December 8, 2011 Theme: Traditions

Club President, Leo Brisebois opened the meeting with his Christmas traditions.

















Past Area Governor, Keith Stoltz, inducts Val Hummel as the new club Secretary.

















Sergeant at Arms, Brent Jemmett, is the Table Topics master of the meeting. Brent provided the background information about the Christmas traditions and each member had to guess what country of origin that the tradition came from.















V.P. of Membership, Lorna Vanderploeg was the General Evaluator of the meeting and provided members with her views on how the meeting was run.

December 8, 2011 Theme: Traditions

Last night's meeting had the theme "TRADITIONS". Mostly Christmas traditions and everyone had a story to tell including the remarks from the chairperson who talked about the different traditions around the world.

Table Topics was chaired by Brent Jemmett. The topic, guess the country after reading it’s Christmas Tradition.

Our guest, Vern Noseworthy was the Table Topics winner who guessed the correct country from the tradition stated.

Jane Stoltz was the Grammarian with the new words "Untraditional" and "Non-traditional". The meeting was just that, untraditional. Especially when it came to the speakers Keith Stoltz and Marie McCutcheon evaluating themselves after presenting their own speeches and the chairperson missing it completely. It was the kind of night that it was.

We started the meeting a bit late, we did not have the agenda filled, it was untraditional. Jane could not have picked a better word. We even had an election for Secretary which was untraditional for this time of year. Lorna VanderPloeg was the General Evaluator and even she mentioned how the meeting was untraditional.

Quizmaster was George Nichol. He had some easy and not so easy quizzes to sharpen our skills. Keith McCluskie, Toast and Timer explained his role and gave us a toast to Canada.

The meeting was untraditional but fun.

Leo Brisebois

Club President

December 1, 2011 Theme: Happy Endings

Caitlyn and Lexi co-chair the final meeting of the Youth Leadership program. Great job!

















Lorna VanderPloeg receives a certificate of achievement for completing her tenth speech from the Competent Communicator manual series.
Left: Jane Stoltz (V.P. of Education) and Right: Leo Brisebois (President) present Lorna VanderPloeg (V.P. of Membership) with a certificate of achievement.













Lexi (left) and Caitlyn (right) receive certificates of achievement for completing the six week Youth Leadership program.

















Lucy D'Arcey receives a certificate of achievement for being the coordinator of the Youth Leadership program.
Shown left: Lucy D'Arcey, front: Jane Stoltz (V.P. of Education) and back: Leo Brisebois (Club President)















Caitlyn and Lexi both adjourn the meeting as they finish their six week program. Well done by both girls!

December 1, 2011 Theme: Happy Endings

It was a fun filled night where we had our Youth Leadership Participants, Lexi Curran and Caitlyn Grubb, co-chair the evening's meeting. They also both presented a speech and evaluated each others speech. They have only been with us for 6 weeks and they are already teaching some of us new things. Well done!

Call to Order was done by Lucy D’Arcey who also did a recap of the 6 week Youth Leadership Program from start to finish.

Joke of the Day, done by Leo Brisebois, was a political joke about a senator meeting St. Peter at the pearly gates. St. Peter asked the senator to choose which direction he wanted to go and the campaigned involved in voting.

Toast and Timer, by Brent Jemmett, talked about happy endings in everything.... especially Toronto fans hoping the Toronto Maple Leaf's repeat the 1967 Stanley Cup win for Canada.

Grammarian, by Sharon D’Arcey, presented the word of the evening "Triumphantly". It was used 15 times, awesome!

Speeches;

Caitlyn Grubb - The Problem with Homework. She explained her likes and dislikes.

Lexi Curran - My Brothers. She explained her likes and dislikes too.

Valrie Hummel - Down the Rabbit Hole. It was a very humorous and entertaining presentation as always.

Lorna VanderPloeg with her 10^th speech - Out of the Cold. A very touching, inspirational speech! Congratulations on completing your Competent Communication manual series with your 10^th speech!

Lorna was presented with a recognition award, for completing her 10th speech, from the V.P. of Education Jane Stoltz and Club President Leo Brisebois.

Youth Leadership participants; Lexi Curran and Caitlyn Grubb were also presented with their Certificate of Excellence for completing the 6 week course on Youth Leadership by V.P. of Education, Jane Stoltz and Club President, Leo Brisebois

We had evaluations done by; Caitlyn, Lexi, George Nichols and Keith McCluskie who all had good better and best.

Table Topics Master; Diane Bender, explained her role and gave out little comic pictures to speak about. She asked us to say whatever came to mind about the picture and to include the new word and also to implement the theme; Happy Endings.

