The 2022-23 DMS yearbook won’t come out until May, but The Flame staff is hard at work putting the annual together.
National Yearbook Week starts Monday and runs through Friday.
According to an email from Herff Jones Yearbooks, which is the company used by Duncan Middle School, National Yearbook Week is intended to celebrate the victories, both large and small, of yearbooks across the United States.
“The first week of October is one that we always love to celebrate. Why? Because we get to bring attention to the hard work you and your staffs are doing to not only make a great yearbook, but ensure the stories of your school are being told,” according to the email.
At Duncan Middle School, yearbook is an elective class where seventh and eighth-grade students gather content and layout pages. This requires them to interview and take photos, all to make sure students from across DMS are represented in the yearbook.
Journalism teacher Derrick Miller sponsors the yearbook class, where he has selected editors to lead to teams to develop yearbook sections. Each of the sections has an assistant editor, who helps the editor and takes the leadership role if the editor is absent.
Riley Hunter is the assistant editor for the Student Life section.
“I really enjoy my role as an assistant editor, and my favorite part of the writing process is taking pictures and placing them in the right places,” Hunter, an eighth-grader, said.
Currently, he is working on a layout and an interview for the first pep rally of the school year, which was Sept. 20. It was the first pep rally DMS has had in years.
Hunter said he is eager to begin putting together the final draft of the yearbook and seeing all of his hard work for this year pay off.
He’s not alone.
Lila Pool, editor for the Performing Arts section, said she is excited about yearbook class.
“I like the yearbook class because I get to talk to people about things and it is not incredibly difficult where you can’t do anything but it’s challenging enough to make you work and have fun with it,” Pool said.
Pool works closely with her section peers, Bennett Burch and Anthony Lada, to develop her section. She said she is excited to be able to help make the school yearbook and is thankful for the wonderful opportunity to work with all of her yearbook peers.
