Columbus Yearbook at Head of Its Class

Colorful photographs of life on the Columbus Middle School campus, essays about and interviews with the movers and shakers of sixth- through eighth-grade classes and hundreds of bright, young faces grace the pages of the school’s 1996 yearbook.

The yearbook is a time capsule that chronicles the year students spent in class, with friends and at play. Many schools create them, but this school has nearly perfected the art of portraying student life.

Louisa Caucia’s journalism classes have won several national awards since 1992 for their yearbook designs, including a silver medal for the 1996 edition from a Columbia Scholastic Press Assn.-sponsored competition for junior and senior high schools.

The Columbia University competition judges yearbooks on concept, photography, writing, graphic design and coverage.

The key to success has been the students’ ability to have full control over the yearbook features, to try something different, Caucia said.

“They own it,” she said. “They own the product they are creating. Their ideas are respected. Without that, I don’t think it would be as successful.”

The students do all the work with minimal equipment: one typewriter and, until this year, one camera, Caucia said.

Many of Caucia’s students entered elementary school knowing little or no English, and were mainstreamed out of ESL classes only a few years earlier.

This year’s annual staff said that when they put the book together, they didn’t feel the pressure to maintain or surpass the accomplishments of those who came before.

“We just try our best to do the yearbook and stuff,” said Evelyn Torres, 13. “I don’t think that’s pressure.”

The stress comes in a more immediate form, the others added.

“The pressure is that we have to please all the students here,” said eighth-grader Lacey Solomos.