New Officers Dec 2015

Congratulations and thank you for the new officers that are assuming their roles for Top of Texas.  They are:

President - Anne Brown
Vice President Education - Shannon Watenpaugh
Vice President Membership - Dudley Mecum
Vice President Public Relations - Ken Dorsey
Secretary - Ana Ortega
Treasurer - Lina Choun
Sargent at Arms - Marcus Mitias 

Club officer training has begun!  You can check the District 25 website calendar for officer training dates here:  http://d25toastmasters.org/tli/index.htm 

Toastmasters Founder Ralph Smedley said, “Skills are not learned by reading books and taking courses, skills are learned by practicing.”  Thanks to everyone at Top of Texas for giving us the environment to continue to improve our skills through practice!  

"If the Pumpkin Fits, Wear It!"

                                                           

Saturday's meeting theme was pumpkins!  I love everything pumpkin... pumpkin coffee, pumpkin pie, pumpkin rolls, pumpkin candles, pumpkin hand soap!  It reminds me of fall – perfect for an October meeting with my fellow Top of Texas Toastmasters.

At our morning meeting, Aparna presented a speech from the Better Speaker Series manual on Preparation and Practice.  Based on her own experiences, she gave us all some great tips on things to become familiar with prior to speaking somewhere unfamiliar.  She also advised us to practice our speeches thoroughly and mentally.

Farah gave her second speech from the Competent Communication manual.  She spoke about The Power of Strategy of IKEA.  It was interesting to hear how the founder of this furniture and housewares empire, Ingvar Kamprad, built up a store we all love to browse for hours!

During Table Topics, Aijnel shared some interesting tidbits about pumpkins.  Did you know pumpkins are a fruit and not a vegetable?  She called on Ken to tell us about his favorite fruit and Vanessa told us a humorous short story about Ken and pumpkins.  Our visitor, Avinash, braved the lectern and took his turn at answering a table topics question!

As always, I enjoyed hearing speeches with new bits of information.  Not only did I gain helpful tips to help myself improve as a speaker, I got a chance to get to know our club members a little more.

                                                                                                                - Lina Choun

90 Years And Counting ...

I was a little surprised to learn that Toastmasters celebrated it's 90th year this year.  Trying to put that in perspective, I decided to find out just when the Boy Scouts began.  Allowing the internet to be my crutch while I surfed for the Boy Scouts, here is what I pieced together to help appreciate the founding of Toastmasters and the world as it was at that time:

The Chrysler Corporation was becoming a reality and would be founded in the summer of 1925.  Four years later, ground on what would become the tallest building in the world and the first to be 1000 feet straight up would begin.  It would only hold the crown for 3 years before being out done by the Empire State Building in 1933.

The Scopes Monkey Trial was about to get into full swing in Tennessee (yeah, I'm having fun with words). 

There was no TV, no Dallas Cowboys, and the Alamo had happened less than 100 years ago.

The first Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade was held a month after Toastmasters formed.  It featured giant balloons that were released, and if found and returned would fetch nice prize money.  Giant balloons and Zeppelins were the fascination, with flying machines having graduated from WWI.

The Titanic had sunk 12 years earlier, but Lindbergh's flight across the Atlantic was still 3 years away.

And here it is... the Boy Scouts had been around since 1910; just 15 years old.  Adolph Hitler was working on Volume 1 of his personal manifesto, Mein Kampf that would be a catalyst for WWII, and many of these  Boy Scouts from 1924 would lead us through some of the world's darkest hours.

The stock market would crash in just 5 more years and through it all, the good and the bad, public speaking would remain a top fear; even a deterrent in the business world despite the hardships and the need to get ahead. Sound familiar?

Fortunately for all of us, an ingenious plan began to unfold in this building in 1924, bringing about the birth of Toastmasters on October 22 of that year.

Located in Santa Ana, California, this YMCA became home of the first club. 

Oh, and how old is the YMCA?  It's an astounding 171 years old getting its start back in 1844. 

Therefore, for all of us Toastmasters out there, it does appear we're just getting started.


                                                      I'll toast to that!



Submitted by
Ken Dorsey
VP Public Relations Top of Texas

September Contests

There is still time to sign-up for either or both contests.  In addition, there are also some openings for volunteers to take a role with the contests that count toward Project 6 in your Competent Leadership manual.  If you are interested in being in either contest  - or - just volunteering, please contact our Top of Texas Contest Chair Lina Choun at (717) 304-8338 linachoun@hotmail.com.

 

 

 

 

 

What Makes A Good Mentor

A Good Mentor Always Learns

The Toastmasters International Website is loaded with Easter eggs of information!  Here you can find educational materials free for download, recorded tips and speeches, information to help improve your speaking and leadership skills, and kits to improve your club.  One such free download from Toastmasters International I recently read came from the Successful

Club Series entitled; "Mentoring" (Click here).

A section worthwhile is a review of the essential qualities a mentor possesses.  Recognizing their importance and why they are considered essential not only helps one mentor more effectively, but it also boosts the club and provides benefit to the mentor as well. 

