Episode 13: CTSO Sponsor - Competition Trip Guideline

0:00 Hey, hey, hey, hey, there it is back to school time. That is for spring 2024. I know many of you are back in the classroom or headed back to the classroom. And really what that means is that c t s o competition is headed into full speed ahead. Right? I know that because I'm actually going to be a judge this year for the district in which I used to teach in. And that's going to be happening in a couple of weeks. I really look forward to judging, being on the opposite side of the coin this year as a judge. So anyhow, I know that I've been talking about DECA related to roleplay, DECA related to project presentation DECA related to prepping your competition or your chapter for competition. So today, I'm going to be talking about trip time. So gather your pen and paper and get ready to take a few notes. I'm going to try to go through this pretty quickly. I don't want to make it a long episode. So listening, gather your notes and everything and stay to the end for the freebie that I have for this particular episode. All right, you ready? Let's go.

1:25 You're listening to Marketing EdVenture, the hub for business, fashion, marketing and other CTE educators who integrate marketing into the learning experience. I'm your host, Jackie Walker. Each week, I'll cover marketing, education concepts, strategies, tips, trends, frameworks, and other information to equip you to connect your classroom to digital natives while cultivating an engaged learning environment. So come on into the room, where your favorite beverage snacks and even your cell phone are all welcome.

2:05 All right, let's hop right in here. So today I have for you a DECA Advisor Trip Time Guideline. And yes, it's labeled DECA. But this is an editable document that you can call whatever you want to call it. And you will be able to add, take away whatever you want to do and make changes. But this is simply a guideline. This is a guideline for when you get ready to go on a trip for competition. And I've come up with a really just an outline of some of the things that I used to do with my students, I know this is not going to be all encompassing for everyone. However, for that DECA advisor, who this is your first time going to competition, you may not have the guideline, you may not know everything that you need to do Sure, maybe one of your DECA buddies said, you know, this is some of the things that we do, be sure you do this or that. But it may not be all encompassing. And then maybe you don't even have a DECA buddy. I mean, because sometimes as a new teacher, it can be a little bit lonely, when you're doing an organization, like DECA, and you're the only person on your campus who is doing this. And you know, unless you have connected with some teachers from other campuses, during meetings, during conferences, or what have you, then you just may not have the access to the things that are, you know, very key to help you be successful and cut down on the stress.

3:49 Okay, so I've put together this list of things that I would do when I was getting ready for competition. So I'm just gonna go through this, it is in four sections, basically. So I have my before trip, things that I would do, I would have things that I would do the week of the trip, and then the date of the trip, and then the day of returning home from the trip. So those are the four sections that I have. And then I have my silos like I had my silos. In the previous episode when I was talking about the “teacher prep for competition”. The silos are three, one is district, that's the first level of competition, and then state and then national competition. All right. And then within each one of those silos, there are designated people. So there's five people in each silo. There's the teacher, the student, the parent, the administration, and the chaperone. And so just imagine those being vertical silos and then the four sections are going across horizontally and And you're able to check off who is involved in each task within those sections. So you would check it off in the silo. So anyway, let's get to it, you'll be able to see this when you actually request the document in the description or in my show notes. So be sure to do that so that you can access this editable, free document.

5:23 Okay. All right, so let's get started. So the first section, as I said, is before the trip. Now, some of the things and this is not all encompassing, like I said, but some key things that I did to prepare for the trip was, number one, secure the funding, make sure that the money is ready, if it hasn't already been paid. Most of our competitions require payment prior to us even leaving for competition, our deadlines usually hit right before competition time. But secure the funding, if you didn't get it and send it in, make sure you have that check with you so that you can go to registration and turn it in once you get to the location. Also funding for the actual transportation funding for food funding for all the expenses that would be incurred while you're on the trip. All right, so that's number one, secure the bag. All right.

