Hosting guest speakers can be such a great experience for your students. Guest speakers can make your content relevant and memorable. During a pandemic speakers may be more available and willing to speak using distance learning technology. This site will outline tips for approaching a speaker, rules you can set with your students and alternatives to live guest speakers.

Yellowstone Rangers: Yellowstone has a great distance learning program. Rangers will talk with you and they have a great presentation prepared. Visit the linked site for more information and contact information.

Buffalo Bill Center of the West: This center in Wyoming will meet with your virtually to teach your students about the ways of the Native Americans, Pioneers and much more.

Sharks4Kids: This groups does many, many virtual classroom visits. They teach students of all ages about sharks, being global citizens and scientific principles.

Entertainment Arts and Engineering: Do you know that the University of Utah offers programs in creating games? When I learned this, I contacted a professor and asked if a couple of his best students could be our virtual speakers and talk about life as a game creator. One of my best teaching experiences ever!

Virtual Meeting with an Astronaut: This one takes a bit of time for the application process, but it is so much fun. You can visit with an astronaut (while they are on Earth). The students love this!

Authors: Authors are great resources and it is so fun to get the background information that comes with a personal conversation. I find emailing authors directly with the information listed on their author pages is most successful. Sometimes authors ask for a fee--and they should, their work is incrediby important and difficult. I tell them that I don't have that money in the budget for speakers, but I do have that same amount of money to buy their books and make sure kids read them over and over again.