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Guest Speaker Success Story

By Rachel Stern, ISJL Director of Education

One of the best ways to involve and invest members of your congregation in the Religious School is to invite guest speakers to come and meet with your students. Utilizing a guest speaker well takes proper preparation and planning. The goal is to create a meaningful experience for both your students and the speaker.

Here are some steps to make your guest speaking sessions great:

1)    Choosing the right speaker.

• If you are having more than one speaker come into the class, make sure to show diversity in age and experience.
• Make sure the speaker is comfortable with and can relate to students.

2)    Communicate with ahead of time. 

• Make sure the speaker knows what you want from them, and give them parameters (including time limit, content, learning modalities or anything else you think would help them be successful).
• Ask a few sample questions to get a feel for what the speaker will say and how they will say it. If you need to provide some guidance and feedback, you will be able to do that before the class session.
• Follow up with a written summary/outline confirming everything you discussed. 
• Give the guest speaker a description of your class so they can know what to expect.

3)    Get your class involved.

• Have the class write a list of questions ahead of time for the speaker and assign each student a question to ask.
• Prepare a worksheet for the class to fill out as the speaker presents, so the students have a task to do while listening.
• Come up with a way for your students to introduce themselves so that there is a two-way connection and interaction with the speaker and your students.
• Have your students send a thank you note after the session to show their appreciation.

4)    Invite parents.

• These sessions are great opportunities for parents to attend also. It introduces them to people in the congregation and is a learning opportunity too. 
• If parents do attend, send them home with some questions to debrief later as a family.

5)    Debriefing and applying what you learned.

• Make sure to plan for the following class to unpack and discuss what you learned. You don’t want the activity to be disconnected from what you have learned.
• Offer the guest speaker a chance to debrief too so you can share feedback with each other.
• Make sure you personally reach out and thank the speaker(s)!

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