Table Topics winners were; Audrey Orth, Florence (guest) and Caitlyn.

General Evaluator, Keith Stoltz gave us some good grow points on how the meeting was one of the best he has seen with our Youth Leadership participants co chairing, presenting speeches and evaluating each others speeches.

We had over 75 laughs and lots of fun! After the meeting we were all invited for refreshments and snacks.

Club President

Leo Brisebois

November 24, 2011 Theme: Going for the Gold

Last night theme: GOING FOR THE GOLD

Chairperson, Jane Stoltz described what is going for the gold. We as Toastmasters work toward the gold which is DTM (Distinguished Toast Master)

What is Gold? What is fool’s gold?

You are as good as Gold.

Put GOLD in your life and you will achieve success, happiness and joy.

Everyone was given a chance to tell us about the gold in their life and how it builds character and how they move forward toward their goal.

Joke of the day was provided by Lexi Curran.

Thoughts to Ponder:

- How do you become successful? One word, "experience".

- How do you gain experience? Two words, "wrong decisions".

Toast and Timer by Sharon D’Arcey explained her role and how we have all the chances to reach our goal and how blessed we are to life here in Canada.

Word of the Day was provided by Caitlyn Grubb. The word means "fear of long words".

Hippopotomonstrosesqippedaliophobiao. Try that word for size! This is a record for the Word of the Day. Try that one at your club.

Education Module by Keith Stoltz was on Vocal Variation. He asked everyone questions about when they would use variation in their vocals.

We had speeches by Lexi Curran on "Shoes" and Caitlyn Grubb "My little sister". Good job by both and they both evaluated each other's speech presentation too.

Lucy D’Arcey provided a speech presentation about "Leadership" She presented her speech without notes. Good job!

Table Topic Master, Heidi Menzi, used different Christmas ornaments for us to express the meaning or what it meant to us. The winners were; Caitlyn and Brent.

General Evaluator, Brent Jemmett, led the evaluation role and gave us a recap of the meeting.

Caitlyn who was the Grammarian with the Word of the Day that had more letters than the alphabet, counted the number of times it was used, 3 times by herself and she counted the number of laughs which totaled 32.

Closing remarks by Jane Stoltz, Get the Gold!

Next week will be the Graduation for the Youth Leadership participants. I hope everyone makes an effort and comes out to support our Youths and congratulates them on their achievements for winning the gold.

Linguist of Listowel

Leo Brisebois

November 17, 2011 Theme: Strategies for Success

Jane Stoltz was the Chairperson of the meeting.


















Valrie Hummel (left) receives her membership pin from the V.P. of Membership - Lorna VanderPloeg.

















Heidi Menzi provides the club members with her speech presentation from the Advanced Toastmaster manual. Her speech was entitled "Diving Accident".

November 17, 2011 Theme: Strategies for Success

Educational Module - Team building Role Playing.
This exercise starts with 4 chairs and 1 person that drives the "car". Each additional passenger has a specific "trait" that influences the way the rest of the occupants of the car acts. (Eg. angry, sad, anxious, nervous, etc.).
Car occupants are; back left to right; Valrie Hummel, Brent Jemmett. Front left to right; Sharon D'Arcey and George Nichol.












Educational Module - team challenge.
Left to Right; Lorna VanderPloeg, Brent Jemmett, George Nichol and Heidi Menzi.

This exercise is a challenge to create an ongoing sentence with one word at a time per person. This helps build impromptu speaking skills as you don't know what word the person before you will say.




Lorna VanderPloeg fills the role of Table Topics Master.
She provided fortune cookies to each club member. When it was their turn to speak for one minute, the cookie was opened and the topic to speak about for 1 minute was removed.















Brent Jemmett was the speech evaluator for Heidi Menzi's speech presentation entitled "Diving Accident".

















Leo Brisebois was the General Evaluator for the meeting. He provided the members with his views of what he enjoyed about the meeting and a suggestion for a possible improvement for the next meeting.

November 17, 2011 Theme: Strategies for Success

Toastmasters and Friends,

We had a setback because of the poor weather conditions on November 17th and we had to cancel the Youth leadership for this week however with the small group we had it all worked out. There were a lot of laughs and good quotes of inspiration, something for everyone to take home.

Call to Order was done by Valrie Hummel for the theme of the meeting and she told us something about the chairperson and her many collections and pastime. Good job Valrie.

