June 2022 Shout Out Newsletter
Discover what District 48 members are up to this month!
The Shout Out Newsletter is all about the members of District 48. It’s the who, what, where and when of members’ activities.
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Table of Contents
Member Spotlight
Speech Contestant Stories
Peak Inside Some of Our Clubs
Editor: District 48 Public Relations Manager
It’s all about our members!
Member Spotlight
Toastmasters, Braille, and Overcoming the Fear of Public Speaking
by Neva Fairchild, National Aging & Vision Loss Specialist at American Foundation for the Blind, AER President, Member of Message Crafters Toastmasters Club
Honest feedback has given me the confidence I needed to do what I can do with the tools I have.
As with most things in life, I get so much more out of Toastmasters than I put in that I sometimes feel like I’m taking advantage by receiving more than my fair share and certainly getting much more than I initially hoped for.
I became a member of Toastmasters a little more than a year ago to improve my public speaking ability so I could prepare for my role as President of the Association for Education and Rehabilitation of the Blind and Visually Impaired (AER). I am trained as a Rehabilitation Counselor and have worked in the field of blindness services for over 30 years.
I have lived with visual impairment all my life. Reading from a script has never been something I could do, so making a speech was terrifying for me. What if I forget what to say? What if I run out of things to say? What if no one wants to listen to what I say? Needless to say, I was one of the millions of people on Planet Earth that feared public speaking more than almost anything.
In my 40s, I learned to read Braille. I can’t read fast or fluently, but I can read short phrases like those you might use in an outline for a speech. My anxiety about doing a presentation in front of a group lessened several decades ago. However, I seldom said the same thing from presentation to presentation and I worried that as President of AER, I would need to make the same speech multiple times, to different groups, across the country. That was my catalyst to become a Toastmaster.
I concluded after only a few speeches that I could deliver a speech using a five-line, short phrase outline so I would be sure to have a compelling introduction, three main points, and a conclusion that made my audience think. Initially, I tried reading well-crafted sentences to give a speech by listening to my computer read them aloud in one ear while I spoke them aloud to the club.
Feedback from my evaluators and my own instincts told me that wasn’t going to work. I sounded jerky, stilted, and unnatural. I have learned to make my points by telling stories. Weaving in humor has also helped me feel more relaxed and when I can be in-person again, the audience response to my “snarkiness” will give me audible feedback.
Honest feedback from evaluators and the TAG team, particularly from my Mentor, especially when problems I am overlooking are illuminated and they challenge me to improve has proven priceless. No one else will tell you that saying “OK” seventeen times in 5 minutes is excessive and distracting, not to mention annoying. Teaching me to engage the audience, even when they are virtual has also helped me to be a better speaker.
Toastmasters has given me the confidence I needed to do what I can do with the tools I have.
I’m confident looking forward to my presidential address and presentations at the 2022 International Conference of AER in July. I will proudly wear my Toastmasters pin awarded to me for serving in all the roles at a meeting during 2021.
Neva Fairchild is a member of VIP Online Toastmasters (Visually Impaired People) and Message Crafters, a Toastmasters club in Clearwater, Florida
Speech Contestant Stories
By: Mark Abadi, Aug 28, 2018: Excerpted from https://www.businessinsider.com/toastmasters-public-speaking-championship-ramona-smith-2018-8
The 31-year-old teacher who beat 30,000 people to become the world champion of public speaking explains exactly how she did it
Ramona Smith, a 31-year-old high-school teacher from Houston, outlasted more than 30,000 other speakers from around the world over the six-month World Championship of Public Speaking competition, the largest of its kind…
Smith is just the second African-American woman and the fifth woman overall to win the public-speaking championship since it began in 1938.
Smith's winning speech, titled "Still Standing," explored how she found strength in the face of adversity throughout her life. You can watch the seven-minute speech below.
In an interview with Business Insider, Smith broke down the techniques she used in her speech and how they pushed her over the edge.
She chose a creative way to get through to her audience
The first step toward a good speech is finding the right way to convey information to your audience.
Smith's speech used a metaphor that many people are familiar with — a boxing match — to describe various points in her life when she was knocked down but refused to give up, included her dropping out of college, her divorce, and her early failures on the public-speaking circuit.
"Pain and difficulty and adversity, those are things that everybody everywhere can deal with, whether you're in America or Australia or Africa," Smith told Business Insider. "We all experience times when we feel like life has knocked us down."
She wasn't afraid to look stupid
Smith was highly animated as she delivered her speech, balling her fists and crouching into a boxer's stance to drive her points home, and punctuating them by mimicking the punches, jabs, and hooks of an actual fight.
Earlier in her career, she would have been afraid of committing to such a high-energy delivery, she said. But experience, as well as a few acting classes, taught her that there's no use in holding back.
"When I got on the stage, I said: 'You know what? I'm just going to do whatever feels good. I'm going to do whatever feels right. I'm not going to care about what happens,'" she told Business Insider. "So I got up there, and I was shimmying my feet and acting like a boxer — in high heels, to boot.
"Just that free body language and not being afraid to look silly and just kind of let loose, I think that helped, because it's like, 'Oh, well, she's this professional speaker on this stage, but she still has this human side.'"
She asked the audience questions — and meant it
Smith said one of her most important techniques was to ask the audience questions and give members enough time to actually formulate an answer.
"Can you think of a time that life tried to knock you down?" Smith said in her speech, stopping for a beat and looking out into the crowd. "Who was your toughest opponent?"
Asking questions draws the audience in and allows them to relate more to the speaker, Smith said.
"Those pregnant pauses are so important," Smith told Business Insider. "I really look at them like I'm waiting for an answer."
She learned from the greats
Smith has absorbed lessons from countless public speakers on the professional circuit and in her local Toastmasters club.
A piece of advice that has stuck out is one she learned from Dananjaya Hettiarachchi, a Sri Lankan entrepreneur who won the 2014 Toastmasters competition. Hettiarachchi recommends speakers open the palms of their hands to the audience to convey openness — something Smith did throughout her winning speech.
"It just makes the audience feel more connected, like I'm really open, I'm vulnerable, and I want to give you all of me," she said. "And it makes me look relaxed and comfortable."
But it takes more than just following others to become a champion.
"At the end of the day, you still have to put your own original spin on it and be bold enough to be yourself," she said.