Within Toastmasters, Pathways is the educational program we follow to become better speakers, evaluators, and leaders. As part of this program we learn about our own communication and leadership styles and we learn how to recognize those styles in others. The speaking projects in the program encourage us to try new skills in our speeches such as using vocal variety and body language or adding humor to a speech. The levels within each of the Paths in the program build our confidence and skills. At our September 21st meeting, DTM Derek Rolle, from District 47 shared his presentation on how to get started in Pathways. Derek encouraged our members to enroll in Pathways and complete the first project in Level 1, the Ice Breaker Speech and then work on the other projects within the first level to master the fundamentals of public speaking.
We started the meeting with our Destination Master, Tym Myers, providing these clues for city in Europe:
- This city is the Capital of Tuscany and its the 8th largest city in the country.
- The entire historic center of the city is an UNESCO World Heritage site.
- It was the first European city to pave its streets in 1339.
- It is the birthplace of the piano.
- The city is known for luxury fashion and Guccio Guccci founded his brand here in 1921.
- It took over 140 year to build its famous cathedral.
If you guessed Florence, Italy, you are correct!
Our Travel Topics Master, Meghan Burns challenged us to use our 1-2 minute Travel Topics responses to build a mini-Ice Breaker speech that we could develop into a 4-6 minute speech and present at the next meeting to get started on our Level 1 Pathways project. First, Meghan asked Tym to start his Travel Topics response with the sentence, “My life as a traveler.” Tym told us about the 192 different cities he had traveled to and how each one was unique. Meghan then asked Helen to create a speech about breakfast, lunch and dinner at her favorite travel destination. Helen described three perfect meals in Paris: breakfast with croissants and Café au lait at a sidewalk cafe, a picnic lunch of baguette and cheese in a park, and a romantic dinner on boat floating down the Seine. Finally, Meghan asked Samantha to talk about a tour guide who had used vocal variety and body language to engage visitors. Samantha told us about a trip to Italy when she was in high school. The tour guide stood in front of the famous statue of David by Michelangelo and pointed to what he considered the largest feature of the the statue, the face of David. Which caused the audience of American High School students to laugh out loud.
Join us for our next meeting on October 5th from 6:30pm to 7:30pm Pacific (-8 UTC). The meeting theme is “Traveling Solo.” We want to hear about your adventures traveling solo. Where did you go and who did you meet? If you would like to join the club, contact Helen Josephine for an application form.
Register for the meeting: https://tinyurl.com/TravelTalkersZoomLink
RSVP on MeetUp to let us know you are coming to the meeting. Guests are always welcome!
Looking forward to hearing your travel stories! Join us to be inspired to take your next trip.
Helen Josephine,
Travel Talkers Toastmasters
Travel Talkers Toastmasters 
Leave a comment