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Katie Britt flips through the “’24 Carrot Gold” edition of Hobbton High School’s (HHS) yearbook and stops on the page that chronicles the most popular snack. “This is called ‘Snack Attack,’” she says.
Beside her, McKayla Harris points to the brand Crumbls. It was the cookie of the moment last year. Britt and Harris are seniors and editors of the yearbook, and they take their roles to heart as documentarians of the school.
These are not your yearbooks of times gone by. Yes — there are sports pages honoring teams and their accomplishments and composite pictures of each student in the school grouped by grade. But the book is so much more.
“We can all be creative. Everybody has their own way of being creative, and that gets shown throughout the pages,” Britt said.
Harris agrees. “From the time we get in there, we’re already thinking about, ‘How can we make this personal to the people in our community?’” she said.
The students who have committed to this elective every year are currently shuffling through pages and showing off articles, questionnaires, and even some investigative journalism. Britt and Harris flip to two pages dedicated to students with after-school jobs. The yearbook staff visited, unbeknownst to their fellow students, and snapped pictures of their friends clocked in to work.
Harris recalls how at the beginning of the year, another editor brought in her grandmother’s yearbook from HHS. The relic emphasized something she and her staff understand about their jobs, but maybe isn’t as apparent to the other students.
“You get to see through the years how the Hobbton community has grown bigger, how it’s changed. The school buildings changed. Soon we’re supposed to be getting a new school,” she said. “So it’s like, through yearbook, we’re documenting all of that.”
Harris believes their job sometimes gets overlooked. People don’t understand the need to be taking pictures at every game or chronicling the most popular trends of the time.
“But it’s more than that,” she said. “It’s like, you’ll realize it later, when you look back in the book — this was your school year, and some things you may forget. But when you look back, you’re like, ‘Wow, that really happened.’”
These two students joined yearbook to be those documentarians. Both had siblings who took the elective. Carla Sutton was the yearbook advisor for 13 years and had their sisters in her class. She is sitting with them this day and reveling in their love of layouts and pride in their work.
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She recently passed the yearbook baton to another teacher, but it remains incredibly close to her heart.
“Being a yearbook advisor was probably my favorite job that I’ve ever had. I love telling stories,” Sutton said.
It’s through that experience and her upbringing that led to her next big project – “Voices of Hobbton High.”
An educator’s dedication to her school
Around every corner at HHS is a reminder of a graduating class. Benches, trophy cases, the welcome marquee in front of the school — all have years etched upon them, seemingly gifts from past students to their alma mater.
And if the year isn’t carved into stone or wood, its painted on a mural. Carla Sutton walks the hallways of her beloved school, pointing out the lasting legacies of each class, and those signatures of graduating seniors.
The building itself is from 1956. It sits across the road from a field and the county’s water tower, announcing to every passerby the place HHS calls home — SAMPSON COUNTY.
Sutton’s love for the school began when she was a toddler. Her dad helped coach basketball, and she remembers rooting for the school in a cheerleader uniform at that young age. She eventually attended HHS herself.
After college, she chose to come home to her district. Her first teaching job was at Hargrove Elementary School. Nine years later, she moved to HHS and has shared her love and history of the school with students.
In 2024, the Hobbton community learned it would receive a new school building. While she and her fellow educators are enthused for their students and the opportunities a new building can present, Sutton couldn’t help but feel conflicting emotions.
She wanted a way to honor the past, while looking forward to the future. Combining her passion of the school, her time as a yearbook advisor, and a Love of Learning grant from Simple Gifts, an idea began to form.
Simple Gifts seeks to enrich and improve the lives of motivated Sampson County students and teachers through scholarships and grant programs. Two history and civics educators at HHS, Ragan Pearson and Stephanie Sullivan, had previously received a Love of Learning Grant, and Sutton turned to them for guidance. Sullivan is the new yearbook advisor as well. The three also happen to be very good friends.
Sutton applied for and received a Love of Learning grant to create an oral history project entitled “Voices of Hobbton High” during the 2025-26 school year.
The grant will support her travel to Yellowstone National Park this summer while she researches how the park system preserves history as it relates to the indigenous tribes of the region. She will carry that knowledge back to HHS and incorporate it into the oral history project, getting students to collect stories from their community.
She is collaborating with Pearson and Sullivan, creating a cross-circular project with the history classes and yearbook.
Students will be asked to join by interviewing their relatives who have a connection to HHS. And for those who are newer to the area, they will still be encouraged to explore their own history.
Sullivan says they spend a lot of time in class talking about recorded history and subsequently who owns that narrative. She thinks Sutton learning about the ways traditionally marginalized communities out west tell their stories will be valuable for Sampson students to learn before they start asking questions and recording stories.
Sullivan looks forward to her students experiencing firsthand accounts — learning the value of a primary resource and the power of being able to pass down history via storytelling. All three educators agree it’s giving students an opportunity to go deeper into narratives of their own history, and hope it helps them recognize the major role they play in it.
It is early in the planning process, but Sutton is excited to continue documenting the community and involving more people in the process. Pearson, Sutton, and Sullivan are all alumni of HHS, and their love of the school is easy to feel.
“I just want to build the love for the community,” says Sutton.
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Editor’s Note: EdNC receives support from the Anonymous Trust.
