SISP Spotlight: Kiara Lavana '23

If you walk across the Mass Academy library, you will find a varied assortment of books, including yearbooks. The yearbook is a tradition found at most high schools across the United States and curating the yearbook is a lengthy task. This year, senior Kiara Lavana is up to the task.

Lavana was approached by Mrs. Post, Mass Academy’s guidance counselor, and asked if she would like to create the yearbook as her Senior Independent Study Project (SISP). The SISP is a 100+ hour independent project completed by all Mass Academy Seniors. However, Lavana did not want the yearbook to be without the contribution of her peers, leading to the creation of the yearbook committee. 

“The [yearbook] committee met weekly to determine layouts and designed all the senior pages,” said Lavana. She also mentioned that brainstorming “lasted from October to November.” 

Once Lavana laid the groundwork, she began reaching out to her classmates for pictures. Lavana noted that the “senior class likes to procrastinate” causing her to send out numerous communications about sending in pictures. One of the pages Lavana noted was the senior superlatives. 

“It was fun to get the senior superlatives. We had two rounds of voting,” said Lavana.  

Unlike most other public schools in Massachusetts, Mass Academy seniors get an entire page to themselves. 

Lavana explained that “[because] we only have 50 seniors, each senior gets their own page for whatever quotes they want or fun facts.” 

Lavana emphasized that she wanted to have a unique page that would be memorable for this period of the class of 2023’s lives. She asked her peers to send in BeReals to be included across three pages of the yearbook. Due to the social media app’s growing popularity in 2022 and 2023, the Mass Academy class of 2023 will have more than their fair share of BeReals to look back on in the future.

As the class of 2023 approaches graduation, they will soon be receiving their yearbooks. As memorable Mass Academy can be, a yearbook will be a great physical memorial of all of the fun, growth, and learning that occurred during their time at Mass Academy.