In a world where photos have taken the place of words, a yearbook is essential to the high school experience. A yearbook is passed down from generation to generation; it displays the students’ lives – the life of that moment in time.
A yearbook shows the moments that express us, the students. This one book consists of our most significant moments, the moments we one day reminisce upon as the “best of times.”
When time passes and the leaves change color and winter turn to spring, we will all one day grow up into the person we once dreamt of being in high school. The memories we made will have faded from color to grey; yet, a yearbook will forever be a tangible item representing who we once were.
This upcoming year, 2021, the Central Bucks High School South yearbook staff is faced with a challenge never attempted before: to create a yearbook in the time of COVID-19.
With limited access to photos and limited opportunities to attend school events, creating a yearbook representing the students will be challenging.
Mrs. Jessica Fidler, Central Bucks High School South art teacher, and yearbook advisor, however, views the year of 2021 as an opportunity to discover “a new way of teaching the class to work outside their comfort zone.”
Mrs. Fidler, who has been teaching in Central Bucks for over 12 years, is proud to be the advisor for the South yearbook in her current ninth year. The mastermind behind the South yearbook since 2012, she exclaimed that “2021 would be a year like no other for this book.”
The yearbook of 2021, to Mrs. Fidler, will be “a breath of fresh air – it is going to allow [the students] to think outside the box.”
With no homecoming dance or student section at the football games, the yearbook has lost most of its “Student Life” content. While it may seem impossible, Mrs. Fidler and her staff are excited for this opportunity to take photos that capture the students outside their school life, the life that defines CB South students beyond the classroom.
Mrs. Fidler does admit that the most challenging section of the book to recreate will “no doubt be the ‘Student Life’ section.” However, “[the] staff this year is awesome, no matter what they do, [the book] will be different, and it will be good.”
With her optimistic approach, it is easy to say that the yearbook of 2021 has a cheerful staff behind it.
Mrs. Fidler shares that the book will be “so unique and that [the staff] will be focusing more on the students, and the students’ lives, and how they are so individual.”
“Across the board, teachers are put into a situation where they’re forced to teach outside their familiarity, but this change, it’s going to be a good one.” Mrs. Fidler shares that creating a yearbook with these never before limitations will allow her staff to utilize different techniques of producing the book and find new forms of photography that have never been put into practice.
While it’s easier to see the faults of the year of 2021, Mrs. Fidler has reversed course and put her energy into creating a confident staff, a helpful community, and an excellent setup for a limitless yearbook.
Through discussions with Mrs. Fidler, the yearbook of 2021 is working to encompass diversity:
diversity within the students we see in school and at home, diversity within the way we approach schooling, and diversity within the interaction in our community,
The yearbook of 2021 will not only be different, but it will be immeasurable in its limits.
This yearbook will take a challenge and turn it into a book of wonders. This yearbook will be the students; it will be “Titans from a Distance.”