|
|
District 33 Toastmasters
WestWord
The Official Newsletter for District 33 Toastmasters
|
|
Sept. 2022 | Vol. 50 Issue 4 |
|
|
|
A message from our
District Director:
Deborah Allmon, DTM
|
Personal growth stretches, pulls and sometimes hurts when you don't meet expectations. Be nice, applaud, ooh and aah.
Notice the changes in your skills, awareness, lack of self doubt, and confidence!
Mirror, mirror on the wall who has grown the most in one year? Don't be surprised when you see yourself smiling back.
|
|
Now is the time to renew your club membership!
RENEWING TOASTMASTERS MEMBERSHIP ENABLES YOU TO:
· Continue your journey of personal growth & development.
· Access Pathways Base Camp
· Take part in Club Agenda
· Compete in Speech Contest
· Help your Club remain in good standing
· Become a better version of you
Wait… there’s more: An incentive for those who will do 1-Year Club Membership Renewals.
For more details, please visit our District 33 Website using this link
CONTACT YOUR CLUB TREASURER AND GET STARTED ON THE ROAD TO RENEWAL!!!
Renew Your Membership on or before September 30th
to continue your learning and growth.
|
|
Program Quality Director
Tan Pham, IP5, DL5, PM4, EH3
|
|
|
What I learned during officer training at the International Convention in Nashville, TN.
With the new Toastmasters' year, comes new leaders, new opportunities, and new roles and responsibilities. It’s that time of year where many of us have received new opportunities to become leaders at the Club, Area, Division, and District levels'. To be effective leaders, we accept the responsibility to become trained in our new roles and for many of us, it’s a chance to build new skills and take on new challenges.
In mid-August, the District 33 Top 3 Officers (District Director, Program Quality Director, and Club Growth Director) joined hundreds of District Officers from across the globe to participate in the first in-person District Leader Training since 2019. The training took place over the two days prior to the International Convention in Nashville, TN. It was a very enlightening experience as we were able to meet and train in-person with our Regional Advisors from all over the world. We shared our District’s goals and challenges with our peers and came up with viable solutions. We were able to build new relationships with other District Leaders and build closer relationships within our District 33 Top 3 during our training exercises and discussion.
We all received strong messages and words of encouragement from the Toastmasters International Board of Directors, Acting International President, and Chief Executive Officer. This is a new year to flourish and grow, to plan and execute the our success plans (Club, Area, Division and District level), and to keep “the main thing”, the main thing --- which is “We build new clubs and support all clubs in achieving excellence”.
|
|
|
Club Growth Director
Nico Martin IP5, MS1
|
|
|
Plan for Big Success!
Welcome to our brand new Toastmasters Year 2022-2023!
Let’s think and achieve big because the district is now in an excellent position and at a great advantage as our Past District Trio Clarisse Kresser, Debbie Allmon, and Tan Pham leadership team did a superb job for us and placed us where we can make an excellent start for this year.
Let’s thank them for their work this past year.
Toastmasters has been a beautiful and life-changing Journey for my social and leadership growth. I started as a new member in March 2019 and have been very grateful for all the learning experiences I gained, the laughter I felt, the friendships I received, the challenges I took, and most of all, the people I connected with during all these years. Now, as your District 33 Club Growth Director, I have another chance to give back to our Toastmasters community through building new clubs and supporting all clubs in achieving excellence.
Our Club Growth & Retention Program this year will involve many exceptional District 33 leaders. As your Club Growth Director, I am currently working with them in organizing our team and resources to direct them in achieving our goals this year.
Please join me in making our Club Growth & Retention Program a big success this year!
|
|
Share Your Story!
Let's Build our District 33 Toastmaster community!
|
|
Would you like to see a topic or share your story in an upcoming newsletter? Human interest stories highlight the culture of Toastmasters, illustrating leadership, delegation, communication skills, training, and more. Tells us why YOU joined Toastmasters and how it's helped you. |
|
Welcomes New Social Media Coordinator, TaVia Wooley-lles, DTM
Flora Turner, DTM
It's My pleasure to introduce district 33 Social Media Coordinator TaVia Wooley-Iles, DTM. She prefers to be contacted via email or text. tavia@taviailes.com or (818)497-2669.
TaVia Wooley-iles is a communication expert that includes Social and Digital Media.
Let's Meet our Social Media Coordinator, TaVia.
TaVia is known as The Communications Chic on all social media platforms. Her love of word usage and the powerful influence of communication is what drew her to Toastmasters many years ago. Now, as a Communication agency owner, she works with government organizations, nonprofits and businesses on how to utilize strategic communication tactics to produce results.
TaVia Wooley-iles is a Business owner and Executive Director of a non-profit organization based in Los Angeles County CA The EmpowerTEHM Collective, but mostly she is proud of being a woman who deeply believes in empowering women. When she is not doing all things empowering and communications, she can be found doting on her family. She is a wife and a mom to 5 children. Her free time is spent homeschooling her three youngest children, movie nights with her husband, crafting, being creative and running around town with her kids and their recreational activities.
