Since our club ended the sponsor relationship with Jacksonville International Airport, JIA Toastmasters has discussed changing our name. In order to keep items printed with our name, such as our banner and lectern, we agreed to find a name that would allow us to keep our initials. In an effort to move forward with this goal, we sent out a survey to everyone on our e-mail list requesting recommendations for possible names.
At our recent Executive Committee meeting, we considered and discussed the names that were suggested. After putting it to a vote, we have selected a new name for our club!
Our new name is:
JIA Toastmasters
Jacksonville Innovative Articulators
Congratulations and welcome to our new JIA Toastmasters!
We believe this name accurately represents our club, because we are always coming up with new and innovative ways to improve ourselves as speakers, leaders and club members.
Many thanks goes to our Vice President of Education, Linda Rondeau, for coming up with our new name!
Youth Leadership program
helps students speak up, build skills
By Christine Clapp, DTM
Andrew Peter Bennett, DTM, is District 71’s adviser on Youth Leadership. In that role, he advocates strongly for the Toastmasters Youth Leadership program (YLP), saying he has seen young participants benefit in many ways from it.
“I have come to the conclusion that it is one of Toastmasters’ hidden treasures,” says Bennett, a member of two clubs in London, England.
Indeed, the eight-session program is popular with parents and educators to help students under age 18 develop “communication and leadership skills so that they may become tomorrow’s leaders in business, industry and the community.”
The YLP sessions are typically held once a week or every other week, and they last one to two hours. They resemble a typical Toastmasters meeting, with a format that includes impromptu speeches, prepared speeches and evaluations. The final session is a showcase event for participants to demonstrate their newly acquired skills for family members, friends, teachers, mentors and community members.
Home-schooled students ages 9 to 17 honed their listening, thinking and speaking skills in a Toastmasters Youth Leadership program held near Great Falls, Montana.
Success stories abound. Take Angelina Zhou, for example, who recently completed a YLP program at the American Chinese School in Herndon, Virginia. Angelina has always struggled with Andrew Peter Bennett, DTM, is District 71’s adviser on Youth Leadership. In that role, he advocates strongly for the Toastmasters Youth Leadership program (YLP), saying he has seen young participants benefit in many ways from it. shyness, says her mother, Rebecca Huang. The Toastmasters program helped with that.
“She used to have ‘does not participate’ as one of her weaknesses from [the time of her] pre-school teacher’s review all the way to her sixth-grade teacher’s review,” Huang says. “This weakness is gone from her grade 7 review.”
YLP graduate Rachel Dunn, now 21, participated when she was a high school student at Gilroy Catholic College near Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. After her experience in the program, and with encouragement from her program coordinator, Rachel presented as part of a youth showcase at a Toastmasters conference and also at a youth leadership contest. The early development of her speaking skills was a sign of things to come: Rachel went on to earn a bachelor’s degree in communications from the University of Western Sydney and is pursuing a career in the performing arts.
“That is the most rewarding thing—parents who can say years later that you did something great for their child and that
[the child] really looked up to you.” — Jimmy Thai, DTM
For Toastmasters who conduct the Youth Leadership program, the experience is highly rewarding. “It’s a wonderful feeling to see a child improving in eight weeks,” says Allena Wesley, DTM, of Landover, Maryland. She coordinated the District 36 Speechcraft and Youth Leadership programs in the early 1990s. “You know you have been able to give them some encouragement and see that they were able to absorb what you were trying to teach them.”
Sarah Rollins, CTM, program coordinator of a Youth Leadership program in Great Falls, Montana, says, “It was inspirational to watch the students grow their confidence and leadership skills that will help them throughout their life!”
The current issue is available for viewing only by Toastmasters members. If you are a member, CLICK HERE to login. You must enter your user name and password to view this month’s issue. (Your user name is the same as your member number, which is easily found on your Toastmaster magazine label.)
You can learn more about the Toastmasters Youth Leadership Program HERE. You can also check out a video about the program below.
“No Toastmasters club is fulfilling its obligation to its members unless it brings them the maximum of training in the art of constructive criticism.”
— Dr. Ralph C. Smedley, from the book Personally Speaking
Criticism, as Dr. Smedley referred to speech evaluation, has been an integral part of the Toastmasters program since the organization’s inception 90 years ago. This is how members truly learn and improve—by standing up and speaking, and then receiving feedback, encouragement and suggestions. Evaluation is at the heart of experiential learning, which is what distinguishes Toastmasters from other organizations in similar fields.
Constructively evaluating fellow members is a skill—one that we all learn through participation. It’s important enough that the concept of an evaluation contest evolved through the years, and today most clubs around the world conduct such a contest annually. Those who receive evaluations grow as speakers, communicators and leaders; those who give evaluations develop a skill that is valuable in all areas of life.
The emphasis on evaluation will carry even more weight in the revitalized education program. Evaluators will be given more training on how to best help their club members.
“The privilege of serving as an evaluator or critic is one of the choicest advantages of membership in a Toastmasters club. No member can afford to miss his chance to listen, appraise, and suggest improvements.”
Some members have debated whether it’s best to evaluate speakers from the third-person point of view or use the second-person approach. In the former, the evaluator addresses the club as a whole and refers to the speaker obliquely—e.g., “John did this well, but needs to improve here.” In the latter, the evaluator speaks directly to the individual: “Subha, your opening was wonderful, but I recommend you work on a stronger closing for your next speech.”
The position that Toastmasters International takes is that the decision about the use of “voice” by an evaluator is up to each evaluator, and that both perspectives have considerable merit because each speaking situation—and speech—is unique.
How It Works
Most Toastmasters first experience speech evaluation when they receive brief written comments on small slips of paper from members at their club meetings. Those giving a prepared speech are also assigned an official evaluator, one who assesses the speech in a brief presentation and writes detailed comments in the manual evaluation guide corresponding to that specific speech project.
A well-done evaluation makes a speaker feel truly listened to and appreciated. When you offer a detailed appraisal of a member’s speech, you’re paying respect to the speaker. You’re saying that what he or she is doing is important enough to merit careful evaluation.
Evaluations help speakers immensely; they boost members’ confidence and provide…
The current issue is available for viewing only by Toastmasters members. If you are a member, CLICK HERE to login. You must enter your user name and password to view this month’s issue. (Your user name is the same as your member number, which is easily found on your Toastmaster magazine label.)
Click on the image below to watch the video, “Give An Excellent Toastmasters Evaluation,” presented by fellow Toastmaster, Bett Correa.
JIA Toastmasters Club 