Are you looking for a way to reduce planning time for special events such as student registration, open house, parent/teacher conferences, new student or teacher orientation, award ceremonies, concerts, plays, graduation, etc.?  Here’s a great organizational and time management tool — a special event checklist.  For each special event in your school, with the planning committee create a checklist of everything that needs to be done to ensure the success of the event (see Graduation Checklist example at this link).   After the event, meet with the committee and discuss what worked, what went wrong, and how things could be improved.  Revise the checklist as needed and save it.  When the event rolls around next year, simply pull out your checklist.  The event checklist will save lots of time and ensure that things are not forgotten from the previous year’s event.

For more organization tools, see

• Morford, L. M. (2005, January). 3 tools to get you organized. Principal Leadership, 5(5), 24–27.