The Talon Yearbook was honored with a Pacemaker Award at the National Scholastic Press Association Spring Convention. The Talon serves Southwest with a unified yearbook program that fosters unity as students with and without disabilities work together.
“It is important to have a unified yearbook because it gives us another opportunity at our school to make it more inclusive to people with disabilities,” junior unified yearbook editor Kaylie Phillips said. “We’re the only school in the nation that has a unified yearbook so it is amazing that we had this opportunity.”
The Pacemaker Award is given for excellence in student American journalism and is considered the highest national honor given to scholastic journalism. The Talon was a recipient in the Innovation Pacemaker category.
The Pacemaker Award is designed to encourage advanced thinking and to improve service to readers and other communities.
Last year, a unified yearbook program was started. Forty pages were created by students working together from special education and general education. The pages were then placed in the traditional book.
“Unified yearbook helped me learn how to work as a team and how to interview others,” senior Jackie Stahnke said. “The yearbook prepared me to be in the traditional yearbook.”
Southwest was the only school in Nebraska to get a Pacemaker award.