Happy Leap Day! This is my 6th leap year (I was born in a leap year after 2/29, so that may mislead you about my age... but so be it...lol).

I have been given a somewhat unique opportunity, and I am hoping to hear from people who have experience in this area.
Let me start off by telling you a little about the school where I teach. There are about 145 students in grades K-8, one class per grade level. After 8th grade, the kids can choose between two area high schools. It is very rural, located between a town of 10,000 and a town of 2,500. Middle school is departmentalized. Currently, I am the art teacher, speech implementer, and special education teacher. Almost every teacher has more than one role... I just so happen to have 3. But not to worry! I only have 19 speech kids, 4 special ed kids, and 110 art kids. It's not as bad as it initially sounds.

Anyway-- Next year I will have much more time to teach art (my favorite part of my job, and my passion!) and my superintendent asked if I want to teach a class based around creating the yearbook. The only thing is that our yearbook program is super simple, and since our yearbook is free to students, it's very simple and doesn't include a lot of extra stuff. Right now our school secretary organizes it and it takes her a couple days at most. So how can I base and entire year of class on that?

Here's what I proposed:
Yearbook, digital art, and desktop publishing, all rolled into one neat little one-day-a-week elective.
My superintendent thought it was a good idea, so now I have to develop a curriculum outline for it!
I have around 36 classes per year with a weekly class. It's actually less, depending on the time and day it's scheduled, assemblies and early-outs cut out classes.
Here's what I have in mind, and again... please make suggestions!
36 classes total for the school year=
2 classes must be dedicated to teaching appropriate behaviors, per school regulations
4 classes missed for assemblies and early outs (approximate, probably actually a low guess)
2 classes for beginning-of-year yearbook planning- events, photo ops, etc.
2 classes for photography basics- use of digital cameras, vocab, framing shots, etc.
5 classes for end-of-year yearbook organization & design
3 classes for photo-manipulation instruction and practice with various programs
6 classes for desktop publishing
10 classes for computer generated art
2 classes "free" for catch-up/unexpected class cancellation

This is my thought process as far as a timeline goes, but the more specific details I need some help with. Did I mention I am open to suggestions? Lol!
It'll be exciting to build goals and a curriculum from the ground up, I hope I haven't bitten off more than I can chew! *nom nom nom*

These leaves were created by doing crayon rubbings and then cutting them out. I decoupaged them to the paper, but they would look cute on many things... I'm thinking art boxes?