My Days as a Special Events Coordinator

My first job in college was as a Recreation Leader for the City of Davis. I was assigned to Slide Hill Park, a large park with a great play structure, a basketball court, a baseball diamond, tons of lawn space, shade trees, a sand area, and its namesake, a huge cement slide. Along with two other leaders, I spent that summer playing sports, doing crafts, and leading games for a group of about 25 kids age 6-9. Each Friday, we left the park to participate in a city-wide special event with the kids and leaders from all the other parks. 

It was an awesome job. 

I loved that job so much that I continued to work recreation for the city right up until I was hired as a 4th/5th grade teacher. While I loved my time as a rec leader, I happily accepted promotions to Assistant Special Events Coordinator, then Special Events Coordinator. As Special Events Coordinator, my primary job was to plan the Friday events for about 300 kids. I also supported the rec leaders, subbed at the parks occasionally, and had to deal with paperwork and other administrative tasks that weren't quite as fun. 

There was one task I absolutely LOVED though, which was designing the weekly schedule template. Each week had a theme, which the rec leaders needed to incorporate in all their activities for the week. The template needed space for three AM and three PM activities for each weekday, which was not as easy as it sounds. Here's the first one I made: 

After I drew the template with the upcoming week's theme, I made copies and gave them to each team of rec leaders during our staff meeting. They filled in their names and park location, along with their schedule with each day's activities, and gave it back to me. Then I made copies on colored-coded paper for them to distribute to the kids registered for their park for that upcoming week. 

A few leaders just filled in the info, while others added their own decorations and details. Check out this example of my template for Hollywood Week, then compare it to how the leaders of Putah Creek Park decorated theirs:

There are so many fun little touches. My favorite is the guy standing on top of the Hollywood sign waving hi to me. :)

Here are the rest of my templates from that summer:

I also made the flyers for the Friday Special Events. Here are a few examples:

  

I have so many wonderful memories from my time in recreation and looking at these bring back even more. They're also a really fun snapshot of what my art style was in my early 20s. I am so glad I kept the originals and that they're now scanned and have a home on the blog.