TaVia is the owner and principal of TaVia W. Iles Communications LLC, a Strategic communication agency that provides communication services to entrepreneures, businesses and non-profit organizations, optimizing their reach through innovative and authentic strategies.
She has a YouTube channel (The Communications Chic) and a Podcast B|Y|O|P|R Be your Own PR Pro. Both platforms she shares strategies to support women to elevate their status in order to achieve M|O|R|E.
|
|
|
Highlights of the International Convention |
|
Smedley Fund Wellness Challenge
During the Toastmasters convention, attendees competed to win prizes for the Ralph C. Smedley Memorial Fund. In-person and online attendees were invited to participate and earn wellness points for counting steps, logging meditation, and healthy eating. They kept track of their wellness accomplishments on the Heka Health app and earned points on the leaderboard, recognizing daily and weekly leaders with prizes. The ticket price includes donating to the Smedley Fund and accessing the Heka Health app.
Many TI members have had economic challenges due to natural and artificial situations. Through the Smedley Fund, Toastmasters International has been prepared and ready to provide aid both in membership dues and the replacement of education materials after an application has been submitted.
Prizes were awarded at the end of the convention, with the grand prize being a complimentary registration for the 2023 Toastmasters Convention.
NASHVILLE/HYBRID “We are all storytellers.”
The Toastmasters International 2022 convention, in its first-ever hybrid event, reshaped our narrative with the theme of Storytelling. It went beyond expectations.
In this keynote presentation, Jim Cathcart teaches us how to become the person who will achieve the results we seek. He explains how to develop the qualities of the person you intend to become so that the life you want will start finding you.
Education Sessions
The educational sessions provided four tracks with one live presentation and 3 each day for the online audience. For example:
- Public Speaking
- Personal Development
- Personal Growth
- Inclusive Excellence
|
|
|
|
Golden Gavel Award
A Gilded Honor
Toastmasters’ most prestigious award, the Golden Gavel, has been presented annually since 1959 to an individual distinguished in the fields of communication and leadership.
This year’s recipient is Dr. Shirley Davis, Ph.D., president, and CEO of SDS Global enterprises, an award-winning global workforce expert with 30 years of human resources and business experience. She has written 5 books, including her most recent Diversity Equity and Inclusion for dummies, and many more accolades. This is a "don't miss" presentation!
|
|
Clarisse Kresser, DTM, IPDD, awarded the District Club Strength Award during the Hall of Fame celebration at the International Convention, Nashville, TN
District 33 Leading the Way to Club Growth
This year at the 2022 International Convention, our very own Distinguished Toastmaster (DTM) Clarisse Kresser, the Immediate Past District Director (IPDD), was recognized for District 33’s achievement by being awarded the District Club Strength Award during the Hall of Fame celebration. The District Club Strength Award is an award bestowed by Toastmaster International to Districts that increased their district average club size by 10% or more. Twenty-one districts received this new award for increasing their member base by 10%.
Clarisse acknowledges they may have called her name, but it was a team effort from the district, division, area, club leaders, and members. District 33 was the only district in region 2 to receive this award by increasing its membership size by 11.12%!
Go, team!
|
|
Principles Underlying
Parliamentary Law:
The rules of parliamentary law have been seen to be constructed upon a careful balance of the rights of persons or subgroups within organization or an assembly’s total membership.
That is, these rules are based on a regard for the rights:
- of the majority
- of the minority, especially a strong minority – greater
- than one third [1/3]
- of individual members
- of absentees, and
- of all these together
{quoted from RONR 12 th ed. Page xlix}
Training with Toastmasters-District 33
Rick Sydor, District 36
|
|
Do you tangle up your words sometimes?
Tangled words lead to Malapropism.
These are genuine words given as health advice in a speech. Unfortunately, tongue twisters
lead to incorrect usage. Therefore, foods that contain the “nuclears”, actually (‘nutrients’) help
healthful habits. Your body needs certain “proceeds”, actually( ‘proteins’). Your health depends
on “carpenters”, really ( ‘carbohydrates’ ). Which you “assume”, truly ( ‘consume’) for high
energy. However, these foods may be high in “canneries”, surely (‘calories’). Problems occur
when “suggestion “, it’s (‘digestion’) is taking place in your stomach. Rich foods maybe difficult
for the “engines” really ( ‘enzymes’) to break down. A lack of vitamins and minerals may develop
a “democracy”--( ‘deficiency’) in your “sewage “canal (alimentary canal). “Malfunction” nee
(‘malnutrition’) develops. As the process of “abbreviation” takes place (‘absorption’), few
substances are absorbed into the bloodstream. ;
Malapropism- misused words by Mrs. Malaprop a character from THE RIVALS, a comedy
written by Richard Sheridan in 1775.
Rhetoric and fluency
Use of rhetoric in speech has a powerful effect . It’s good for the soul and the speaker.
