Toastmasters: Mastering, um, our Public Speaking Skills

Tuesday evening completed our eight week Toastmasters public speaking class! It was a great experience filled with engaging and entertaining speeches, but it's nice to close that chapter of our spring and move onto other things :). We did learn a lot though, and maybe you will even be able to tell a difference in the way we speak in front of others from now on :).

I mentioned it briefly in another post, but we had class every Tuesday and all five of us were in it: Kenan in the youngest class, Jared and Lily in the middle one, and Marcus and I in the high school class. We gave speeches not quite every week, debated classmates over a variety of different topics, practiced answering questions by giving a mini speech without having time to prepare, and mock interviews for us in the high school class.

kenan's class

Jared and lily's class with their teacher, Miss Barb.

Lily did a demonstration speech on a couple sewing projects with her friend, Lexie!

Kenan did a demonstration speech on how he does the laundry at our house :).

this must be the sorting stage :)

during my interview with Mr. Joyner - He makes the class entertaining in his own kind of way :). He's a great teacher though, and even though I've done the class with him before, it was great to do it again! 

Jared gave a demonstration speech on starting seeds indoors...

one Tuesday evening, Kenan's class was a one room schoolhouse - doesn't he look like he would have fit right in way back when?! hmm... not sure about those shirt sleeves, Mom :)

As I mentioned earlier, Tuesday was our final class and we celebrated with a regal graduation ceremony :). Each class shared something with the audience and then all the students were presented with a certificate! We were all bummed the Dad couldn't be there as he was gone all week for work... glad to have him back now, though!

I mentioned in some of my speeches that I play and teach piano ... bad idea, for Mr. Joyner appointed me to play Pomp and Circumstance and then another piece of my choice as the students filed out :). I told him I was a little nervous right before we started and he said, "Why are you nervous?? Come on, don't you teach this stuff?!" well yes... but that certainly doesn't mean I'm now forever exempt from being nervous. In the end, the whole evening went really well, and I'm glad he had me do it :). It was good for me and I had fun with it, even if he did only give me a week's notice! 

Kenan recited a poem about a Hippopotamus :)

Jared and Lily's class presented to us a very dramatic story line in which they were each given two words and as they passed the mic down the line, they had to use their words in the growing story. It got interesting, especially with the words giant mutated eggplant, and clean shaven Abraham Lincoln!

such a blurry picture but still worth posting because he did such a great job tying up the whole ordeal in just a couple sentences :). 

Our class grouped up into pairs and each illustrated a Public Speaking Basic, by showing the wrong way and the right way.

Kate and I were partners, illustrating the mistake of fidgeting with your clothing and hair while speaking :). 

our whole class with Mr. Joyner (minus Garrett). It was a fun class to be part of !!

And thus ends Toastmasters for 2016. It was a good challenge and some of us are sad to see it end so quickly (maybe some more than others... ?!). It will be nice to have our Tuesday evenings back at home although I have no doubt that something new will fill it's place because it seems to me that's how life works around here!