Going Beyond on November 11

On Wednesday, November 11, 2015, the NTL Advanced Toastmasters will focus on "Going Beyond Our Club." What does "Going Beyond" mean to you?  Is it attending TLIs and participating in contests?  Is it taking on a leadership role with the District, or even at the International, level?  Is it taking what you learn from Toastmasters and applying it to your personal or work life?  Is it reaching out to other clubs and helping their members to grow and achieve more?

November 11 is also Veterans Day.  Could Going Beyond mean being an active leader by serving your country in uniform, voting in elections, running for office, or supporting candidates locally and nationally?

In what ways have you Gone Beyond Your Club with Toastmasters?

The Best Club Climate

The next meeting of the NTL Advanced Speakers will be September 9, 2015 at 7:00 pm at Holy Cross Lutheran Church, 6905 Greenbelt Road, Greenbelt, Maryland. This will be an amazing meeting. Why?
- Our theme is Create The Best Club Climate - which we strive to do at each meeting.
- It is our president Jill Vanderweit's birthday.
- Our area director Vera Jones will visit and give a speech about Interpersonal Communication.
- We will hear about the success of Toastmasters' involvement at the Greenbelt Labor Day information booth and parade.
- We will be paying our fall dues so we will remain active members of this excellent club.

Does this sound like fun to you?

Sorry, I'm not going to make it tonight - Have Fun!

Liz Saniga

Providing Feedback meeting

I really enjoyed our Evaluation Workshop meeting on May 27, 2015. We had two guest speakers. The first, Mel Bayo, spoke about techniques that can help you win the evaluation contest. Did you ever think that you can rehearse giving evaluations? He suggested doing just that to get lots of extra practice compared to evaluating only at Toastmaster meetings. The second speaker, Jill Lambe, described how contest judging is different from evaluations, and what contestants should do to get the most points from the judges. Knowing the criteria on the judging form will help you remember to have recommendations and a summary in the evaluation contest to score more points. Then we had a mock evaluation contest. The test speaker pointed out that the Toastmasters' definition of a good evaluation will help you avoid giving bad evaluations. Our Table Topics questions were phrased as letters to Dear Abby and the respondents had to provide feedback to the letter writers.

By the way, our workshop participants are doing a terrific job. They are trying the different evaluation formats we are sharing with them. They are giving recommendations for improvement to the people they are evaluating. And I think they are having fun. I certainly like that they are asking questions and participating fully in the meetings. This has been a win-win for all of us.

Critical Thinking/Creativity

The theme for the next session is "How to Be the Best Critical Thinker". Critical thinking also involves some creativity. How are you creative or artistic? Do you think that "critical" is always a negative term?

Get well wishes for Neal

Our member Neal Meyerson had surgery on April 30th. While he is recuperating, let's send him some get well wishes.

2015 Evaluation Workshop comments

We started the 2015 Evaluation Workshop on 4/22/2015. Do you have feedback about how registration was handled? The quality of the handout packet? The agenda and/or timing of the first session?