How to Host an ECET2KY Event
Elevate and Celebrate the Teaching and Teachers Near You!
You've attended an ECET2KY event and you want to host your own convening. We're here to help!
ECET2 Key Beliefs
Every ECET2 convening should be conceived and designed from the ground up with a set of ingredients in mind. These key beliefs represent the foundation of each ECET2 event, and they represent the qualities that every ECET2 convening should evoke.
Every ECET2 event should:
- Nurture trust among teachers
- Focus on each teacher’s potential for growth
- Inspire both the intellect and the passion that drives teachers in their work
- Provide time for collaboration and learning
- Put teachers in the lead
- Recognize teachers as talented professionals
- Equip and empower teachers to build the capacity of their peers
Teachers should leave an ECET2 convening with:
- tools, best practices, and hands-on experiences
- a network that they can call upon for perspectives, advice, feedback, and successful strategies
- resources that help them improve their classroom practice, build the capacity of their peers, and drive school-level change.
ECET2 convenings should enable meaningful professional growth and learning among participating teachers. Examples include opportunities for teachers to:
- Explore potential pathways to leadership in order to enhance and improve their ability to implement rigorous curricula
- Bring new ideas, tools, and strategies to their schools and communities
- Improve or enhance their classroom practice
ECET2 convenings should enable participants to collaborate with peers in their schools, districts, and beyond. Examples include opportunities for teachers to:
- Build their communication and facilitation skills, and build and strengthen their networks
- Increase their ability to work productively with colleagues to solve problems, make decisions, manage conflict, implement rigorous curricula, and promote meaningful change in student learning and in school policy and culture
ECET2 convenings should empower teachers to take action in their classrooms, schools, districts, and communities in meaningful ways. Examples include opportunities for teachers to:
- Harness individual and collective power by working with colleagues to design and implement rigorous curricula and appropriate interventions to address student needs
- Coach, mentor, and support peers within and outside their schools
- Exercise their teacher voice and advocate for the needs of students and the profession
- Partner with shareholders to co-create and design solutions, policies, and professional learning that impact the classroom.
ECET2 Content Focus
- teacher leadership
- effective collaboration
- innovative and effective instructional practices
- equity in education
Teachers should leave a convening with specific tools to help them implement new strategies and techniques in their classrooms and to engage with professional networks in meaningful ways.
Format & Structure
- Cultivating a Calling Keynotes - 15 to 20 minutes in length, these are educators sharing their "Why" and their stories of impact.
- Colleague Circles - concentrated times where teachers share problems of practice or discuss issues in the field. They can also be used to plan next steps after the convening ends to continue conversations.
- Breakout Sessions, led by teachers - these sessions allow teachers to learn new skills and techniques, access actionable tools and information, strengthen feedback mechanisms, better understand college- and career-ready standards, and build their capacity to develop into teacher leaders.
Convenings should also have specific times set aside to:
- Network - These networking opportunities should connect teachers not just with one another, but also with existing teacher networks.
- Reflect - Reflection opportunities can help teachers process the experience and ultimately begin planning for action, either individually or in teams. These opportunities can be formal (during lunch or common times) or informal (colleague circle sessions)
- Celebrate - Convenings can often change the way teachers approach their futures and professions by giving them the space to celebrate themselves and their chosen profession. Good food, nice venues, social activities, and tokens of appreciation are critical elements of an ECET2 convening. Having performances by students in your area can also be a nice celebratory touch to your event. This can be anything from ROTC to cheerleaders, step teams to singers.
Ready to assemble your team and get started? BOOM! Let's go!
Step 1 - Build Your Planning Team
Much of the planning will need to be done via the cloud. You'll need a shared space to hold all your important files. We suggest a Google Drive shared folder.
- All planning team members (and others you choose) should have edit access.
- We suggest the KISS method. Keep It Simple, Silly:)
- Clearly name your main folder as the name of your event.
- Add files to subfolders to lessen confusion
- Choose folder names that are clearly defined (your names don't have to match ours)
Below is an example of a planning team's convening folder.
Step 2- Create a Budget and a Work Plan
- A venue
- Food
- Celebratory gifts
- Printing
- Speaker fees
- Advertising
- A/V fees
- Other things that might pop up
How much funding you'll need will be up to the size of your convening, and how creative and diligent you are...
- Schools will usually host an event for little or no cost
- Local businesses may be willing to donate a portion or all of a meal in exchange for publicity and social media love
- Local businesses and educational organizations might be willing to donate a prize or two, a gift card or discounts for services
- Teachers may often share the printing for a convening at their schools or ask district leadership to help offset costs.
