An area high school has received an award for its yearbook design. Rocori’s 2024 Yearbook has received the Walsworth Publishing Company’s Gallery of Excellence Award. The yearbook will now travel the United States to be showcased at workshops and seminars as an example for other schools.

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Paul Habstritt, WJON
Paul Habstritt, WJON
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Paul Habstritt, WJON
Paul Habstritt, WJON
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Yearbook Co-Advisor Renee Bacon says they were completely shocked to receive the award:

“It just came in the mail and we didn’t know anything about it, it was a total surprise that we received this Gallery of Excellence Award and to be honest I wasn’t quite sure what it was because it wasn’t even on my radar but what it is, is it just recognizes us for the commitment that we had to the program and the quality of our book that we put out in the year 2024.”

Paul Habstritt, WJON
Paul Habstritt, WJON
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Paul Habstritt, WJON
Paul Habstritt, WJON
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Senior Cora Yarke is an editor for the yearbook and says knowing their yearbook will be an inspiration to others is pretty neat:

“It’s going up on their website to use as inspiration for other yearbooks which is really cool because we’re always looking at a whole bunch of other places for  ideas so knowing that our book can be an inspiration is pretty cool.”

Bacon says they noticed people were not reading the stories in the yearbook so they knew it needed a change and they tried a few different things that she thinks helped get the book noticed:

“Instead of like writing a story we were just doing our stories through little captions around the photos and we really seemed to like that style and so I think some of those things stood out to our representative that she noticed that it was something that we went with that thought, we pursued it and made it come through completion and all and all it turned out really well.”

Paul Habstritt, WJON
Paul Habstritt, WJON
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Paul Habstritt, WJON
Paul Habstritt, WJON
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Yarke says the staff was all on board for the changes:

“I was really excited for the changes because they all kind of came up at a workshop that we went to last August and one of the things that the facilitators talked about was that the most dangerous thing that you can say is we’ve always done it this way.”

Paul Habstritt, WJON
Paul Habstritt, WJON
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Paul Habstritt, WJON
Paul Habstritt, WJON
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Bacon and Yarke say at first it was tough to get students and staff to buy into the changes but once people saw the book it was so popular they sold almost all of their extra copies. Yarke says they are already working on some new ideas for 2025 but they are keeping those a secret for now.

Paul Habstritt, WJON
Paul Habstritt, WJON
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Paul Habstritt, WJON
Paul Habstritt, WJON
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Paul Habstritt, WJON
Paul Habstritt, WJON
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Paul Habstritt, WJON
Paul Habstritt, WJON
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Paul Habstritt, WJON
Paul Habstritt, WJON
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Paul Habstritt, WJON
Paul Habstritt, WJON
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Paul Habstritt, WJON
Paul Habstritt, WJON
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Paul Habstritt, WJON
Paul Habstritt, WJON
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Paul Habstritt, WJON
Paul Habstritt, WJON
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Paul Habstritt, WJON
Paul Habstritt, WJON
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Paul Habstritt, WJON
Paul Habstritt, WJON
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