WORD of the DAY
Vocabulary to chew on- Empathy and Sympathy
Empathy Oxford Dictionary- From German,
“Einfuhlung”, “Feeling into”- requires active listening because people want to be heard. “I feel
how you feel.”
Sympathy Denotes fellow feeling, not a feeling into- “I know how you feel,” often unsolicited
advice.
Euphemism From the Greek ‘to speak well’: Example- ‘to pass away’ for being dead, for
American “Gosh darn” for “God damn.”
Euphony and cacophony-
Euphony (Webster’s Dictionary), smooth, pleasant, musical- From
Robert Frost – “Whose woods these are I think I know/ His house is in the village though.”
A line from a Toastmaster’s speech- “My roses rear their heads like dancers in the breeze.”
Cacophony Often related to discordant noise/sound, dissonance- it is often harsh. This
happens in difficulty in pronunciation or inadvertent lapse in attention. Answering a call or
talking to someone else while speaking to an audience.
These rhetorical devices craft our eloquence.
Nandita Das, DTM
|
|
White Board Tips for Great ZOOMS
As we increase our technical abilities in the New Year, consider expanding your
collaborative skills by implementing the digital platform whiteboard.
This platform helps with:
1. Brainstorming with the team.
2. Planning out special events.
3. A place to hold all meeting notes and correspondence.
Here are the step-by-step instructions to start now:
Creating a whiteboard in a desktop client meeting
1. Start a meeting from the Zoom desktop client.
2. Click the Whiteboard button on the in-meeting controls.
3. Click New Whiteboard or click an existing whiteboard you would like to edit.
4. Click the arrow next to All Participants can edit to choose what
permissions you would like participants to have.
5. Click Open and Collaborate.
The whiteboard will open in your meeting window.
6. (Optional) Click Share to send the whiteboard to other users outside the
meeting.
Enter the contact names, zoom chat channel, or email addresses of the
users you would like to share the whiteboard with and set their
permissions with the arrow to the right of the entry box. Click Share to
finish.
Click the arrow to the right of the Copy Link button at the bottom of
the window to set the permissions for users you are going to send the link
to. Click Copy Link and then paste the link in a message or email to send
to others.
For details on the whiteboard controls, see the section below. How whiteboards are
saved depends on the settings configured by the Zoom administrator. For details on
how to access saved whiteboards, see this section.
1. Sign in to the Zoom desktop client.
2. Click the Whiteboards button at the top right.
3. Click New to create a new whiteboard.
To edit an existing whiteboard, choose a whiteboard from your dashboard. The
whiteboards are categorized using the following filters:
All Whiteboards: Displays all whiteboards visible to the user from the filters
below.
My Whiteboards: Displays all whiteboards that the user has created.
Shared with Me: Displays all whiteboards others have shared with the
user.
Starred: Displays whiteboards that have been starred by the user.
Trash: Displays all whiteboards that have been moved to the trash.
4. (Optional) Click the whiteboard icon you would like to open.
5. (Optional) Click Share to invite other users to collaborate on the whiteboard.
Enter the contact names, zoom chat channel, or email addresses of the
users you would like to share the whiteboard with and set their
permissions with the arrow to the right of the entry box. Click Share to
finish.
To create a shareable link: Click the arrow to the right of the Copy
Link button at the bottom of the window to set the permissions for
users you are going to send the link to. Click Copy Link and then paste
the link in a message or email to send to others.
For details on the whiteboard controls, see the section below. How whiteboards are
saved depends on the settings configured by the Zoom administrator. For details on
how to access saved whiteboards, see this section.
Text: Create text. Double-clicking a text object puts the object into “text editing”
mode.
Context menu:
Font style (bold, italic, underline)
Font Size
Font Alignment
Font Color
Carolyn Moore, IP4
|
|
|
Let’s Talk Canva
District 33 Public Relations Team held a meeting on July 30, 2022, to introduce the concept of using Canva.
Distinguished Toastmaster (DTM) Flora Turner, Public Relations Manager, opened the meeting and thanked everyone for attending. She talked about how Canva has grown and bloomed in District 33. Flora Turner introduced speaker DTM Maria Azevedo.
Those in attendance were engaged and intrigued by the speaker’s passion for Canva.
Besides learning about Canva designs, there are five takeaways from our meeting:
1. The benefits of using design with Canva to promote Toastmasters.
2. Toastmasters Branding – We serve as brand ambassadors, and to learn more
about the Toastmasters brand, visit www.toastmasters.org.
3. How to display Toastmaster’s logo.
4. When posting pictures on your website or social media, use pictures from your
environment, such as club meetings, conferences, and/or open houses. Make sure
the people in the picture(s) are engaged. Note: Do not use cartoons.
5. If you are unsure of what you are using, refer to Toastmaster’s International
standards and procedures.
Again, the meeting went well, and everyone in attendance was appreciative of what
they learned.
|
|
Article contributions by
Nandita Das, DTM
Annie Hall, DTM
Darnell Evans, DTM
Carolyn Moore, IP4
TaVia Wooley-iles, DTM
Roberta Nadler, CC
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