5:23 Number two, within the before the trip, as I always created a trip binder. Yes, a trip binder. One of the things you may not know about me is that I create a binder for everything. That's my organization key is to create a binder, let me make a folder or what have you. I'm gonna have something to contain the information. All right. So my trip binder was very all encompassing, it had a lot of things in it. And I'm thinking about actually putting a document together that has all of this information. But some of the things just to give you an idea would be my itinerary for the trip from the beginning to the end of the trip. I did keep all of the permission forms field trip permission forms because it had the student information on it as well as the parent. And then you know, like your financials, student list and a whole host of other things, I'm not going to get into the whole thing. But that's just an idea of some of the things that I created. I put in my trip binder. This allowed me to have a one stop place to find any pertinent information that I needed. For this trip. I didn't have to go digging through my bag, or anything like that it was in the binder, anything that I needed. All right.

7:50 Now the third thing that I would create is any emergency bag. I had a friend, well I have a friend, she's a nurse practitioner. And I remember when my son was going off to college, and she created him an emergency bag that had like everything that he can need for first aid in war. And I was like, wow, that's such a great idea. So I decided that I'm going to have an emergency bag for my students. Because let me tell you, when you go to competitions with a lot of girls, there's always something that has needed, always. Okay, so that emergency bag includes, you know, band aids, ponytail holders, eye drops, lens solution, and a whole host of things. Just imagine all the things that you may pack yourself when you're going on a trip. But that's what the emergency bag would have. Because inevitably, somebody is going to go on the trip and not have context solutions and their content came out or dried or whatever, they don't have anything to put their context in overnight. Trust me. So an emergency bag is a must have. So I create that for my trips, even for the local trip. It may not be as big as not all encompassing as when we go on an out of state or overnight trip or anything like that. But I still create an emergency bag.

9:17 All right, and then for the Before the Trip, if we're doing our long distance trips, I create a snack tote. And it may be totes okay, because the kids need to have some food. And I taught in a title one school too. So a lot of times we had challenges with money or finances. You know, the students had challenges with finances. And so I didn't want any kid to feel left out. Because they didn't have money to go and buy things at the you know, snacks and things while we were on our trip. So I would create a snack tote and I would make it available to everyone and Sometimes I would create a snack bag for every student. So I would hand those out and they can have them in their room. And so you know, hey, just want to make sure everybody's taken care of, and the kids love it. I mean, they're like little kindergarteners, when you give them little snack bags. I mean, they want their snack bag of chips, candy, or granola or what have you, they were excited about that. So those are the four things I did before the trip. Again, I secured the funds, I had created a trip folder, I had created an emergency bag, and a snack tote. All right, and then all of those I would do for every level of competition districts state in national, except for the snack totes, I didn't necessarily do anything for that, because it's local, it's a day trip is not something that we're going to be doing overnight. When we go to companies, I may have some, you know, I may bring them breakfast in the morning time, but not necessarily a snack bag. And when we get to the competition, we have food for them anyway. And then we headed back home after the competition. So no need for carrying a big little tote of snacks.

11:05 Okay, so moving on, into the week of the trip. Now there's a lot of chaos that tends to go with, you know, the week of the trip, depending on what day it falls on. Like, for instance, this particular competition that I'm going to be judging her. It's on a Wednesday, that's smack dab in the middle of the week. So, you know, you really have to have your things ready probably before that week. But anyway, the week of the trip, you want to have some things in order. So let's start with the substitute folder. I know every district has their own guidelines behind creating, you know, a substitute folder, or what have you. We were supposed to leave like a little red folder for the substitute. That became too obvious for the students. So I rarely left that little red folder, I did other things instead. But we also could attach the student assignments to the substitute request. So it's digital, and they would have it, they could print it out before they came into the room. But I would either leave a book and have the documents or folder with the book and explanations. But I also because my students worked on their computers and had their either Google classroom or with my dual credit students, they had their Blackboard, which is the eCampus for the district that we were in. So I would upload their work to whatever system they were on, whether it was Google Classroom, whether it was eCampus, their work was uploaded. So there was no excuse as to why they didn't have it. But also printed out a copy for the sub and left, you know, of the printed information and the related books or whatever, for the sub all laid out on my desk.

13:10 And I also sent an email with all of that information to my teaching buddy. I taught in a magnet school, I was the marketing side of the fashion program. And then there was a design teacher, who was the design side of the fashion program. So that was my teaching buddy. And I made sure that she had an email and detailed information about what each class needed to do. While I wasn't good. And she was always good about going in and checking on my classroom to make sure that the sub was okay. And that the students were doing what they needed to do. So that's great. So if you have a teaching buddy, give them the information for the work that the students need to do. So they can make sure that they're on task. And these are for the students, of course that are going to be left behind who are not competing. All right, so far, we've created a sub folder, we've uploaded our work to the LMS systems that the students use, and we've sent an email to our teacher, buddy, right.

