‘Teacher’ is a title that is not merely given but rewarded. The role means you have a duty to the student to instruct, inform, inspire and care. Your juggling expertise is about to jump another level as raising student interest for a school trip can be one of the hardest things to do. This is made all the trickier to manage if you’ve got numerous trips in the school launching at the same time or if you are competing with other trips. So here begins your Level 7 Juggling lessons as well as some great tips to get your students interested in your trip.

Have a parents’ evening
The benefits of a parents’ evening are two-fold: you can get the parents on side and create a buzz about the trip. Inject enthusiasm into your presentation to show the benefits of learning outside the classroom and take advantage of using a PowerPoint presentation. Here you can include a rough itinerary, lots of photos, and even a video if you have one. Gather together a series of images from your last trip to show the learning and enjoyment the group experienced last year. Do your homework, know what places will get the students excited and use them in your presentation. By the end of the evening the parents will want to sign up themselves!

Set up a Facebook page
Social media is a fantastic way to promote the trip within a group. Students will be able to interact with each other, talk about the trip and check out previous tour photos or images of the destination that will awaken the desire to get involved. Get the students talking with ‘Polls’ to gather their opinion on aspects of the trip that are open to discussion. The more people that see your page the more likely you are to get more students signing up to get involved in the trip.

Create a media wall
Why isolate the trip amongst a select group? Bring the school together as a community with a media wall where students can learn more about their destination and attach images or their own photos. Make this display a feature of school spirit while allowing for learning to be visible through research and presentation skills. Some schools choose to celebrate the work that has gone into contributing to the media wall with some including a ‘contribution for the week’ award in their school assemblies.

Write a letter home
The aim is to meet learning objectives and to do so by using an exciting stimulus to generate a whirlwind of ideas. Get the students to write their own postcards/letters home in advance about what they hope to see or learn on the trip. The more they know about where they’re going, the more involved the students are likely to be in their learning leading to the universally known action as ‘nagging’. Fear not teachers as ‘nagging’ today will be directed at parents whose children want to go away on the trip!

Buy merchandise
Students like to stand apart from each other and there is no better way to show this than strutting down the hallway in a personalised hoody. Offer students t-shirts or hoodies to wear on the trip that they can have emblazoned with the destination, institution and catchy slogan. It’ll bring them together as a group and make them want to get involved. Groups tend to get all the names of their party members on their tops and they turn out to be a fantastic souvenir to remind them of the great times they experienced on the trip. Remember, there’s safety in numbers!

Here concludes the five steps to reach Party Leader supremacy. If you follow one, or even all of these pieces of advice, you’ll soon be turning students away with over subscribers for the trip. Reflecting on your juggling skills you look up to the balls in the air with a little smile and realise why you are running this trip – to instruct, to inform, to inspire and because you care.

Tim Jenkins writes for Travelbound, a school trip company offering educational visits for school and university students.