Education & Events Manager

Reports to: Director of Student Engagement & Membership, Jamie Keil
Location: Santa Cruz, California (not a remote position)
Full time, with benefits

Lookout believes that all students deserve to know deeply about the place they live in. In our current social, cultural and political climate, it is now more important than ever before for all citizens - especially students - to have easy access to reliable, non-partisan and trustworthy journalism about their local community. Lookout’s entire locally driven operation – with the county’s largest newsroom of 10 full-time journalists and four mission-driven staffers in our Community & Commerce group – is becoming the go-to primary news and information source for Santa Cruz County. Our forward-thinking model includes a community betterment strategy at its core, a Civic Partners community giveback program and growing relationships with community and marketing partners.

Lookout Santa Cruz’s Education & Events Manager leads the coordination and execution of our student engagement strategy and helps drive our growing events engagement and sponsorship. A member of the Community & Commerce team and a key participant in growing our relationship with students, schools and faculty, this manager’s job requires both excellent curriculum building abilities, great organization and the day-to-day enthusiasm and skills to work on site in schools and at events while representing Lookout.

Our Student Engagement program now provides Lookout access to all high school and college students in the county. The plan starts with free access to our membership site, providing a broad and deep array of content across Santa Cruz County. Access opens the door to schools and engagement with students follows. Our program aims to promote media literacy and deepen students’ understanding of core institutions through a comprehensive curriculum integration. We are also beginning to showcase student voices in Lookout Santa Cruz.

The Education & Event Manager’s job is to execute our strategy and goals by working directly with teachers and students, creating curriculum that uses Lookout’s articles to enhance teaching in classrooms and advance any other student and event initiatives to come. The manager will work closely with Lookout’s team members to speed adoption.

This is a role for a driven manager, adept at fast-moving targets, enjoys multi-tasking and understands the complex system of education. Superior organizational skills are a must, as well as the development/implementation/evaluation of key tactics. Both rigor and flexibility define the job.

What you’ll be doing:

COMMUNICATION & COORDINATION: Leads the communication with school faculty and teachers, and coordinates visits, calling on the newsroom team to join in certain circumstances.

Provides access to all high school students and sets them up in our paywall system.
Organizes times to meet with and listen to the goals of education staff and teachers in how Lookout can enhance their work best.
Establishes useful working relationships with education faculty, teachers and students.
Daily communication with education faculty and teachers, on access, projects, visits and curriculum development.
Creates a schedule for the newsroom to attend school visits and speak to classrooms about journalism topics.
Leads surveying of teachers and students to gauge success around this program.
Works closely with the Director of Student Engagement on KPIS and goals surrounding this work. Aims to meet established tracking goals and measure against them.

CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT: Creates engaging new curriculum using Lookout content, ranging from pulling articles related to certain topics, to in-depth multi-month writing projects. Developing a resource library for teachers to pull from.

Create news quizzes and produce an initial set of curriculum for a resource library.
After communicating with teachers, produce specific curriculum to match their needs in the classroom.
Works closely with the Director of Student Engagement on content, layout and editing of curriculum materials.
Actively engage with teachers and faculty for feedback on curriculum and make changes as needed.

ON SITE ENGAGEMENT: Creating regular face-to-face interactions with local teachers and students is extremely important to the success of this program. After communicating with teachers and creating curriculum, execute the work in the classroom. Ranging from one time visits to ongoing projects, depending on teachers preference, these relationships will serve to provide feedback and help us create the best program for other local news organizations to use as well.

Regularly visit schools and classrooms, executing your curriculum on site.
Applies classroom best practices and learnings to maximize the value of these on-site visits.
Works closely with the newsroom staff, and prepares them for visits.

EVENT PREP & ASSISTING: Attending, preparing and participating in all public, private, member and student events throughout the year.

Brainstorm creative event ideas to engage students, members and the larger community.
Works closely with the Community and Commerce team to provide coordination and organization with event planning details.
Participate in email communications, ordering materials and budgeting surrounding event details and expenses.
Participate in setup and clean-up needs, as well as registration and check in for on-site and off-site events.
Actively engage with participants and positively represent Lookout Santa Cruz at events.

YOUR EXPERIENCE & SKILLS

Proven education experience of three years or more, specific experience with high school students preferable.
Superior organizational and collaborative abilities, with excellent written and verbal communication skills.
Strong public speaking skills and the ability to explain complex concepts to a younger audience in a variety of ways.
Curiosity and drive.
Demonstrated creativity and vision in shaping and producing curriculum and projects for students.
Experience in working within the education system and working with groups of faculty and students.
Familiarity with basic web applications and multimedia types (photo, video, audio).
Bilingual skills and knowledge of Santa Cruz County a plus.

BENEFITS AND APPLICATIONS

The Education & Events Manager is a full-time Lookout Local employee. We offer competitive salary and excellent employee benefits.

Lookout Local is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability or veteran status.

As we interact with the public on a regular basis, a vaccination against COVID-19 is required for employment absent documented disability or religious reasons.

Please apply, with cover letter and resume to jobs@lookoutlocal.com.