled: Built means the engine is production-ready and live. In development means the classroom or grading layer is in active build. We do not claim otherwise.

Student jobs, not busywork — scoped roles that mirror a real newsroom

A yearbook class runs on roles: an editor-in-chief, section editors for seniors, sports, clubs and academics, photo editors, and copy editors. On this platform each role is a scoped account — a section editor works on their section and cannot overwrite another’s spreads, a photo editor works from the shared photo library, and the editor-in-chief sees the whole book. The scoping is real access control at the data layer, not an honour system: a student is accountable for a defined body of work with defined permissions, exactly as a job would be. That is what makes the class teachable — a rubric can point at a student’s actual section, and a student can point at it on a resume. Role-scoped access is built and live.

Student roles & scoped access built · live

Coverage tracking — the accountability system that grades itself into the book

The hardest editorial lesson is coverage: every club, team, and student belongs somewhere in the book, and the ones left out are the ones nobody assigned. Coverage tracking shows the class which groups and which roster names are already on a spread and which are not yet covered — a live gap list an adviser can turn into assignments. It turns an abstract deadline into a concrete, checkable standard: the section is done when the coverage is complete, not when it looks full. Students learn to plan a beat, chase what is missing, and close a gap before the book closes. Coverage tracking is built and live.

Coverage tracking built · live

The adviser review loop — spread-level feedback that teaches, with a fail-closed gate

The proof-approval workflow is the classroom feedback loop. An adviser reviews a spread in the editor and comments on the specific object — a caption that buries the lede, a photo that is out of focus, a portrait name that is wrong — and returns it to the student, who corrects it and resubmits. When the adviser approves a spread it locks; a corrected spread comes back as a new version. The approval gate is fail-closed at the data layer: no spread reaches the press-ready export until the adviser has approved it. For a teacher that is the difference between grading a stack at the end and coaching the work as it is made. The adviser review-and-approval loop is built and live.

Adviser review loop built · fail-closed · live

Version history — students experiment without fear, and recover from any mistake

Students learn by trying things that do not work. Version history records every saved state of a spread, so a student can push a bold layout, decide it failed, and roll back to the version before it — without losing the work that came after. An adviser can restore a spread a student accidentally overwrote, or re-open a locked spread for a late correction while preserving the approved version alongside it. The lesson is real craft practice: iterate, compare, keep the better version. Version history and rollback are built and live.

Version history & rollback built · live

The graded-class layer — assignments, standards-aligned rubrics, and a skills record for the resume

Running yearbook as a graded elective wants more than production tools: structured assignments tied to the coverage plan, rubrics an adviser can align to their own course or state standards, a gradebook that reads from the work a student actually did in the editor, and a skills record a student can export — photography, editorial writing, layout and typography, project management, and team leadership — for a resume or a college application. That structured curriculum layer is in active development. We describe it plainly because it is not shipped: today an adviser grades from the built parts (scoped roles, coverage tracking, the approval history), and the formal assignment-and-rubric engine is being built on top of them. No gradebook or rubric feature is claimed as live.

Assignment & rubric engine in development · graded from built parts today

The teaching calendar

Ten stages, browseable — each one names the production artifact it yields

This is the granular version of the year above: the stages an adviser actually teaches through, in order, each tied to a real object the class produces on the platform — a roster, a plan, a draft, a spread, an export. Open any stage to see what it produces.

Stage 1 · First week

The adviser imports the class roster and assigns each student a scoped role — editor-in-chief, section editor, photo editor, copy editor. This is the syllabus made concrete: a student can see exactly which section is theirs from day one.

Produces: Role roster — every student assigned a scoped account

Stage 2 · Coverage planning

The class builds the coverage plan from the roster and the school’s activity list: every team, club, and grade that must appear in the book. Coverage tracking turns that plan into a live gap list the class works against all year.

Produces: Coverage plan — the gap list the class closes stage by stage

Stage 3 · Interviewing

Section editors and copy editors interview the students, coaches, and teachers on their beat — the reporting a caption or a feature blurb is built on. It is the same fact-gathering discipline as a newsroom beat, scaled to a school section.

Produces: Interview notes — the quote and fact source for a section’s captions

Stage 4 · Caption writing

Copy editors turn interview notes and event coverage into captions and short copy, written and cut to fit the spread. A caption that buries the lede is exactly what the adviser flags in the review cycle later.

Produces: Caption drafts — text objects attached to a spread’s photos

Stage 5 · Design

The class agrees on a style foundation — grid, type, palette — and section editors lay out their spreads against it in the production editor. Version history means a bold layout can be tried without risking the work underneath it.

Produces: Spread layouts — grid, type, and palette applied to a section’s pages

Stage 6 · Photography

Photo editors shoot events and games and build the shared photo library the whole class works from, matched to students by their name on the roster rather than by a face scan.

