When d’Iberville High School teacher Mandy Mahan was told she’d be taking over the school’s yearbook, she was given an $8,000 deficit and a program that lagging on a national scale.

Mahan said when the former adviser left the school, the yearbook students found out she would be the adviser before she was ever told.

“During summer registration a student came up to me and handed me an envelope with money and business ads,” she said. “About that time the principal saw me and asked me to come to his office.”

That was eight years ago, and since then, Mahan and her staff have turned The Warrior Annual into an award-winning publication with a surplus and a 30 percent increase in publications sold.

“Journalism is a business not just a hobby,” she said. “It’s not just being a writer, it’s not just being a photographer, but it’s about teaching your children 21^st century skills to get them into the job market.”

Mahan said today’s jobs require employees to be trained in multiple areas in order to be successful.

“They want everybody to be able to do everything,” she said. “I use my husband as a prime example because he got his degree in meteorology, but he got a job as a reporter.”

Mahan said the skills her husband uses daily for his job such as interviewing, photography, writing and time management are all taught in her journalism class.

“When I first started teaching I would tell people I taught Spanish and yearbook, but now I say I teach journalism and Spanish,” she said. “I don’t just teach them how to make a yearbook, but I teach them how to write a story and how to find a story.”

Mahan said she also puts and emphasis on photojournalism.

“We talk about pictures and how to get the picture and be a photographer,” she said. “When you don’t have a lot of space on the page for words, the pictures have to tell the story.”

The Warrior Annual is completely student-run, Mahan said, adding that she is there to advise, not to do the work.

“They have complete autonomy as long as they run anything that’s consequential by me first,” she said. “To have 15, 16, 17 and 18 year olds who can organize and run things like that in a smooth fashion is completely amazing. They are managing a $60,000-a-year program.”

Mahan still teaches Spanish, but she hopes to start a newspaper and broadcast journalism program at d’Iberville High.

“I don’t think I knew how big of an impact it was making on my kids until last year when I got a text from my former photography editor who was in her freshman year at Mississippi State,” she said. “She texted me and said, ‘The years I spent with you in yearbook prepared me more for college than any other class I took in high school.’”

The student told Mahan she took AP English in high school to help her writing for college, but it was her journalism class that really taught her how to write.

“To me, that text completely validated everything I have been doing for the last eight years,” she said. “Even if they don’t go into a journalism career, at least I’m making them prepared for whatever career they’re heading toward.”