Some of our yearbook members who helped make last years award-winning book are going on a field trip to the Herff Jones Plant in Edwardsville, Kan. on Sept. 19. This plant is very profound in publications, more specifically the yearbook world. Herff actually reached out to one of our teachers at Liberty, Mr. Hall. Hall has been teaching for roughly 18 years now, and any chance he gets to allow his students to get explore publications environments other than our own he does. 

Herff reached out to Hall and St. Louis yearbook representative Dan Mueller for this amazing opportunity. Hall and his students will be driving out to Kansas on a charter bus Sept. 18 with four other high schools. They are going to get to tour the plant, while also receiving in-person experience on how the yearbook gets printed and processed. While they are unsure on what all they will get to see, they are hoping to get a sneak peak on what this years 2022-2023 year book will look like.

“I wanted them to take away the experience of how much work goes into the production of the yearbook. The yearbook staff members that I am taking are all editors in publications and very passionate about that class,” Hall said. He proceeds to add on that, “They get to see it on our end, but they’ve never seen it on the production cycle.” Hall spoke about how when we had a newspaper, he would bring them to see how that paper was created. He is now getting the opportunity to share the experience in a different light. 

The yearbook staff is full very talented and passionate students with the same interest. It’s nice for them to not only get the experience from the trip, but Hall also thinks “It’ll be a good little bonding experience for some of them too.”

Hall expresses the learning experience the students will gain from this experience.

He says, “I just think that it’s good to take students out and give them experiential learning opportunities. When we went out to L.A. last spring for the National Journalism Conference, it was a really great experience for everybody.”

Last year after the LA trip, students were much more motivated and creative. Hall and Herff are hoping to give yearbook that experience another time.

“I really saw a boost in our program after we came back from L.A.,” Hall said. “They got to bring back all these great, new ideas to our program.”