- S'more newsletters such as this one are free and require no printing costs.
- Many convenings do not utilize speakers who require compensation. Highlight the educators in your area and give speakers/presenters a token of appreciation (that could be donated)
- Social media is a great way to advertise, as is word of mouth in schools. Have teachers plug your event to their admins or district leaders to help spread the word. Talk about your event in the lounge or in faculty meetings.
- A/V costs are minimal, if any, in schools. Planning team members can also round up projectors from schools and use their own computers for an event.
Step 3 - Determine Your Audience and Goals
Step 4 - Find a Venue
If a school isn't available, search for a site that would be able to host and attempt to raise funds/find sponsorship for your expenses.
Step 5 - Identify, Invite and Register Participants
- Have each person on the planning team add names as well.
- Create a nomination form (we suggest a Google Form) and allow educators and admins to invite deserving educators. Advertise on social media and in school/district emails.
- Look through our directory of attendees from the 2017 funding season and all Kentucky convenings and reach out to them, encouraging them to nominate deserving educators in the convening's area.
- Add all the names of nominated/identified educators to your Google Doc.
Create an invitation. This can be in the form of an email, a paper copy in a mailbox, a hand delivered, old fashion invite, or whatever you choose. We create a template We use Eventbrite for the registration process and S'mores to publicize the events. They're free at the basic levels and not that difficult to figure out. We link the Eventbrite registration page to ALL of our S'mores to keep it easy to access.
In your invite, tell about your event and how awesome it is. Use personal stories if you can. If the person was nominated by someone, add the nominator's name to make the invite more personal. Tell the main info about your event and include pictures from events you've attended or by taking them off the #ECET2KY hashtag on Twitter.
Information to collect as someone registers can be specified on Eventbrite. We collect:
- First Name
- Last Name
- School email (GET THE GLOBAL - IT MAKES THINGS SO MUCH EASIER)
- District
- School
- Role in education (educator, instructional coach, admin, district role)
- Level they teach (early childhood, elem, middle, high)
- Subject they teach
- Twitter handle
You can collect other information, like college attended, professional networks, educational passions, etc. We keep ours short and sweet. These are all pieces of information we might use at some point at the current time or in the future.
Regularly update your information. Also keep in mind that some folks might have clutter or junk box rules. We have started to use our own emails to send out updates instead of the Eventbrite. If you register folks three months before your event, they may forget it unless you remind them. We try to do a six-week out, one month out, two weeks out and then one the week of the convening with a "TOP TEN THINGS TO KNOW" theme.
When someone cancels, delete their Eventbrite registration. It's important to keep this up to date, especially when you're ready to order food and prizes and make name badges. The planning team member who registers for Eventbrite can also create an inbox rule to make all emails associated with the event go to its own folder (add to favorites and you'll see the running total, as they'll be unread).
Step 6 - Develop Your Agenda
We usually have:
- Two to three sessions of breakouts that are at least 60-minutes. If you want to go any longer than 60-minutes, you'll need to only have two sessions.
- Breakout numbers are based on the number of attendees. We generally think of 25 people max per session and try to have at least five breakouts during each session. At our largest ECET2KY events, we may have up to ten breakouts for 300 attendees. You don't want to have too many, but you want to ensure you have quality sessions that meet ECET2KY's core beliefs and are high-quality sessions.
- Two rounds of Colleague Circles. These should be as close to an hour as possible, but they need to be at least 45 minutes. You can use pre-determined questions to make the circles flow like a Twitter chat on one general topic or pre-selected choices you give attendees. You could also do something called a "Problem of Practice" protocol. These are a bit more complicated and take 60 minutes. These are excellent ONLY if you are going to have the time to implement. Learn more here. Having attendees plan their next steps/Action Plan for when they leave the convening is also a wise use of this time. Here is an example of one of our ECET2KY Action Plans.
- Two to three Cultivating a Calling Keynotes. Here is a link to see some awesome past keynotes. There are really no wrong topics for these because they are so emotional and uplifting. These should be 15 to 20 minutes long. We space them out throughout the day and have the speakers give us their slides (if they have them) ahead of time.
Besides these key elements, we tend to do our door prizes at the end of the day (just give folks a ticket when they get their badge). We also have our PD certificates and gifts kept out of sight until the end of the day. If you're using lanyards and name badges, this is a great way to get all of them back.