14:20 And then you want to create and make sure you have a group created in some type of chat system or app, such as I used to Remind. That's what our school district uses for communicating to the students. And so I would also come in because I had a lot of the parents that are already in the Remind as well. So I would set up a group in Remind that was for competition. And so I added all the competing students who were in competition, and I would add the parents and then I would have this group that I could communicate it through at the time that we were on our trip. And so I love to include the parents in it. So hey, the parents can feel confident with their students being away, especially when we're traveling to state or traveling nationally. It helped the parents feel comfortable in knowing where their child was and what kind of communication I was having with them. So I would create a group. So again, Remind can be one, you can create Google Chat, I don't know if you can do that with Google Classroom. I don't know, I never tried that one. But you can also do Telegraph. Or Group Me, those are really popular ones. But I had with those, you're going to have to get the phone numbers and all that kind of information and get the students into those different apps and things like that. I never used any of those. I stuck with Remind because that's what we use as a district, it didn't require me getting phone numbers, emails or anything like that. All I had to do was just add the student to the group from my own classroom group. So that works really easy. And it's really easy to get parents signed up with it as well. So I, once I have that group established, I send out the itinerary to the group so that the students, the parents in the chaperone would have the itinerary of our trip from the moment that we leave the school to the moment we return back to the school.

16:29 All right, and then next up for that Week of the Trip, I would give all of the students a letter for their teachers. For district we would only be missing one day of class. And so our district was on a block schedule. And so that means that our students will be missing four of their classes. And so that will give them letters to take to each one of their teachers, to get a signature from the teacher, the letter lets the teacher know that the student is going to be missing class, because they're going to compete. And if you know, if there's any work for them to do, please allow them to do that, or provide them with the work, they can do it for homework, or what have you. And I will get to teach her to sign off on it. And the student would bring it back. And we will just follow that way. So that we have documentation that the teacher knows that student will not be in class, and that the student knows what work is due for the class accountability all the way around. All right. And hopefully the student I mean, the teacher would not count the student absent, that's the whole, that's one of the main things about it is just making sure the student, the teacher knows that the student would not be there and not count them absent. And then the second part is the student being accountable for their work.

17:54 I will also email the staff, this is just you know, that's the, that's the one requirement that we have to do for our district is to email our campus, we had to email the staff to let so this teachers would be aware of students that weren't going to be in their class. But my letter to the teachers was my backup to the email. So I would send that email, like at the beginning of the week, so that the teachers had enough time to mark in their roster schedule or whatever, that that student was not going to be in class, it gave them time to prep. And then it also helped because like, you know, with other organizations like football, team sports and all that kind of stuff, it lets the teacher knows, oh, if half of my class is not going to be here, then I may want to change what I'm doing for that day and wait to do something that may, you know, be big and important, like a test or something like that, save it for another day. Because you know, I don't want to have to give a test when I'm only going to have half the class. Whereas I can just, you know, adjust it to a day when the class everybody in the class is going to be there. So it's just accountability for the teacher being able to make adjustments based upon the students who are going to be away and not in attendance. So that email, like I said, would go out generally at the beginning of the week.

19:21 And then I would also print the email and hand deliver it to the attendance office because it always happens that some student is counted absent. Because the teacher didn't pay attention to the email. A teacher didn't remember that they got that letter, and the student was going to be absent or something. So when I hand deliver it to the attendance office, generally, the attendance clerk will go in and mark the students on a trip. And I forgot how I think ours was a letter S in the attendance book, so that when the teachers pulled up the attendance to do the attendance, the students were already marked, as on a school field trip. glory, hallelujah, I love that, because they couldn't change it. So that is what I would do the week of the trip, create a sub folder, upload the work to the LMS, email my teacher, buddy, send an itinerary to the group chat, send a letter to the teachers, or just have the students take the letters to the teachers, email the staff and hand deliver the student list to the attendance office. Okay, and I'm pretty sure there's other things that could be done during that time. But these are just some really key things just like some housekeeping things that I took care of.