The Chairperson of the meeting was Jane Stoltz. Her remarks were that we all need goals. Each of us need to write them down. Once written down, we need to constantly keep checking them in order to stay in check or in order to make adjustments along the way. The best way to describe it would be like your checkbook.

Joke of the Day was done by Brent Jemmett. His joke was about his new found Genie and how he made a wish for something that might never happen again like the Toronto Maple Leaf's winning the Stanley Cup.

Sharon D’Arcey was the Toast and Timer. She explained her role and how this role helps her with her listening skills. Everyone has the tools to get things done and she proposed a toast to thank Canada for giving us everything we need to be successful.

Grammarian, Lorna VanderPloeg, provided us with the Word of the Day "LUCRATIVE" and it was used 10 times throughout the evening.

Literary Corner by Valrie Hummel, provided us with a challenge to find your passion and pursue it. Even in bad situations, look for the good and you will find it . Listen to your inner voice. Everyone has a purpose and the tools to succeed, listen to your heart and have the courage to follow it.

Heidi Menzi gave us a speech about a very bad experience she had from a DIVING ACCIDENT when she was young.

Brent did her evaluation and used the GOOD, BETTER and BEST method to evaluate her speech.

Table Topics by Lorna VanderPloeg used fortune cookies for the impromptu mini speeches each of the members took part in. Good topics! The winner was a tie with 2 Keith’s.

Quiz Master, George Nichol had some easy and not so easy phrases for us to guess who said them during the meeting.

We had an Educational Module presented by Keith Stoltz. He used different role plays in order to help us improve our listening, thinking and speaking skills. There were some good games to help us think on our feet. We had lots of fun and laughs. Good job Keith! Everyone really enjoyed the workshops.

We also had a membership presentation in honor of Val Hummel who was presented with her toastmaster pin by Lorna VanderPloeg her mentor and V.P. of Membership.

We had a good night with over 50 laughs on this cold and snowy Autumn night in Listowel.

Good night all

Leo Brisebois

November 10, 2011 Theme: Facing the Challenge

V.P. of Education, Jane Stoltz, was the Chairperson for the meeting. Jane provided us with lots of encouraging ways that each one of us can "Face the Challenges in life and succeed.
















Youth Leadership participant, Lexi Curran presented her speech presentation entitled "Why I Should Get A Puppy".
She had some very convincing views and ideas why a puppy would enrich her life.















Youth Leadership participant, Caitlyn Grubb presented her speech presentation entitled "Joan of Arc".
Caitlyn did a good job providing the club members with history and the story of Joan of Arc and how she faced the challenge and changed the history of the world.














Lucy D'Arcey, provided the club members with her speech presentation entitled "Character Is A Choice".
Lucy's speech presentation left us with lots to think about when we interact with others and what impression we leave with them.














Club President, Leo Brisebois provided everyone with a speech presentation from one of the advanced Toastmaster manuals.

November 10, 2011 Theme: Facing the Challenge

Youth Leadership participants; Lexi Curran (left) and Caitlyn Grubb (right) jointly shared the role of Table Topics Master.
They did a great job by providing the club members each with two questions "What would you prefer more ...........or .........?
Each club member had to answer these impromptu questions and speak aloud for one minute.













Sharon D'Arcey's role of the evening was an evaluator of Lexi Curran's speech presentation entitled "Why I should get a Puppy". This was done to help Lexi know what her strengths are in public speaking and perhaps offer a suggestion to help improve one thing for the next speech.














Club Treasurer, George Nichol, also had the role of speech evaluator and he evaluated Caitlyn Grubb's speech presentation entitled "Joan of Arc". George gave lots of praise as well and offered a suggestion to help Caitlyn with her next speech presentation.














Diane Bender was also a speech evaluator for the evening and provided feedback to Lucy D'Arcey after she presented her 9th speech from the Competent Communicator manual. The speech was entitled "Character is a Choice".















V.P. of Membership, Lorna VanderPloeg was the General Evaluator of the entire meeting. She provided the club members with her views of how the meeting was conducted, value-added features and some suggestions for possible changes/improvements for the next meeting.

November 10, 2011, Theme: Facing the Challenge

Linguists of Listowel

Them: FACING THE CHALLENGE

Good remarks by our chairperson Jane Stoltz about the challenges we face every day and good quotes to make you stop and think.

This was the third week for our Youth Leadership last night and they both presented another speech. Lexi's speech was entitled "Why I Should Get A Puppy". Caitlyn's speech was entitled "Joan of Arc".

Both Youth Leadership participants are doing great and they have made great strides since the first week.

