How to collect yearbook photos from teachers and room parents
Set up one shared folder for the yearbook, with a subfolder per event and per class, and share it only with the specific adults who take photos. Then give those teachers and room parents a one-page guide: what to photograph, where to put it, and to upload once a month rather than in May.
Collecting photos is the hardest part of the yearbook, and the only part nobody outside your school can do for you. This page covers the folders, the sharing rule and the guide to send, and everything here works with any vendor.
What’s included?
- A folder structure you can set up in Google Drive or any shared drive.
- A sharing rule that keeps children’s photos out of the wrong hands.
- A shareable guide for teachers and room parents with what to photograph and how to upload. The full text is on this page, ready to copy; a copyable document is on its way.
Download link coming soon
How should the photo folders be set up?
Build the folders before the first event, not after it. Make one shared folder called Yearbook Photos, with two folders inside it:
- School-wide Photos, with one folder per event: Back to School Night, Halloween Parade, Walkathon and so on.
- Class-wide Photos, with one folder per grade (Kindergarten, 1st Grade…) and one folder per class inside each grade (for example “K – Room 4”).
- School-wide events with mixed classes (walkathon, parade, assemblies) go in a folder named after the event under School-wide Photos.
- Class or grade moments (daily life, field trips, classroom parties) go straight into that class’s folder. No sub-folder per event is needed there.
- One folder per event, not one big “Yearbook Photos” dump. A parent with forty field-trip photos will put them in a folder named after the field trip, and won’t sort anything into anything.
What should the guide to teachers and room parents say?
Copy this, add your folder link and your photo deadline, and send it at the start of the year.
Taking and uploading photos for the yearbook
What to photograph
- Small groups of 3 to 7 children. Faces are easy to see, instead of twenty children squeezed into one frame.
- Whole or half class photos at events such as Halloween, field trips and the winter party. They don’t need to be as polished as the official class photo.
- The life of the classroom: decorations, bulletin boards, desk groups, the teacher with the class. Families want to remember where their child spent their day, not only the children.
How to upload
- Upload everything to the yearbook folder shared with you.
- School-wide event with mixed classes? Put it in that event’s folder under School-wide Photos. A class or grade moment? Put it straight in your class folder.
- Go through your camera roll once a month. Please don’t wait until the end of the year: it gets busy, photos from the first semester get hard to find, and some pages are already designed by then.
- Before uploading, delete duplicates and blurry shots and keep the best of each moment.
- Need help? Ask another teacher or room parent, or contact the yearbook coordinator.
More on framing and light: how to take good yearbook photos with a phone →
How do I keep photos coming all year?
- Ask within a day or two of each event, while the photos are still on the home screen of the phone.
- Send a monthly reminder. The further into the year, the harder first-semester photos are to find.
- Say what’s missing, not “send photos”. “We have nothing from the 3rd grade science fair” gets a reply.
- Ask teachers differently from parents. Teachers have the classroom photos nobody else has, and the least time. Offer to come and take the phone for five minutes.
- Take blurry over nothing. A soft photo of a child who’s in no other picture is worth more than another sharp shot of the school gate.
- Track coverage on paper. Print class rosters in November and tick a name when you see a usable photo of that child. Why this matters →
How does this work at a Rethink school?
We create the Google Drive folder for your school and share it with your coordinators, already set so only your team can reach it. If you’d rather use your own folder, share it with specific people and send us the link.
To mark particular shots you want used for an event, put them in a folder named favs inside that event’s folder before the photo seal date. The full month-by-month version is in the first-time coordinator’s guide.
Photos in.
Book out.
Rethink Yearbooks makes these resources free for any school. Every child is in the shared school pages, and families who choose personalization get pages built around their own child’s class and grade. See how it works for elementary schools →