20:52 All right, so let's talk about the departure day. This is the day. All right, so we would meet up at our school. And in general 99% of the time, this is where we met for our trips, unless we were going out of state or on a tour to state. Sometimes it just really depends. There was one location that was pretty central because my school is a magnet school. And students come from all over Dallas, and even some suburbs, some suburban cities in Dallas to attend our school. And our school was located in East Dallas. And many times the highway that we needed to take to go on our trip was in the southern part of Dallas. And that's where a lot of the kids came from. So that would be like a central place to meet pretty much because that part where we would meet at one of the district stadiums was right off of the highway that we needed to take to go out of town. And so sometimes we will meet at that spot as a central point. But wherever we would meet, we would have the students check in, I would do an attendance check. So I have my little attendance roster and I'm checking people off as they are arriving and getting on the bus.

22:22 But before that I also had a competition list of items that I would need like easels, binders or you know, printed projects, you know, our competition boards or whatever our supplies to repair a competition board or, or what have you. So I just made sure I have my list of items. And I just had my checklist. And I would check off those things to make sure that I personally was accountable for bringing those things extra DECA, DECA jackets, what have you.

22:56 And then once we were at our departure site, I would do the attendance and then have the kids board the bus and do the attendance, do a check again, just to make sure because you never know kids may get on and off the bus. But I would check for them again before the bus departed. Or if we were taking a flight because we're going out of state to international competition, I would do the headcount at the airport. And make sure everybody's accounted for once we get through our check in, make sure our kids everybody's there and accounted for, and then we would board our flight. All right. And then we're happy on the bus, happy on the flight heading to competition.

23:44 And of course, we have our “time of arrival at the hotel”. So once we're at the hotel, we're going to go through registration and get everyone checked in and accounted for for their rooms and get them up and up to their rooms. And then it's time for me to go check in for the competition.

24:07 So this is registration, we have to go into our registration check in. And this is where we pay all of our monies if we haven't paid it yet for our registration. And we will pick up our packets which had all the kids badges, tags, lanyards, their programs, and you know, their competition times and all of that good stuff. So I will pick up those bags and then go back to the hotel and have a meeting with the students and this is when we distribute all of the information that they need, their lanyards, their badges and everything.

24:49 All right, so we have our student advisor meeting. And then we would have just depending on the timing of everything and if our Competition was local to where we are school is in Dallas or Fort Worth, you know, then we may have a little bit more leeway time a little bit more extra time in between meeting and then having dinner with the students. So they just may have a little free time there. But as far as my itinerary is concerned, we would have the student meeting and then we have the student advisor student dinner. And we would do that before going off to the opening ceremony because that was generally a little later in the evening. And of course, we have curfew, and the kids have to be back in their hotel rooms by a certain time. So then we'd have the opening ceremony.

25:46 Now, as I'm going through this, I haven't told you where all this falls in the silo. So as I go back to just recap, the day of the departure, I will tell you that the competition checklist of items, I would do that for every level of competition. And that involved me and the student, because there were some items for the student that needed to be we need to ensure that they had all right, and then so the attendance check would just be me involved in every level of competition, check in attendance, and then boarding the bus, it would be I would say that would involve me, the student and a chaperone because I'm the one checking and checking for the students and making sure that all my chaperones are there, and that's at every level of competition. And catching the flight. We normally didn't catch any lights. Unless we were going to a national competition. When we had state competition, we used the bus because that was pretty accessible. For us. I mean, think the longest drive we've had is a six hour drive. Going down to Corpus Christi, I believe that is. But anyhow, we only had the bus for either district and state. We never used a bus. Well, I can't say we never used a bus for nationals. Well, we never did use a bus for nationals, because nationals have always been like in California and Florida and Atlanta and Utah. It's going to be in Houston this year. So I think the kids will be catching a bus to Houston. But anyhow, and like I said, We've never taken a flight unless it was national. But I do have on here that you could you know x off taking a flight for state or for nationals. All right, and then for the hotel arrival and check in. We didn't have overnight for district, our districts have, they used to be two days, and we did have overnight stay. But now they're only one day. So your district may have, you know, multiple days. And if so you can put an x in that column as something that you need to account for. But for district, there was nothing that we needed to account for. And so arrival at the hotel was generally for state and for nationals. District registration check in was for all levels. And that will only involve me. So that's I have an x under teacher for each one of those. And then for the adviser student meeting, of course that involved the teacher, the student, and the chaperones, and we had those for each level of competition. And then the advisor student dinner, we only had dinner for state in national because those were multiple days of competition. So we didn't have an advisor, student dinner for the district. And then of course the opening ceremony is every level of competition and that involves the student, the teacher and the chaperones. All right, that concludes the section for Date of Departure.

