NORTH KINGSTOWN, R.I. — The Class of 2021 certainly faced a senior year like no other, and in North Kingstown, now they have something to remember it by.
Members of the North Kingstown High School Class of 2021 received their yearbooks Friday afternoon during a pickup window at the high school, where fellow graduates could meet and sign each other’s yearbooks and enjoy a frozen lemonade courtesy of Del’s.
The yearbooks came out later this year in order to incorporate pictures from some of the end of year events seniors were able to experience as COVID cases decreased statewide during the spring, as an attempt to give the class as normal of a yearbook as possible.
To accomplish that, the task went to English teacher Leslie Holcroft and the yearbook class. Holcroft, who usually leads the senior project program at the high school, took over the yearbook program this year after the usual advisor was unable to due to other commitments.
“Usually Elizabeth Kenworthy does it, but they had her teaching a different class this year, so they asked for someone to step up,” Holcroft said. “I usually run the senior project program here, but we didn’t run it this year, so I decided to take on a different kind of project learning: the yearbook.”
With many of the events on the year on hold until after March, the usual deadline for yearbooks, Holcroft and the yearbook team decided to hold back in order to represent the end of year events.
“We got to the beginning of March and things were really just starting to happen (in terms of) school events and sports and everything, so we really put our heads down and worked so hard on this through March, April and May so that we could submit it and get the summer print, so it was a lot of work and it was very pressured in the spring, but we’re happy with the result,” Holcroft said.
With many of the events earlier in the year, such as the homecoming dance, called off due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Holcroft and the yearbook class had to come up with different solutions to showcase the unusual senior year.
“A lot of what we covered in the yearbook didn’t happen until the second half of the year because everything was delayed, like fall sports were delayed until mid winter, so to get it up on its feet was really challenging,” Holcroft said. “We knew from the beginning that we wanted to have an honest, but uplifting representation of the year, so our theme for the yearbook was ‘Braving the Storm,’ which goes along with our Skipper mascot. I had two groups of students who worked on it and they did a really fantastic job so now the seniors are here to pick up their yearbooks because we couldn’t distribute them until later.”
With less pictures from school events and sports teams, Holcroft and her team asked students and parents alike to provide more photos from outside of school.
“(The seniors) wanted a lot more pictures than text and they wanted to make sure that we used pictures from outside of school so we could see people without their masks on,” Holcroft said. “Hundreds of pictures came in from students and parents. Parents were really key in sending in photos too, so we have a lot of pages in the yearbook that we don’t usually include.”
Among some of the new sections were pictures of students participating in sports outside of the school realm.
“They are not part of school teams maybe, but they rock climb or they do dance or we even had one student who is in skeet shooting competitions and so it was really neat to showcase kids who don’t normally get recognized in the yearbook for those things and a lot of those pictures came in through parents,” Holcroft said.
For Holcroft, it was all part of highlighting some of the things students do outside of school that usually don’t garner as much attention in a traditional yearbook as a filler for those events that didn’t happen.
“There were events like homecoming that didn’t happen at all this year, so some of the differences I really showcased in the student life section where we tried to bring to light what kids were doing and caring about during the year in spite of the pandemic,” Holcroft said.
Additionally, Holcroft said she wanted to showcase the reality of the Class of 2021’s senior year, while also bringing a positive spin to things.
“We really wanted the yearbook to be honest, so we have a page where it really details what it was like to walk into the school year and have everything the limited or different in someway, but we also try to make sure they were pops of inspiration, so there’s a page that covers one of our ninth graders who came in as a first year student at NKHS having to learn braille for the first time and his success story of feeling like this year really went well for him, so we really tried to highlight stories of bravery and resilience as well,” Holcroft said.
Overall, Holcroft said it was the resilience of the senior class that really drove getting this year’s yearbook done.
“The kids are really what kept us afloat,” Holcroft said. “Their positivity and that teenage energy of ‘we’re still here, it’s still our year (and) this is still when we get to be seniors,’ and they really pushed us as a small community to make sure that we made this year the best year it could be, so engaging with the Class of 2021.”
For those who worked on the yearbook as part of the class, it was truly a labor of love.
“It was really fun to do,” incoming senior Abigail Capaldo said. “I really enjoyed the graphic design element of it and Miss Holcroft was really great at putting it all together. It was a really nice way to remember the graduating seniors because I didn’t really have much other end of their junior year, they didn’t really have much of a senior year, so at least I’ll have something to remember once they’re gone in college.”
Adjusting to the changes this year as a yearbook class was a bit of a hassle.
“It was definitely a struggle because we couldn’t really come together as a school for many events, so we had to really reach out to people and ask for pictures of them hanging out with friends we’re hanging out around town, and most of the pictures we do have in the yearbook, people are wearing masks, so it’s a little bit difficult to identify people, but I think this year it was so important to have a yearbook so we have something to look back on and remember such a historical school year,” Capaldo said.
Overall for Capaldo, seeing the final product made all of the hard work worth it.
“It’s very rewarding to see it all come together and all of the pictures and all the work we did,” Capaldo said. “It was definitely a bit of a stressful experience trying to throw it all together this year, but I’m really proud of how it turned out and I’m really proud to take the class. It was a lot of fun.”
As for the seniors themselves, it was also a worthwhile experience to have the final product in hand.
In the end for Holcroft, it was seeing the reactions from the Class of 2021 that really made all of the work worthwhile.
“This is my favorite part to see them leafing through it and (being) interested in what’s actually on the page,” Holcroft said. “It just makes all of the hard work worth it to see them really engage with what we covered.”
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