Susan Fearnside, a Balfour Representative for La Joya Community High School. When she first started working with Mrs. Heather Eaton, Media teacher at La Joya, on the yearbook, they worked one on one with one another. If she didn’t have an answer, she went out of her way to find it.

Susan’s title is Balfour Representative, but she is more than that. Her job is to be able to produce and sell a school’s yearbook. Susan said,

“Well, my main job is to sell new accounts to bring you your book business into Balfour. Balfour has two sides to it. Balfour has the Scholastic side, which is the rings, the caps and gowns, invitations, and that sort of thing. That’s the one side. And then the other side is the yearbook side, which produces the yearbooks for all grades for the schools. We actually do elementary, middle school, high school, college, and university and find books. So I’m responsible to sell all levels of the yearbook.”

This school year’s yearbook will look completely different, and it will be difficult to get content and pictures. Susan said,

“That is what we should be covering in the book because it’s reality. It’s what’s going on. Virtual Learning is going on. Who’s our best friend at home? Right now our pets, you know, instead of a pet page, let’s call it something else. Yeah, you know, who’s your best friend? You know, there. There are other things we can cover. We just have to think outside the box. We can’t think about our traditional yearbooks anymore. We have to think of other things. And I know Miss Eaton is good at getting you to think that way, but not all advisors are.”

This year there are more freshmen joining La Joya’s yearbook and media classes. It can seem overwhelming for them this year, being online. Susan said,

“[The freshman are] coming into high school, which is scary enough… And there are more and more freshmen in yearbook last year and this year. So you need to get them to talk about it. What scares them about it? You can’t expect a lot of them. You have to find out what their where they place their budget, they want to be there. You have to be very patient with them and you have to, you need to dig, find out why they’re there.”