Thinking About Having a Guest Speaker... This is for You!

Wow this past week has been a whirl wind of instruction, chapter FFA meeting, back to school night, and winter pep rally!  It might sound crazy, but I’m beginning to get used to this organized chaos.  The rapport that I am beginning to build with my students is phenomenal.  I can’t begin to say how thankful I am for the guidance and wisdom I am also receiving from my cooperating teachers as well.  I also witnessed the significance of back to school night and having an open line of communication with the parents.  While all these things left a lasting impression on me this week.  There is one thing I am super ecstatic to share with you.  That would be my career speaker panel I had come in on Friday afternoon for my vet science 2 class.

I began this event back in the fall semester preparing for my student teaching experience.  When people within the agricultural community came in to talk when I was in high school or in college during club events I greatly enjoyed these events.  My first unit of instruction in my vet science 2 class was terminology and careers in the animal sciences.  I began researching local companies, veterinarians, and talking with community members to begin to formulate a list of possible speakers.  When I got to Lampeter Strasburg I immediately began getting in contact with these people.  It was amazing how interested and supportive these people were willing to try and make it work in their busy schedule to come and talk to the students.  The big day finally came this past Friday and I must say I was blown away by my students’ interest and attention to the speakers the words of wisdom my speaker panel gave to the students and the overall success of the guest speaker panel.  So… you’re probably saying to yourself MASON who did you have come and speak?  Aaron Harris a recent graduate of Penn State and old roommate of mine came and spoke on behalf of Land O’Lakes.  Dr. John Kreider came and spoke on behalf of Eastern Lancaster County Veterinary Clinic.  Matt Hershey spoke on behalf of Select Sires.  Jeff Peifer spoke on behalf of ABS Genetics.  A Bradford County native!  Dr. Bill Braungard spoke about his experiences being a large animal veterinarian and his work formulating dairy nutrition rations with Cargill.  Dr. Gregory Martin spoke on behalf of Penn State Extension.  And John Frey spoke about his work promoting the dairy industry and providing support and resources to dairy farmers through The Center of Dairy Excellence. 

These seven men hit all the key points I wanted them to talk about to the vet science 1 and 2 classes and FFA members.  They spoke about their experiences in their chosen career field, educational background, working hard, and networking with everyone you come in contact with.  While everything went off without a hitch at least to those in the audience, but I filed a few things away for the next time I do an event like this.  Oh and by the way my cooperating teacher was away on a field trip with a student who won a scholarship so it was me in the room with the sub.  Here are a few takeaways…

1.      Preparation is crucial!  These events do not happen overnight!  With good planning you can pull things like this off, but you have to make numerous phone calls send emails align dates and times to work with everyone’s schedules and have answers to the questions they might ask when you are on the phone with them.

2.      Notify the office.  Let them know what is going to occur on the day of your event.  Notifying the office made things go much smoother. 

3.      Inform your speakers to wait in the office until a designated time when you will come and escort them down to the classroom.  I did not do this and I was running back and forth down the hallway picking up my guests.

4.      Name tags for your students make everything much more professional. 

5.      Having your students create meaningful questions and researching the companies that your guest speakers work for beforehand makes for much more of a purposeful discussion.

6.      Allow for time at the end of your guest speaker panel for them to give one final closing remark.  I kind of got cut short with time because of our winter pep rally.  I was busy making sure we got through a few of the students questions and did not allow for any time for the guests to make any final remarks

7.      THANK THEM!  Show them how appreciative you are of them.  Make sure to get email and postal addresses!