Meeting - September 3

Hello Fellow Toastmasters, 

Yesterday, we another great meeting at Cedar Hill Toastmasters, with great attendance. Two guests joined us along for with the reporter from Newington Life publication. 

Paul was the Toastmaster for the evening. With some guests in attendance, he took the time to explain the roles performed in the meeting as the meeting went on. Elizabeth presented an invocation, a new addition to our meeting format. We shared an inspirational thought of bringing improvement into our lives by making small steps that eventually get us closer to the completion of a goal. 

Mike, the Word Master, encouraged us to use the word of the day "equivocal" in a sentence during the meeting thus building our vocabulary. 

Larry presented a great joke and got us all laughing. 

Then, we moved to the speaking part of the meeting. Speaker 1, John, delivered a speech from the Special Occasion speeches series. In his speech "A Toast", John was toasting to the Summer season and the beauty that it brings - the memorable moments with family and friends, fun times at the beach, games at the ballpark, etc. 

Speaker 2, Paula presented the speech from the leadership series. She shared her experience with working on the High Performance Leadership (HPL) project that aimed at achieving the distinguished status for our club. 

Speaker 3, Ilir gave his second speech from the Competent Communicator manual. In his speech "My Life in America" we learnt about his experiences in this country and how they shaped his vision on life and perseverance during the hard times. 

During the Table Topics session, Prend, our Topic Master, gave us a chance to practice impromptu speaking by answering simple, but often challenging questions. Prend asked everyone to vote for the best Table Topic presenter. Once the votes were counted, Kevin emerged as a winner. 

During the Evaluations, the evaluators analyzes the speeches and provided the verbal and written feedback to the speakers. Joyce evaluated John, Kevin evaluated Paula and Elizabeth evaluated Ilir. 

Eliot performed the role of General Evaluator. Paula delivered the timer's report and Paul as a Grammarian was keeping score of our grammar and the use of filler words. 

John, the President of club, concluded the meeting reminding officers about the officers' meeting on September 17. Also, John reminded us about the upcoming speech contest at our club on October 1. The speech contest will be in two categories - Humorous Speech and Table Topics. Members are encouraged to participate in the contest. 

Everyone, have a great holiday weekend. 

Respectfully submitted by
Martha Danielewicz

Cedar Hill Toastmasters