I should probably cross post this on the Chapter Directors's site too but for now...
This past weekend, I we held a STO leadership workshop and planning session.
What made this so successful was we invited Alex Minton (ITO chair alumnus) and Grace Alt (Current ITO Chair) down to run these.
Despite also hosting Hurricane Matthew the same day in Eastern NC, we had 9 of our 11 STOs attend. Alex (with a bit of tag teaming from Grace) took the group through a personality/strengths assessment and and spent a couple of hours on specific board tactics related to leadership, After a break for lunch (which was in effect a continuation of the session) we reconvened and Grace took the board through planning for our Festival in March.
The key to all this was 1) there were no adults involved (though we provided the daily schedule for the Festival) as it was completely coordinated by the two ITOs and 2) Alex and Grace worked closely together to prepare the workshop.
I really cannot stress how successful it was, how our student board took ownership of planning and logistics and how motivated they were at the end of the day. With Alex's guidance, they each identified their strengths and were able to with Grace's help to sort themselves into teams with very specific and practical tasks to tackle.
If you can find a way to do this...we are in our 3rd year of having STOs and it was a truly effective and practical means to find a way to utilize and include STOs in a meaningful way with planning and executing our Festival.
--Jerf
The cost to us was for travel, hotel and a modest honorarium and worth every penny.
We first talked about this as a possibility at Festival and then nailed it down at Summit.
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John E. R. Friedenberg * Director of Theatre * Department of Theatre & Dance * Wake Forest University |
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