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Field Trips to Shows: How Teachers & Arts Companies Can Make It Work Better
by Becky Brett
Submitted: Saturday, December 06, 2008
Each year for Lyric Opera’s Opera in the Neighborhoods (OIN) program, communication with teachers is a struggle. OIN is a free program for elementary and middle school students, featuring a fully staged production of an opera. The opera itself is abridged and translated into English, but it is indeed a full production and quite involved to produce. This year for OIN we attempted to streamline the communications process with mixed results.
Rather than three separate mailings to each confirmed teacher, we put everything into one packet: confirmation info, driving directions for the busses, signage for the busses, and study guides (if requested). Although this did save us money and time in putting together several separate mailings, we did not take into consideration what might happen if a teacher’s mailing got lost (either in the US postal system or at the school itself). This resulted in several no-shows the first day, which we quickly corrected by calling every school (more than 200 of them) to be sure they got their materials and were still planning on coming.
Throughout my several years working on this project, I have come up with a few general guidelines that show what Lyric Opera does to help the teachers and what the teachers can do to help us serve them better.
Here’s how Lyric Opera tries to make things easier:
1. All reservation forms and applications for Lyric Opera educational programs, as well as the OIN study guides, can be found and downloaded from the Lyric website.
2. The programs are free for the schools (although donations are welcome)
3. By streamlining communications, teachers only have to deal with one packet of mail from us, and the follow up phone call ensures there are no lingering doubts or questions.
4. We pay attention to the details, like providing signage for each school’s busses so that we may easily dismiss the students by school, in the order that their busses are parked outside.
Here’s what the schools can do to make our job easier.
1. Bring all the kids you said you’d bring. One or two sick children is expected, but when entire classrooms don’t show up and don’t call, that is disappointing for everyone. Remember, the seat you have reserved is a seat someone else isn’t getting.
2. Follow up with the company if you think you should have gotten your confirmation letter, study guides or any other materials you’ve been promised. Don’t assume that because you didn’t hear from them, you did not get the tickets you wanted.
3. Return phone calls and emails in a timely manner.
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What you want, wants you
...A study has shown that only three percent of all Americans list their goals in writing...[and] do reach their goals. ...belong to this group of people, who reach their goals and live the life they want...
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