How Teachers Can Build Their Resume Through Event Management

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How do you build your resume as a new teacher?

There are many ways to go about answering this question. Whether it be time in the profession, pursuing an advanced degree, or taking on leadership roles within your faculty. But what if you are a new teacher? Or a teacher who is looking to add a new skill to your repertoire?

Would you consider giving event management a try?

How Event Management Can Boost Your Resume

By event management, I mean organising things like talent shows, hackathons, fine arts festivals, and science fairs—anything that brings your school community together. 

On the plus side, helping out with, or being the lead organiser for, any of these will allow you to connect with more teachers, more members of staff, and more students in your school.

On the down side, organising an event can take a lot of time and energy on top of your already busy course load.

One potential danger: becoming known as the school’s event manager. New teachers often feel pressured to take on events, so it’s important to know your options and what your contract says. 

Taking on an event on top of a courseload made up of new preps and a class or two that are proving just a bit much to manage is by no means advised. But here, having some know-how ahead of time can make for a world of difference. And serve as a means of showing just how event management savvy you are.

Why Event Management Helps Build Connections

For high school teachers in the public sector, there are companies that specialise in running school-based events like hackathons. If you don’t have time to organize the event yourself, you can build your resume by being the teacher who knows which companies to hire.

For teachers in the private sector, where your employment depends on more than classroom work, hiring a company may not be in the budget. If you want to become the teacher who can run any event, EduWise has resources to help.

Adding event management to your teaching repertoire is a great way to help build out your resume. A word to the wise though.

5 Tips for Organising Your First Event

If you decide to run your first event, keep these 5 tips in mind:

• Don’t rush to say “yes” if you’re asked to manage an event. 

Say this: “That sounds interesting, can I have some time to think about it?”

If not, just say “No!”

• Don’t do it alone.

Chances are, someone on your staff has already organised something similar to your event. 

Make sure to seek them out, ask for help, and ask them about any hard lessons that were learned when someone tried to run something like this before.

• Don’t do it alone (Part 2). 

Oftentimes teachers can forget they are part of a profession which goes beyond the confines of their school. There is better than a good chance that another teacher or teacher within your school district, or within your school association has run the event you are trying to organise before. So don’t be afraid to reach out to your wider teacher network. 

Even if it involves asking a teacher who is a friend of a friend of an acquaintance from another town.Teachers love to help each other, and the best insights come from those who’ve done it before.

• Make sure information is easy to access and centrally located.

Keep information flowing openly and transparently. Use shared folders or calendars for meeting dates, to-do lists, and timetables.

Although, when sharing these resources with others oftentimes a ‘read only’ link can save a lot of hassle. As I am sure, I can’t be the only one who has known the pain that accidental edits have caused.

• Be intentional when involving students.

Running an event is a great way to get students involved in their wider school community. They can also serve as ways for students who may not be academically inclined to show their skills.

But it is important to have a clear understanding of just what you want the students to do. And even more important to sell the students on just what’s in it for them should they do those things better than well.

Start Building Your Event Management Experience

What sort of event would you want to organise? And who would you reach out to in order to help? As you’d be amazed how many teachers have added to their resumes, grown their departments, and given their students something to look forward to year after year!