School by the book

Hoover High School students are preparing the first-ever yearbooks for Columbus Elementary and students from both schools are eager for the finished product.

“I’m happy and excited,” said 12-year-old Columbus sixth-grader Allison Zalin, who is the student council co-president. “Because some of my friends that got their pictures taken early in the year, some of them have moved away. And that’s the only we can really remember them, by seeing their picture.”

The hardcover yearbooks will have roughly 40 pages of student portraits, class pictures, pages for autographs and other familiar yearbook sections. Its cover is navy blue and features silver writing and an eagle, Columbus’ mascot. Students ordered them for $20 apiece.

The release of the yearbooks is highly anticipated by the Columbus students, Allison said. But the work was all Hoover High School’s, she said.

“We really didn’t do anything,” she said. “It’s all the Hoover students.”

Actually, the work was done by just two Hoover students, Vartan Nadjaryan and Elena Koocharian.

They visited Columbus in February to snap photographs of students, and they revisited several times to get the entire sixth-grade class. After touching up the photos to make sure the lighting was the same in all of them, arranging the book’s layout and creating a couple special pages, the Hoover students were ready for the hard part.

All of class time on Monday was devoted to collating the color pages and binding the pages into a hard cover by hand in Hoover’s Business, Engineering and Technology Academy, which is taught by Mildred Outlaw.

“It’s a pretty slow process,” said Vartan, the yearbook’s chief editor, who was gluing the pages into the hardback covers. “I just did three in, like, [the entire class period].”

He hopes to have more than 100 books finished by Monday, he said.

Elena was the de facto second-in-command for the semester-long project — the hardest project she has ever undertaken, the eleventh-grader said.

There are a couple pages that she feels especially proud of — like the memories page, which has spaces for students to jot down their favorite teachers, movies, TV shows or music during the year, Elena said. It all helps create a sense of memory and significance for students to cherish later on, she said.

“I think they will be amazed,” Elena said.

Because the entire project was under his wing, Vartan said no particular page or aspect really stands out as his favorite. He enjoyed almost all of it and feels proud of the finished products, he said.

The project was especially meaningful to him because Vartan is an alumnus of Columbus Elementary School, he said. He even got to meet his sixth-grade teacher, Mark Ouweleen, when he went to take a photograph of his class, Vartan said. He said he wished he had his own yearbook for those years.

“It’s a good memory for them,” he said about the Columbus students. “You’ll always have a yearbook to remember who’s who, and your childhood times.”

The Hoover High-created yearbooks are the first ever for the more than 100-year-old Columbus Elementary School, at least as far as district and school officials can remember. But students have had a way to capture their elementary school memories there in past years, said the Columbus student, Allison.

“The sixth graders, what they do is wear a white shirt and everybody writes on it and says nice things,” she said.

She said this year she will be toting the yearbook around for autographs, but will also wear a plain white T-shirt to carry on the tradition, she said. You can never have enough autographs, she said.

“The more the merrier,” she said.

Columbus Asst. Principal Lynda Teems said she is not sure if Columbus will have yearbooks again next school year.

“We were really excited that Hoover was willing to take on the project,” Teems said. “We know it’s been a huge project for them. It’s been a big task. The fact that sixth grade will have yearbooks, it really is a memory that they will cherish.”