By Brooke Oberly and Courtney Clearfield
With COVID-19 challenges, the Great Valley Yearbook has been working hard to make the 2020-2021 yearbook as unique and as memorable as they can considering most seniors are not even in the building on a given school day.
Inspired by living in “The New Normal,” the yearbook staff selected the phrase as this year’s theme.
As expected, many elements of the yearbook have been more difficult to execute—sports teams or club member pictures and just capturing the daily during school and after-school life of high school students. In order to ensure the yearbook retains its quality and fully captures life as we experienced this year, the arrival date of the book has been moved to the beginning of August.
One of the difficulties the staff faces is being able to take pictures of the sports teams due to shorter seasons and uncertainty of whether some sports will even have a season. The yearbook staff is committed to honoring our athletes and had to work around shortened and delayed seasons.
Additionally, the large group pictures that are usually included in the yearbook violate the current COVID-19 restrictions at this time, but the yearbook staff hopes to be able to take these at the end of the year instead.
However, the yearbook is most worried about being able to take the traditional senior yearbook photo where the seniors are arranged in the numbers of their graduation year for the class of 2021. If COVID-19 mandates still restrict large gatherings, the yearbook staff will brainstorm an alternative method to create the picture.
Similarly, the underclassmen portraits have been pushed back as well.
“Normally, underclassmen have their portraits taken the first week of school, and we would receive all the underclassmen portraits by October,” said Mrs. Megan Druckenmiller, the yearbook advisor. “Because portraits were taken at the end of October and November and retakes will be in January, we will probably receive these portraits by mid-February.”
Although COVID-19 has brought many challenges for the yearbook, the later release date does come with some positives.
The yearbook staff will be able to include pictures of events that occur too late in the year to normally include, like graduation pictures and prom pictures.
Even with social distancing requirements, the yearbook staff has found a way to uphold the tradition of signing each other’s yearbooks.
“Please know that we will provide signature pages to all students who pre-ordered a yearbook in mid-May so that they can participate in the tradition of signing each other’s yearbook,” said Mrs. Druckenmiller. “These signature pages come with adhesive so that students can easily paste their signature pages into their yearbook.”
Although the later release date may be upsetting to some, the Yearbook staff is dedicated to making the yearbook worth the wait.
Senior editor, Julia Pyc, reflected on the importance of the yearbook this year.
“This year brought several new challenges including the communication between the staff. However, my section and I have done our best to work together in this virtual environment to create a book that highlights the seniors, especially during this stressful year for them.”
“We do have an amazing team of students, who are passionate about creating this year’s yearbook, and because of their enthusiasm and creativity, I know that Great Valley students will have a beautiful and colorful yearbook to remember their time here,” said Mrs. Druckenmiller.
Make sure to check out this year's yearbook for new additions including quarantine trends, volunteering in the Valley, and new senior superlative categories!