I joined about a year ago and I haven’t written anything about it because it just doesn’t seem all that interesting. However, I was just reading some older posts and realized I like the journal/diary nature that this blog has taken on. Therefore, more journal/diary type entries are called for.
Toastmasters is an international organization dedicated to public speaking and leadership. I don’t feel qualified to discuss the “leadership” aspect. What little I know, I don’t much care for. I’m sticking my head in the sand and pretending that my local club is the organization. Although it may make an appearance in a future post about virtual organizations in an increasingly physically fragmented world. I’m going to talk about the public speaking part, because that’s what interests me and it’s very good.
I first joined Toastmasters in 1990 while stationed at Tyndall AFB. Jim Peterson wanted to join and he did not want to go alone. I went to the first meeting with him and found it to be a fun and interesting group. We both joined and stuck with it up to Competent Toastmaster. They had a newbie-to-competent Toastmaster curriculum that fit in a small plastic binder, which I threw away only a couple of months ago (it succumbed to the “frame it or throw it away” philosophy, but I did frame the club membership certificate).
I left Toastmasters when I left the Air Force (1992, if you’re keeping track). In a new city, I thought it would be a good way to meet some people and recover my long since lost public speaking skills. They now have a very extensive online curriculum called Pathways. Apparently, there was at least one intermediate step between then and now because several members have less than complimentary things to say about the “new” Pathways. Compared to that small binder, it’s a marvel. The interface requires far (far, far) too much mouse clicking, but the content is good – and I’m very critical of curriculum content.
I chose the “Visionary Communicator” path. There are many such paths, hence “Pathways”. So far, nothing particularly “visionary” has shown up, but I have only just completed level one (which requires five speeches; I went off-roading a bit and did eight). The last project for level one was about evaluations. The content was great. Some things I knew (e.g. positive feedback); some things I knew about, but mostly ignored (e.g. don’t give advice); some things were new (e.g. give opinions, not statements).
Now I get to be an Evaluator (yes, capital “E”), which is just what it sounds like: One who evaluates the speeches of whoever is speaking at that meeting. It’s a delicate role because the club is composed of a wide variety of experience levels. One doesn’t want to be too critical of newcomers, yet one still wants to have some sort of useful critique for the experienced folk. I’m not a fan of “grading on a curve”, but it seems appropriate – much as I would expect a dance contest judge to judge me more leniently as an amateur because judging me as a professional would just result in me being dragged off the dance floor.
The meetings are much less formal these days. When I joined, it was Robert’s Rules of Order from start to finish. That was a bit anachronistic in 1990. In 2024, it makes no sense at all. I’m not sure when it was jettisoned, but jettisoned it was. The business part of the meeting is still a bit RRO – there are motions and such – but even there only a bit.
Today’s meeting was novel, which is one reason for this post. We ran it backwards by following the agenda (there’s always an agenda) from the bottom upward. That is, speeches were evaluated before they were given and questions were answered before they were asked. It was a bit tumultuous – because we all kept laughing – but it worked out OK and was a lot of fun.
That seems a sufficient post to start the category with.
Should a Toastmaster Grammarian point out the trailing preposition? I yelled at my spellchecker today because it did not recognize “campi” as the plural of “campus”. Microsoft has not recognized “indecies” as a word for a decade. Even I consider it time to not care about split infinitives. See why an organization about public speaking appeals to me?
Marked Up 