I am a member of two Toastmasters clubs, one at my place of business and another in my local community. Both of these clubs host two meetings a month where they assemble at a specific location at a specific time and they conduct club business.
When I am at the meetings, I get the privilege of meeting many interesting people with diverse skills and interests that I would not otherwise know. The meetings are a place to put into practice the skills we have been studying, practicing, and perfecting in our own time. I put in as much work outside of club meetings as I put in at the meetings. Study and preparation are key to my personal success.
I am not let to fend for myself though. Toastmasters International has many tools and resources to help me achieve my speaking goals. When I joined, I received two printed manuals for the Competent Leadership and Competent Communicator series. A club member also taught me to access some of the videos and other resources on the Toastmasters International website. These resources were- average.
Professionally, I interact with multiple online learning and training systems. I am used to having curriculum assigned to me that I need to progress through. When Toastmasters introduced Pathways, it resembled the learning and training models that I was accustomed to through work! This similarity made it very easy for me to adopt to the new Pathways culture at Toastmasters.
In Pathways, you have access to a couple of projects at a time, based on which path and level you are working on. You can read them and complete the projects in any order. Many of the projects have instructional videos to accompany them. All of the projects have pre and post tests so you can monitor your own progress. There are project checklists and worksheets that you can download as well to help you complete your projects.
With all of these tools and resources available to you, you are able to work very independently on your projects. Meetings become a place where members assemble to share the progress that they have made and to share their final projects. When meetings are celebratory places where members are achieving milestones- they are a lot of fun and you want to be at them!
