Turn
a Three-Ring Circus Into a Three-Ring Binder
Tips for managing the paperwork that
goes along with traveling with students
Traveling with students is kind of like going to the dentist. You know that you have to do it. You're not always looking forward to it. There's usually apprehension about the possibility of pain, and sometimes there is some. Finally, when you get home, you typically feel pretty good about going, and about the way you handled it all.
We've spoken about the responsibilities and the legal exposure faced by DECA advisors when traveling with students. Here’s a tip for compiling, organizing, and managing the piles of paperwork that go along with traveling. If you've ever noticed an advisor having problems at a hotel desk, when picking up tour tickets, or dealing with a competition snafu, the chances are that (s)he was fumbling with papers falling out of a manila envelope or the bottom of a briefcase. If you have been that advisor, or could have been that advisor, here's our tip for managing the paperwork, and making it easier to fill out next time around: put your three-ring circus into a three-ring binder. Here's how it works.
Buy a three-ring binder and a set of tabbed dividers. Label each divider as shown below. Information shown in red Italics is stuff that you should write down on the divider page itself, so it's available for reference in future years.
Conference Registration
This is where you put a copy of your conference
registration, as well as a copy of all checks cut, and any important e-mails
that might solve a problem (or stop an argument). State and National DECA addresses, phone and
fax numbers, e-mail addresses. Your school and district bookkeeper's names and phone numbers.
Housing
All correspondence to and from the hotel
where you are staying. Copies of
all checks cut. Address
and phone numbers of hotels, as well as important contact people at those
hotels. Broadmoor info is a must, and
you can put about twenty years worth of Glenwood Springs, Western Regional, and
ICDC hotel info on this divider...sure beats spending hours tracking it down
the next time you need it.
Transportation
Copies of correspondence with your travel
agent. Copies
of tickets. Copies of bus charter
contracts. Shuttle and
car rental agreements. Contact info for
your travel agent, charter bus company, district
transportation department, car rental companies. Airline
service numbers. Write down shuttle info in the cities you
travel to for future reference. Cab companies.
Meals
Copies of any contracts and notes about verbal arrangements (reservations) for any meals you have arranged. Names and phone numbers of good restaurants in cities you visit with DECA. Names of maitre d’s and managers of places you stop to eat while traveling (like the Village Inn in Silverthorne on your way to Glenwood Springs.) Mike Silvestro’s and Dining reservations phone numbers at the Broadmoor.
Activities
Copies of tour package confirmations and copies of checks
cut to pay for them. Info
about when and where to pick them up.
Notes about good places to go (e.g. the Mercado in
Emergency
Information/Forms
All student medical forms and conference conduct forms. Any forms your district requires you to
carry. Check them all to make sure
they're completely filled out. Hospital contact
info. Your
administrators' contact info. Your teaching partner (s) home contact info.
Miscellaneous
Golf courses, shopping
malls, grocery stores, anything else that you have to look up while you’re
traveling.
Zippered
Pouch
Keep one in the back of your binder and when you empty your pockets out at the end of the night, put all those receipts in it! This will make it easier to complete your P-card and/or district travel reports when you return to school.
Keep this binder handy when you travel. When you get back to school, take all the information out (put it in a file folder and file it away), but leave the dividers in the binder. Use the same binder for every trip you take. When you start to get ready for your next trip, the dividers will not only help you get organized, but they'll also remind you of the items you need to prepare and provide that info you look for every year. IT will not only help you keep everything in one place on your desk at school, it’ll also help once you leave town. Try it--you'll find that using a system like this will save time and take some of the aggravation out of your life!