Toastmasters International recognizes the 10 essential characteristics of a mentor to be:
 

Available	Knowledgeable	Respectful
Flexible	Sensitive	A Good Listener
Confident	Considerate	Patient
	Supportive

 
When a new member joins Top of Texas Toastmasters, they are paired with a mentor.  But one of the things that drew me to Top of Texas was the genuine willingness demonstrated by all to help each other succeed, and in turn all of us succeed.  It’s no wonder Top of Texas has been recognized as a Distinguished Club for four years running.  They have the essential characteristics and I’ve found are always available.

Being a good mentor starts with being available.  Nothing else really happens unless there is a dialog and interaction between the mentor and the mentee.  Watching each other grow becomes part of the reward; another hidden Easter egg waiting to be discovered within the Toastmasters organization.

Submitted by

Ken Dorsey
VP Public Relations

February 7, 2015 Meeting Recap

Three wonderful speeches were the highlight of Saturdays meeting.  

Richard Gonzales started us off with with a motivational message about lessons learned from his kids. Jodie Sanders then inspired us all to achieve our Toastmaster goals through partnering and accountability. She told us the story of how she and several others in our club decided to finish their DTM's together in a very aggressive timeline. In sharing this story she encouraged us all to find partners and work on our goals together. Eunie Yook was a guest speaker on Saturday. She was practicing an Ice Breaker speech that is to be delivered for her schooling. 

Regina Clay, as Table Topics Master, provided some wonderful questions about favorite vacations spots. We discovered that Ana likes to visit castles and Jerry would like to time travel backwards to watch the Big Bang.

We had two guests in attendance. Richard Layne from Sprint Speakers and Eunie Yook. Please welcome Eunie as she is now the newest member of Top of Texas.
Richard will be visiting again and is on next week's agenda as a guest speaker.

Submitted By 

Jeff Wright

President Top of Texas 

January 31, 2015 Meeting Recap

What a fun meeting we had on Saturday morning! Not only did we have two speeches, but we also had two guests. We also had the opportunity to officially vote our newest member, Jerry, into our club.

But first our toastmaster of the day, Anne, reminded us how silly The Super Bowl viewing ritual can be! Our theme of the day was The Not So Super Bowl. Leftovers for days and cleaning up after your party guests, anyone?

Our first speaker, Judy, shared with us a brief portion of a real-life workshop she recently held for after-school program organizers. Judy's workshop gave the program leaders tips and suggestions on how to lead and operate programs that are fun for the kids and stress free for the leaders. It was a privilege to hear Judy give us a small sample of her exciting job with the city of Fort Worth!

Next, Sandra told us the story of how she came to adopt three "dachshunds." The funny part is that each time she thought she was adopting a true dachshund, she came to find out that only one of the three is a true dachshund! Nevertheless, Sandra and her husband could not turn their backs on the critters and one by one they were each adopted and currently live happily at the Price residence.

As always we had a fun Table Topics session and our topics master of the day, Aparna, led our participants through some fun answers.

Overall we had a great meeting: we got to meet some new guests, saw some returning members, and we took advantage of a quorum to vote a new member into the club. Lots of fun packed into one hour!

Submitted by: Ana Ortega, ACB, ALB

Picture Credit: Sandra Price

January 24th Meeting Recap

This Saturday's meeting was chock-full of advice for the attendees.  Our Toastmaster was Dudley.  The theme -- Advantages of Having a "Rip and Read" file.  I was the Table Topics master for the meeting and thought the theme was related to ripping DVDs to computers... boy was I wrong!  Dudley explained that a rip and read file is a file containing articles we rip from a magazine or newspaper and file away to read later.  This is useful for speech topic ideas and having conversation pieces.

Our two speakers for the day were Richard, a fairly new member to the club, and Jeff, a veteran Toastmaster.  Both speakers added to Dudley's advice and gave us all some more tips to help with our speeches.  Richard encouraged us all to speak up without worrying too much about having the perfectly prepared speech, because there's quality hidden in quantity.

Jeff told us about his "Constipated Brain" and how he plans to work through his writer's block.  He encouraged us to carry a notebook so we always have something handy to write down any ideas that pop into our heads.  He also suggested reading more effectively to feed our minds.  For example, instead of reading book after book about vampires, throw in a nonfiction book such as The Way of The Seal by Mark Divine.  His last bit of advice was to write a list of 10 ideas every day centered around a theme.

I always learn something at a Top of Texas meeting and this meeting was no exception!

Submitted by: Lina Choun

Photo Credit: carpewebem via Compfight cc

Incoming Top of Texas Club Officers

Top of Texas Toastmasters' club officers serve for a 6 month term. A new year, brings new club officers for us. Welcome to those who are continuing in their office and to those who are moving into a new position:

Top of Texas Officer Installation with Area 14 Governor Daphene Singleton

President
- Jeff Wright
VP Education
- Sandra Price
VP Membership
- DeAnna Wolf
VP Public Relations
- Ken Dorsey
Secretary
- Anne Brown
Treasurer
- Lina Choun
Sergeant At Arms
- Ana Ortega




If you would like to know what these positions entail, you can read all about them here in the Club Leadership Handbook.
If you'd like to hear about them from those who have been there, done that, then sign up for the District 25 Toastmasters Leadership Institute (TLI) and check it out.

If you are interested in learning more about leadership, consider mentoring for one of these positions with the officer serving in that role.

Submitted By
Sandra Price
Top of Texas VP Education