Produces: Photo library — roster-matched images available to every section editor

Stage 7 · Editing

Photos are culled and adjusted, copy is tightened, and a spread moves from a rough draft to something the adviser can review. This is the stage where a section editor’s judgment shows — which shot leads, which quote earns the space.

Produces: Edited spread — the draft ready to enter the adviser review queue

Stage 8 · Ad sales

Students who take on the ad-sales beat sell ad and tribute pages to local businesses and families, the funding model that keeps the book free of a per-student fee. It is a real sales and account-management job with its own deadline, run alongside editorial coverage.

Produces: Sold ad & tribute pages — the revenue line that funds the printed book

Stage 9 · Proofing

The adviser runs the proof-approval queue: spread-level comments on the specific problem, returned to the student, corrected, resubmitted. An approved spread locks; the approval history is the class’s editorial record. The gate is fail-closed — nothing skips it.

Produces: Approved, version-locked spread — the adviser’s sign-off on record

Stage 10 · Final submission

When coverage is complete and every spread across every section is approved, the book exports to a press-ready file the school submits to whichever print lab it uses. The year’s work becomes a real, attributed publication.

Produces: Press-ready export — the finished book, submitted to print

A real unit you could teach next week — a preview of the curriculum layer in development

Beat Coverage & the Approved Spread — a two-week starter unit

By the end of two weeks, each student plans, shoots, writes, and lays out one attributed spread for an assigned beat, takes one round of adviser feedback through the proof-approval queue, and resubmits an approved version — the same workflow the class runs all year, scaled down to a single spread.

Week 1 — assign the beat and report it

The adviser assigns each student one open item from the coverage-tracking gap list — a club, a team, or a grade not yet on a spread — through the student’s role-scoped account. The student books the shoot or interview, builds a shot list, and files at least one photo and a first-draft caption before the week is out. The beat is a real gap in the real book, and the coverage tracker shows the class, in real time, whether it has been closed.

Week 2 — write, lay out, submit, and revise

The student writes captions and any body copy, lays out the spread in the editor, and submits it to the adviser proof-approval queue. The adviser leaves spread-level comments on specific problems — a caption that buries the lede, a misspelled name, a photo that does not earn its space — and returns it. The student revises and resubmits; version history keeps the earlier draft alongside the corrected one so nothing is lost. The unit ends when the adviser approves the spread and it locks.

The rubric below is a template, not a certified standard: an adviser aligns it to their own course objectives or state standards. We do not cite standards codes here because none are certified against this unit — when the standards-alignment layer ships, it aligns to the standards an adviser actually teaches to, not a set we invented.

Coverage Beat Assignment -- scoring rubric — Sample unit: Beat Coverage and the Approved Spread
Criterion	Emerging	Developing	Proficient	Exemplary
Coverage completeness	The beat is only partly reported; several rostered names or activities from the assigned group are missing from the spread.	Most of the assigned group appears on the spread, but the student needed adviser prompting to close the remaining gaps.	Every rostered name and activity in the assigned beat is accounted for on the spread, matched against the coverage gap list without prompting.	The beat is fully covered and the student proactively flagged an overlap or gap in an adjacent section's coverage.
Reporting and captions	Captions restate the obvious (who is in the photo) without any reported detail from talking to the students involved.	Captions include some reported detail, but names, quotes, or context are inconsistent or thin.	Every caption is accurate, attributed, and includes a specific reported detail -- a quote, a score, a date -- gathered directly from the students covered.	Captions read like real journalism: specific, well-sourced, and give the reader a reason to care about a group they don't already know.
Deadline and revision	The spread missed the review deadline, or the student did not act on the adviser's spread-level comments.	The spread was submitted on time, but revisions after adviser feedback were incomplete or required a second round for the same issue.	The spread was submitted on time and every adviser comment was resolved in the next version, visible in the version history.	The student revised ahead of the deadline and used version history to compare layout options before resubmitting.
Layout and typography craft	The layout does not follow the class's agreed grid, type scale, or palette from the term-start style foundation.	The layout mostly follows the style foundation, with inconsistent spacing or a type hierarchy that is hard to scan.	The layout follows the grid, type scale, and palette consistently, and the spread reads clearly at a glance.	The layout follows the style foundation and makes a deliberate, defensible design choice that strengthens the beat's story.

The graded deliverable is one adviser-approved spread, credited to the student’s byline in the coverage plan, plus the revision history the approval queue keeps automatically. Every tool this unit uses is built and live today: the student’s role-scoped account, the coverage-tracking gap list that assigns the beat, the adviser proof-approval queue that returns feedback and locks the spread once approved, and the version history that keeps the earlier draft alongside the approved one. The formal assignment-and-grading wrapper around this unit — auto-populated rosters and a gradebook that reads the rubric score back into a grade — is the curriculum layer in development; today an adviser runs this unit by hand from the built parts, using the rubric above as a printable or copyable guide.

