FOR YEARBOOKS, CLASS RINGS, ALL ROADS LEAD TO VISALIA : JOSTEN'S SHEPHERDS STUDENTS, ADVISERS THROUGH PUBLICATION'S PERILS.

Byline: Joe Bigham Associated Press 

Covers showing off the school mascot. Photos of classmates doing the things that make high school special. Mug shots of dressed-up students trying to look mature. Autograph pages filled with silly, sweet sayings.

These are the yearbook memories that teens take with them as school days end for the summer and seniors graduate.

Yearbooks distributed to thousands of California high school students on hundreds of campuses this month probably were printed in Visalia by Josten's, the nation's leading maker of yearbooks and class rings.

Josten's puts together and prints 3,600 different yearbooks annually at the 115,000-square-foot plant for schools throughout the West.

The crunch comes each spring when everyone wants their yearbooks completed, but Josten's staff keeps after schools to get pages in early to make the work flow as smoothly as possible.

``We bug them throughout the year,'' says Laure Peot, Josten's personnel officer. ``Once a school misses a deadline, we start calling.''

It's a constant challenge because there's so much turnover in yearbook staffs.

``Each year, we're dealing with a new batch of inexperienced students,'' Peot says. ``What makes sense to them, a layperson, might be telling us to do the opposite of what they really want.''

So, Josten's 180 full-time employees include consultants who advise yearbook staffs. Sales representatives also stay in regular contact with their schools to help out as needed.

``We have seminars all over,'' Peot adds. ``Sometimes, we bring them to Visalia. A lot of schools like to tour the plant, see where their pages are, learn a little of the manufacturing process.''

Faculty advisers and students from schools in the San Joaquin Valley or adjacent Sierra Nevada often pick up their yearbooks to save shipping costs. Three students and their adviser from Tioga High at Groveland in Mariposa County took a guided tour when they came for their 1996 yearbook.

``They're the best-looking ones here,'' says the proud adviser, Cathryn Michaud, after looking over the finished product.

Titled ``Seasons of the Wolf,'' the school mascot, Tioga High's cover features several impressions of wolves and wolf paws.

``They had the idea, and we fine-tuned it, and they told us what colors they want,'' says Phyllis Davison, a Josten's customer services representative.

Keeping careful track of what goes where is the most important lesson each year's students learn, Peot says.

``If we teach the kids nothing else, it's to put their job number on everything,'' she says. ``We have a very elaborate tracking system.''

Putting out a yearbook teaches teen-agers other disciplines they will need as adults, Peot adds.

``Kids learn about budgeting, that they can't have everything they want, and they learn about deadlines,'' she says.

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Photo: Jamane Cryer makes sure pages are fed correctly into one of the many presses at Josten's yearbook print shop in Visalia.

Associated Press