Meeting Logistics

Selecting the Date and Time

If possible, it is best to hold Teachers' Days during the work week, since professional development is an integral part of teaching and should take place during regular work time. It is recognized, however, that a few teachers are unable or unwilling to miss class, especially in April with AP exams approaching. This planning scheme has seemed to work out for the majority of the Teachers' Day participants.

In selecting the day of the week, there are a few important considerations. First, Mondays and Fridays should be avoided, since it is often hard for schools to find substitutes on these days. Second, it works well to place the Teachers' Day somewhere in the middle of the APS meeting, so there will be plenty of physicists available to be luncheon guests.

Experience shows that it is best to schedule Teachers' Day activities to match approximately the school day, beginning, for example, at 8:00 a.m. and ending at 2:30-3:00 p.m. This has been found very beneficial to participants in order to accommodate their after-school commitments.

Scheduling talks after lunch has been found less than optimal owing to the potential for sleepiness, according to feedback from participants. A good solution has been to schedule two talks in the morning, with a workshop in between.

Breakfast

Breakfast presents a nice opportunity for the teachers to get to know each other. The juice, coffee, tea, and pastries are set out on a table at the beginning of the day. The participants enter, register (see below), get their food, and take a seat.

Lunch

Physicists attending the meeting are invited to join the teachers for lunch, and it is good to arrange it so there is only one physicist per table of five teachers. The tables can be numbered using cardboard tents, and lunch guests are informed of their table number as they arrive. In recruiting the lunch guests, it is helpful to consult with the division or section leadership for ideas and suggestions.

As you build up a database of feedback from previous meetings (see Feedback and Evaluation), you can identify particularly effective luncheon guests and invite them back for future events. It is also helpful to keep track of those luncheon guests who felt most enthusiastic about their participation. Experience has shown that invitations for approximately 3 times the number of required guests should be sent out in order to yield the desired number.

One option is to set up different lunch tables for different interest groups, such as Physics First, AP physics, etc., as well as for particular research topics. The interest group for each table is identified with a cardboard tent, and lunch guests are matched to tables of their expressed interest. This approach can, however, create the unrealistic expectation in the participants that a lunch guest will be an expert on the discussion topic.

Lunch can usually be catered by the hotel, consisting, for example, of sandwiches, salad, and dessert. Participants serve themselves and then take their food to their tables. The total number attending lunch for the March and April APS meetings is typically about 95, which includes the presenters and APS staff.

Meeting Place and Rooms

Teachers' Days typically take place in the same hotel at which the APS division or section that meeting takes place. It helps to reserve two meeting rooms, especially when the event involves over 30 participants, to accommodate the concurrent workshops. For smaller meetings, one room for both purposes can suffice.

Main Room: The main room, where the whole group meets, is typically set with several round tables, each able to seat six people or so. In addition to this, five 6' x 3' tables are helpful for the following:

• two at the door, to hold registration materials and giveaways
• two elsewhere in the back of the room to hold workshop materials
• one near the front of the room for the presenters' materials

Breakout Room: The second room is the site of the second of the concurrent activities. For a typical workshop it is typical to request a room that can hold about 36 at rectangular tables.

Audio/Visual

In the main room, the following items will need to be available: an overhead projector and screen, a sound system, a lavaliere microphone, computer projector, and a white board with markers. The breakout room should also be provided with an overhead projector. Anything else requested by the speakers will need to be arranged as well.

Registration

Participants initial a sign-in sheet as they file in. At this time you can provide giveaways, such as posters, to each participant. The APS Education and Outreach Department can supply an envelope of these items - contact Ed Lee at lee@aps.org.

Badges

Badges are provided for participants, presenters, and APS staff.

Parking

The APS covers the cost of parking for the participants, an important inducement to our prospective attendees. The hotel can usually supply parking vouchers, which can be handed out to the participants at breakfast and which they then submit when they leave the hotel parking garage. They need to be informed in advance that they must park in the hotel garage to use the voucher. The cost of the vouchers is added to the APS hotel bill.

Another option can be to use public parking garages, which are typically less expensive, but may require teachers to be reimbursed in cash on the spot, which can be a nuisance for organizers. Some of the teachers prefer the convenience of parking in the hotel.