Palmer Trinity School

A Snapshot in Time By Jackie Taylor, MS English IN THE S PRING OF 2020, as I planned ahead for the next school year, I naively thought that—by fall—everything would be back to normal. Surely by August we'd be back in school again, face-to-face, right? I was not prepared to kick off a school year virtually, but I was even less prepared to put together a yearbook, which traditionally documents student life on campus. The new normal would require thinking outside the box. With guidance from our publisher, Walsworth, I decided to shift the focus of our coverage. What was important now? If it wasn't school gatherings, what was the glue holding us together? The first step was choosing a theme. The yearbook staff decided on a theme that appeals to all of us: music. We also chose vintage colors and graphics that established a sense of feel-good nostalgia. Additionally, to make up for the lack of student life coverage, we decided to try something new that would also give our community something special to look forward to. We used augmented reality (AR) to link YouTube videos to certain images in our book. Using a cell phone, the Walsworth yearbook app scans a photo tagged with a specific icon and then pulls up a designated playlist on YouTube. For example, when we covered the Black Lives Matter movement, those pages had an icon that connected to a playlist of songs that have changed the world—like John Lennon's "Imagine." At the end of the senior section, we included a playlist of all the songs our seniors selected to be a part of the "Soundtrack of PTS." Additionally, to solve the problem of students who remained online and couldn't come to campus to take their school picture, we collected photos submitted by students and put them in a Zoom template to help document this historic time. Students and teachers alike will always remember what it was like to distance learn. Many of our stories cover topics specific to the pandemic, like what it's like to wear a mask all the time, how Zoom has changed the way we learn, what students did with their newfound time and more. And while these challenging times are not over yet, one day we will laugh about these days, look back fondly and remember how we made it through a pandemic together. The yearbook staff hopes this year's volume captures these historic moments and helps the community focus on what's really important: each other. We are excited to share that our PTS 2020-2021 yearbook was selected to be in the Publisher's Gallery of Excellence. The yearbook is shared with other schools across the nation as an example of top quality design. S U MME R 2 0 2 1 13

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