This 2024-2025 school year, Echowan is working on ensuring accuracy and inclusivity in the yearbook. Last year, Echowan received feedback regarding mistakes that the book had had in years past. Echowan took this feedback and decided to change the creation process of the book, including a more extensive check process, talking about subjects strictly involving Park, and putting more effort into covering not only sporting events but clubs as well.
According to Echowan advisor Kelsey Hanson, the Echowan staff has been focusing on ensuring the book’s rough draft versions are fully accurate before sending it to the publishing company. She said not only do students want to ensure everything looks correct, but also Park’s administration.
“This year we implemented a much stronger proofing process. Everyone in our class has access to all the pages and we all proof them,” Hanson said. “We also send all of our proofs to the communications office and our building administration for review before we submit them to Jostens for publishing.”
Echowan Chief senior Sarah Tirado said this year, Echowan is working to cover the school year differently than before, highlighting different activities around Park instead of just sporting events.
“This year the books have been a lot more inclusive than it was last year. We have a higher percentage of the school that we have covered so far and we are putting a lot of our focus on having coverage from things besides sporting events, said Tirado. “Now we are covering sporting events and clubs and just covering the school year in a different way than before.”
Hanson said last year a mistake Echowan made was including a controversial political statement in the book that brought harm to the community. She said the staff is choosing to focus on events only Park-related now.
“Last year there was an issue with a very imbalanced statement regarding Israel and Palestine and obviously we did not intend any harm and so this year we are being much more intentional about how things might land in the community,” Hanson said. “On a broader scale, it was a mistake for a yearbook to address anything political so we are just keeping things to school happenings and what’s going on here.”
According to senior Echowan manager Kayleigh Mitchell, the changes Echowan has been making have been going well along with old practices that are successful.
“Something that worked well last year is our process to get more people featured in the book. We have used the same process and even made it better to try and make sure everyone in the school is featured in the book at least once,” Mitchell said.
Tirado said changing the deadlines for each part of the book has been beneficial for the process of creating the book and made for a more thorough creation process.
“We’ve made a lot of changes this year to make sure there are no errors. We’ve made our deadlines a lot closer so we have more time to proofread and we are having all pages of the book proofread by the high school administration,” Tirado said. “We’ve also been having the class double down on proofing as well so that there won’t be anything that we miss.”
Mitchell said she’s hopeful about the outcome of the book, and due to the changes this year, they have already been seeing results amongst students at Park.
“I’ve seen how much our sales have gone up, how many people we have featured in the book go up and how well we have covered clubs. We have been more mindful and acknowledged more clubs which creates a wider range of things in the book,” Mitchell said.