Step 7 - Prepare your Speakers and Presenters
- Give them a background of Cultivating a Calling keynotes of the past. You can share this link for reference.
- Make sure you give them the time frame.
- Work with them before your convening to make sure their needs are met.
- If they have AV, make sure you take care of that at least a week before the convening.
- Have them give you a bio (100 words or so) and a headshot for your advertising and agenda.
- Give them some sort of token of appreciation, even if it is a handwritten note after the convening is over.
- Make sure you are upfront about any changes that need to be made with scheduling. Always accommodate their requests for the time of their session if you can.
- Give them a 5-minute warning and keep them as close to time as possible.
- Ask them to make their own copies or have links to share.
- Make sure the rooms are set up for sessions, from projectors to speakers to wifi before the event begins and have one person assigned as a tech guru in case issues arise.
- If you have the ability to, give them a thank you gift/note or have them stand at the end to be recognized.
- Make sure they have their contact information in their presentation or a card to give out for follow up.
Step 8 - Develop and Implement a Media Outreach Plan
Facebook - we share our nomination form in the early stages, continue to provide updates to the event and share pictures of speakers/presenters before the event.
- During the event, we encourage folks to share, share, share and tag, tag, tag. It's great publicity and it sets the stage for further recruitment.
- Keep in mind that there are people who ONLY use Facebook and this is the easiest way to cover the most ground.
- Educator groups, private school/district groups and pages, etc. Don't just flood with information at one time and then fall off.
- Keep regular updates on Facebook from your team.
- Tag folks, but don't over tag them.
Twitter - use hashtag for your event. Hashtag tips:
- We suggest #ECET2KY because it's established and has a wider net.
- If not, use #ECET2 at the front of the hashtag (#ECET2WKY, #ECET2CNKY, #ECET2Paducah)
- Try not to get too long - 10 characters is considered long
- Make sure you don't hop on to someone else's hashtag in another state or region (#ECET2 plus some form of KY at the end is usually a safe bet). Go to the Twitter search bar and enter the hashtag you're thinking of using to check and see who's using it.
- Make sure you're blasting that hashtag on all your advertising so folks will start using it. Make sure everyone on the planning team is using it.
- Even if you're adding to Facebook or Instagram, use the hashtag.
- In emails to attendees, remind them each time of the hashtag.
- Encourage folks to tweet as often as possible and take pictures.
- Have one of two folks on your team who focus on Tweeting and engaging throughout your event.
Step 9 - Manage On Site Logistics
TOP FIVE COMMUNICATION LOGISTICS FOR YOUR TEAM
- HAVE A PREDETERMINED FORM OF COMMUNICATION.
- MAKE SURE ALL PLANNING TEAM MEMBERS CHECK THEIR PHONES.
- HAVE A GROUP THREAD AND MAKE SURE PEOPLE KNOW EACH OTHER'S NUMBERS.
- DON'T WASTE TEXTS ON SILLY CHATTER. PAY ATTENTION AND BE ATTENTIVE.
- TEXTING IS EASIER TO PAY ATTENTION TO THAN USING VOXER OR A BACKCHANNEL
Make sure you have a point person for registration, for food, for AV and for social media. Other things we suggest:
- Wear comfortable shoes.
- Have one computer set up with any keynote presentation, welcome slides, running information - IN ONE FILE.
- Keep the prizes and PD certificates out of site.
- If you're doing name tags with badges, it's pretty easy to just lay out the name badges in alphabetical order and then have lanyards and name badge protectors to the side. It keeps people flowing.
- If you have name badges laid out, you don't need to have a big sign in sheet. You'll know who doesn't show up by the extra badges.
- Always have extra badges.
- If someone shows up without a badge, make sure you have them fill out all the necessary information so you'll be able to contact.
- Keep all your important stuff in a clearly marked place so planning team members know where to look.
- If planning team members aren't in sessions, use that time to tidy up and set things out for the next activity.
Step 10 - Continue the Momentum
- Continue to reach out on social media. Encourage folks to share pics.
- Regularly share out pics your planning team members took after the convening.
- Send a follow-up email sharing names and emails of attendees to encourage continued conversations.
- Reach out four to six weeks out and check in on attendees.
- Ask them to refer two of their peers they think would be a great future attendee. Use a Google form to collect that information.
ECET2KY
Email: meme.ratliff@jefferson.kyschools.us
Phone: 502-724-8464
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ecet2ky/
Twitter: @ecet2ky