28:59 Now let's get into the date of return. I'm not covering, if there's like more than two days of competition, I'm not covering those in between days because there is so much going on. On those in-between days, it will be hard to really put together a list of things to cover because it's just random is it's so many things advisors are at their stations working their duties. Students are running around during their competitions at various times on different days. It's just a lot going on. So I chose to just focus on the day of departure and date of return. So on the day of return from competition, our day looks like this. This is how mid late your day may look similar or it may have more or less things. So we always started the day off, getting ready to go to the award ceremony. So everyone is To be professional ready, and meet in the lobby of the hotel with their luggage. So we gathered together really quickly. And we either secure our luggage, on the bus, or in the concierge area if our bus has not arrived yet. So those are the two things that we do, once we meet down in the lobby, we're going to secure the luggage. And then we'll, I mean, by that time the students could have gotten themselves something to eat our will, they can get something to eat after we secure the luggage.

30:36 But the next major thing that we do is we hit two, I do the attendance I'm sorry, I do attendance before the ceremony. So once everybody's luggage and everything is secured, I do attendance. And of course, the luggage in the check attendance before the ceremony is at the state and national levels because again, we don't travel anywhere where we need luggage for district. Although you may do that. All right. And so I'm going to be checking the students, I'm going to be checking with the chaperone for the luggage. And I'm doing an attendance check for all the teachers, students and the chaperone. All right.

31:19 And then the next thing is to go to the award ceremony. And of course, we have award ceremonies at every level of competition, and everyone has to be there, the student, the teacher, and the chaperone. Okay. And then we do another attendance after the ceremony, so we can make sure we have everyone before we depart. So we will do an attendance check, we will have a spot to meet before we board the bus or head to the airport to catch our flight. So we would do that at every level competition, of course, that involves the student, the teacher and the chaperone as well.

32:03 And then finally, I will send a message to the group stating our departure and this is mainly for the parents. So they all know that hey, we're on the road. I usually tell my students anyway, text your parents, call your parents, let them know we are leaving and our expected arrival is at such and such time. And halfway through that time I let them know to check in with your parents and again, let them know we are X number of hours or minutes away. And I also send a message to the group and that ends the section for the date of return home that covers all of the activities that happen related to the trip that I do that I didn't do and which I think would be a great guideline for you to use. It at least sets the foundation for you.

33:03 So you will be able to access this guideline by clicking on “Trip Time Guideline" in the description or in my show notes. Oh my goodness, I thought I could do this in like 15 minutes. I'm telling you I was talking fast and I felt like I was talking too fast. But apparently not because this has taken longer than 15 minutes but I hope that you find this information to be very valuable in a talking about all of this kind of makes me miss the competition season it really does but I will live vicariously through all of you as you go out there in your conquer this competition season. And as I watch you post your things on Instagram pictures and all I look forward to seeing it all and let me tell you, I know that I went through some things really fast and I had the things like the emergency bag if you want to know what was in my emergency bag because let me tell you it was pretty stuffed and I usually had like two emergency bags but if you want to know what's in that emergency bag, just DM me on Instagram. I'm at marketing Ed venture and DM me emergency back and I will send you a list of my emergency bag for sure. But don't miss the freebie with the TAT. The DECA advisor trip time guidelines so that you can make sure you have your list and are able to check things off as you get prepared for your trips. Have a great season.

34:51 Thanks for listening to Marketing EdVenture. Remember to subscribe rate, review and share this episode with someone you think would benefit From the information shared here today, if you have any questions or want to connect with me, find me on Instagram at Marketing EdVenture. All links and resources discussed this episode can be found in the show notes at MarketingEdVenture.com