Guest Speaker Series, P IV

These are the remaining tips on what do do before, during and after the speaker visits class to mazimize the quality of the visit.

Prior

• Be sure the speaker is on board with his her role in the class for that day.
  Meet the speaker in the main office and walk him or her to your office to go over presentation or to the classroom to get set up. If you are unable to do this get a student volunteer from the class. I have yet to meet a guest speaker who was not interested in talking to students.
• Remind speaker of how long the class meets and the signal that will be used when it is time to bring the presentation to a close, Q&A, etc.

During

• Do an energetic and meaningfully brief intro of the speaker once class starts.
• Remain in the class for the presentation; what message is being sent students if you do not care to stay and hear presentation?
• Monitor students and make sure they are all paying attention, text messaging, etc.

After

• If possible take the speaker to lunch or coffee or dinner depending on time of presentation.
  Have someone escort the speaker to their car or make sure they have proper directions to not only remember where they parked but how to get back home.
• Debrief the presentation with the students to see if they have further questions, comments about what was presented, etc.
• If the speaker was good add them to your database to invite back to class to speak on the same or possibly different topic.
• I like to send a handwritten thank you note, with my business card in it.
• Ask the students if the speaker should be invited back to speak to another class.

I hope these tips have helped shape high quality presentations of future guest speakers. If you have tips of your own and would like to share please add to this post, or send to me at Mlalopa@fooded.org and I will share in a future post.