Get the 2-week starter unit See what is built

The resume line

The skills a yearbook class actually builds — real, because the work is real

A student who runs a section learns to shoot and edit photography, write and cut copy to length, lay out a page with real typography, interview and report, manage their piece of a hard deadline, and — as a section editor or editor-in-chief — lead a team. Those are nameable, transferable skills a student can put on a resume or a college application, and they are earned on a genuine publication with a genuine audience.

The structured skills-portfolio export that packages a student’s attributed work for an application is in development. Until it ships, the honest artefact already exists: the finished book credits the student’s section, and an adviser can point a reference at the student’s real, attributed work.

What is built and what is coming — plainly

The class runs on built engines. The gradebook is not one of them yet.

Built and live today: scoped student roles and access control; coverage tracking; the adviser proof-approval loop with a fail-closed gate; version history and rollback; and the production editor the class builds the book on (documented at yearbook.press).

In active development, and not claimed as live: the formal assignment engine, the standards-aligned rubric layer, the gradebook that reads from a student’s editor work, and the skills-portfolio export. There is no live checkout here, no billing, and no subscription. We say so directly because advisers and school offices deserve to know what is production-ready and what is still being built.

Part of the school publishing platform

The class builds the book. Related products handle production, funding, and recognition.

Yearbook Press is the production editor the class builds on — layers, roster-driven portraits, adviser proofing, and a press-ready PDF. Yearbook Ad Network is how the book gets funded without selling subscriptions: local businesses and families buy ad and tribute pages, and the revenue stays with the school. Seen is the recognition programme that makes sure every student — not only the obvious ones — lands on a real named page. A yearbook class connects to all three.

yearbook.press yearbookad.network seen.school

Start your class · Yearbook advisers

Book a conversation to see what is built — or start setting up the class now

Yearbook Education is in active development. In a demo we walk through what is built — assigning student roles, the coverage plan and gap list, the adviser proof-approval loop, and version history — and we are candid about what is not: the formal gradebook and rubric engine. There is no pricing commitment, no signup, and no live payment. If it fits how you teach the class, we discuss what starting the current year looks like.

To start or to book: email [email protected].

FAQ

Common questions

How is this different from a yearbook production tool?

A production tool builds the book. Yearbook Education is the same platform used as a graded class: scoped student roles so each student owns a real section, coverage tracking as the accountability system, the adviser proof-approval loop as the feedback-and-revision cycle, and version history so students can experiment safely. The distinction is the teaching structure around the work, not a different editor. The production editor itself is documented at yearbook.press; here the focus is running the class.

Do you have a gradebook and rubrics?

Not as a shipped feature yet — we will not claim one that is not live. A formal assignment-and-rubric engine and a gradebook that reads from the work a student did in the editor are in active development. Today an adviser grades from the built parts: the scoped role a student owns, the coverage they closed, and the approval history that records their revisions. When the structured curriculum layer ships, it builds on those same records.

Is it really free for the school?

Yes. There is no per-student fee and no annual contract to start the class. There is no live checkout, no billing, and no subscription in this conversation. Printed copies of the finished book are a separate matter handled through the production and print flow; the charge rail for print orders is honest-off. The CTA here is “start your class” or “book a conversation,” never “pay now.”

What skills does a yearbook class actually teach?

Real, nameable ones: photography and photo editing, editorial and caption writing, layout and typography, interviewing and reporting, project management against a hard deadline, and leading a team as a section editor or editor-in-chief. Those are the skills a student can put on a resume or a college application. The value is genuine because the work is genuine — a real publication with a real deadline that a real audience will read.

How do student roles and access work?

Each student is assigned a role with scoped access: a section editor works on their section, a photo editor works from the shared photo library, the editor-in-chief sees the whole book. The scoping is enforced at the data layer, so a student cannot alter a section they are not assigned to. That is what makes accountability real: a student owns a defined body of work, and an adviser can assess exactly that. Role-scoped access is built and live.

How is student privacy handled in a classroom setting?

Student portraits and student work are consent-gated and access-controlled: never public, never sold. Portraits are matched to a student by their name on the school roster, not by a face scan — facial recognition is off by default. A student whose family has not consented to publication is withheld from shared spreads automatically, enforced at the data layer. In a class context that also means a student’s own work is visible to their adviser and their assigned collaborators, not to the whole school.

Can we align it to our course or state standards?

The rubric engine that would let an adviser map assignments to their own course objectives or state standards is in development, so we are not going to hand you a list of standards codes and claim an alignment that is not shipped. What exists today is the structure a standards alignment attaches to: defined roles, a coverage plan, and an approval history. When the rubric layer ships, an adviser aligns it to their own standards rather than to a set we invented.

When can we start?

The platform is in active development. In a demo we walk through what is built — assigning student roles, the coverage plan and gap list, the adviser proof-approval loop, and version history — and we are candid about what is not: the formal gradebook and rubric engine. No payment, no contract, no signup. If it fits how you teach the class, we discuss starting the current year. To start: email [email protected] or use the “start your class” link.