HOW WE DO IT
The 2020–2021 yearbook was created in a year when no one really knew what they were doing — including me. It was my first year advising Le Flambeau, and we were in the middle of a pandemic, navigating hybrid learning, mask mandates, event cancellations, and the looming questions: What even goes in a yearbook? and What even goes in a yearbook when school barely feels like school?
The theme, "How We Do It," was part defiance, part documentation. It was about figuring things out in real time — how we celebrated, connected, studied, danced, competed, and cared for each other under constantly shifting circumstances. The book was structured to mirror that resourcefulness: flexible, honest, and focused on the moments that actually did happen, even if they didn’t look like they used to.
I was lucky to have a single Editor-in-Chief, Sophia, who carried the vision and energy of an entire team. She taught me what yearbooking looked like from the inside — and together, we learned how to make it work. How We Do It was a lesson in creativity, resilience, and collaboration — and the start of something much bigger than either of us knew.
Scroll down for glimpses of a year that rewrote the rules — and the book that documented how we adapted.
Theme development
Every yearbook has a theme. This school year, my very first year of teaching and advising the journalism program, was an intensive COVID year. Masks were mandated, there were absolutely no all-school gatherings in the gym, passing periods were extending in an effort to get students to walk slower and farther apart in the hallways, and I taught both in-person and online Zoom classes at the same time. It was truly nothing short of a nightmare when I think back on it now knowing how school life can be post-pandemic, but my editor wanted the theme to be one of resilience and confidence, despite the crazy change to the year. We landed on "How We Do It" - how we navigated those crazy times and just got it DONE!
Read the full theme copy below
Yearbook Lingo
What even is a folio, and what goes on it? What do you mean we have to get photos for a designed "theme extension"? How does one go about "flowing" the portrait section? We were supposed to add that to our secondary coverage? What goes on the title page? How do we package our end sheets and send them to print? Where are the proofs? What if we turned that picture into a partial COB? What if we added an overlay? Should these headlines have drop shadows? Did you know there's a button for drop caps? You don't have to manually text wrap a bunch of weird ways.
There is SO much to the language of creating a yearbook and publishing a huge project like this that goes beyond simple knowledge of journalism and photography. I learned it all through baptism by fire and now I see the world in a whole new lens (pun intended).
My one and only
It being my first year, I relied heavily on the student leadership to show me the way of the yearbook universe. This came in the form of one singular editor and lovely human being, Sophia Allen, who went on to attend and graduate from TCU. We became very close and struggled together and leaned on one another to figure it out and put out an excellent first-ever yearbook. She also applied for and won a national Photographer of the Year award through one of our many journalism organizations.
HIGHLIGHTING CANDID PHOTOGRAPHY
In a year where everyone is required to wear masks when indoors with one another, it becomes a challenge to take pictures. I taught my students to go out and look for actions, reactions, emotions, and collaborations when hunting for things to photograph. A lot of those avenues for exceptional candid photography are cut off when everyone you photograph is required to cover half their expression and distance themselves wherever possible. It became a challenge just to take pictures at all, let alone to capture fantastic, publishable pictures. We managed to endure.
Though it may still be a tad traumatizing to see all of the masks in school, we successfully documented what it was like to educate inside a pandemic. Essentially, we "did the damn thing."
The last few years have felt like a rough draft.
Something, a certain pandemic shall we say, left everything a bit off.
Before, it was writer's block, but now? Now we are inspired. We came together in the fall ready to face our first "normal" school days in three years and to flourish our traditions back to the way they used to be.
But just like any great story, it started with a hook.
And there were notes in the margins and red pen struck through the things that weren't working. The writing process, just like life, includes continuous demolition and construction as a way to grow and learn from the past.
The truth is, it all begins with an outline. A Foundation.
This year it was a literal foundation change. We sat in makeshift classrooms, hearing the violent noise of a drill or hammer in an almost never-ending pattern over lectures and projects. Science labs were performed between black curtains in the Grande Salle. A writer can't write without a touch of wifi, which was sorely lacking in the fall.
Shakespeare never had to deal with hotspots, did he?
But despite the setbacks, we kept the vision.
Theology director Jessica Hull organized a fleet of vans delivering student volunteers all over the city for orientation week.
The Storm Stomp basketball tournament came back to campus with Willy Wonka and her Oompa Loompas taking home the knockout championship, the Founding Ballers dressed best, and sophomores winning the 3-v-3 tournament. Altogether we raised over $16,000 for student scholarships.
The Chiefs won the Super Bowl and we kicked off that weekend with an impromptu pep rally involving a sea of red and yellow.
We hosted the International Student Conference on Kansas City soil, inviting tweens, teens and teachers from Australia, Brazil, Canada, France and the UK to a traditional American pep assembly and "Eco Prom." We were told our high school experience was "just like the movies."
We aren't sure we totally agree with that. But we know one thing.
Our high school experience is full of stories.
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Each year, each tradition, each event and each day hold stories.
Every hour can hold a new chapter.
The time we spent planning, recording and stitching together our experiences was only a fraction of what we actually lived.
Life at Sion is more than one single story.
Honestly, there is too much to tell because it's not just about this year or this special place...
It's about what's not yet written.