The word of the day "COWABUNGA" was used 11 times throughout the night and was well presented to everyone. Good job Keith McCluskie!

We had Joke of the Day by Leo Brisebois. Leo also presented a speech about praise for someone’s retirement. Lucy D’Arcey's speech "Character is a Choice" was a very inspirational speech. I always like her speeches as she always give us something to take away with us. Tonight, we all have choices. It’s not what you do that makes the difference, it’s how you respond to it that make all the difference.

We had good inspirational quotes by Jane Stoltz throughout the evening;

"Do the things you think you cannot do".

"Never leave until tomorrow what you can do today".

"Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened".

Doesn’t that make you think? There are a lot of truths in those phrases/quotes.

Toast and Timer by Valrie Hummel was a patriotic toast to all our fallen soldiers and family members that went to war, with some never returning. Good toast!

Marie McCutcheon did an education module on GESTURES and gave us examples using habits the female and male use often that give away their speech.

Table Topics were lead by no other than Lexi and Caitlyn. They worked it out together by explaining their roles and giving out impromptu speaking roles. An example of choices were; Would you prefer being poor or rich and why? Good choice to table topics.

Evaluator George Nichol, Sharon D’Arcey, Diane Bender and Keith Stoltz, all did a good job giving good points and grow points.

Lorna VanderPloeg, general evaluator took over the chairing part of the meeting for the evaluators role and gave us comments about the meeting

65 LAUGHS for the evening and lots of fun.

Leo Brisebois

Club President

"Do the things you think you cannot do".

Good night

November 3, 2011, Theme: Remembering the Past, Present and Future

Left: Club President, Leo Brisebois presents Brent Jemmett with the Presidents Distinguished Club award. This was earned when Brent was the club president during the 2010/2011 year.
















Sergeant At Arms, Brent Jemmett, is proudly attaching the 2010/2011 Presidents Distinguished Club ribbon to the Linguists of Listowel club banner.

November 3, 2011 Theme: Remembering the Past, Present and Future

Club president, Leo Brisebois, fills the role of "Joke of the Day".


















Youth leadership participant, Lexi Curran, presents her speech to the club members.

















Newest member, Val Hummel, presented her sample Ice Breaker speech to the Youth Leadership participants and the rest of the club members.
















Youth Leadership participants, left to right; Lexi Curran, Caitlyn Grubb and Youth Leadership leader Lucy D'Arcey.

November 3, 2011 Theme: Remembering the Past, Present and Future

Toastmasters

Our meeting last night was fun and it included lots of laughs according to the laugh counter. "Awesome" was the word of the evening and it was used over 15 times. Thanks to Lorna VanderPloeg, our Grammarian, awesome eh!

The theme; past, present and future is based upon the quote "Yesterday is History, Tomorrow a Mystery, Today is a Gift, That's why it's called the Present. The theme is also timely as we reflect on Remembrance Day and those who fought and have fallen for our country's freedom.

Jane Stoltz, who was chair for last night’s meeting, did a fantastic job keeping thing moving forward and on schedule as every meeting should be run.

This was the second week for our Youth Leadership group and it started with introductions which flowed into the Joke of the Day done by myself about a parrot named Moses and the dog named Jesus.

Youth Leadership participants; Lexi and Caityln both presented their Ice Breaker speeches last night and both presented very well for their first speech presentation. They were both evaluated and were provided with lots of glow points and at least one grow point to help improve their speech presentation for next week. Overall they were wonderful.

Table Topics was presented by Lucy D’Arcey. She had us all speak about a famous person and make us all believe that their success and achievements in life came from being in Toastmasters.

The Table Topics winner was a tie between Lexi and Caityln. Way to go!

Sample speech was provided by Valrie Hummel. She is so humorous because she appears so serious and makes you just want to keep laughing. Our Timer George Nichol who explained his role and gave us a toast to Canada.

All in all we had lot of laughs and lot of fun.

Leo Brisebois

Club President

October 20, 2011 Theme: It Starts With Us

October 20th was the start of the Youth Leadership Program. We had two youth sign up for the 6 week program.
We also had a guest, Tracy Ireland, during the meeting.











Part of the Youth Leadership Program is to demonstrate and explain what happens during a Toastmaster's meeting.
Lucy D'Arcey is running the Youth Leadership Program and introduced the program to the youth.
George Nichol provided an educational module on preparing a speech.
Diane Bender provided a very good speech presentation with her sample Ice Breaker Speech. (This helped the youth participants understand how they might write and present their Ice Breaker Speech).
Lorna VanderPloeg presented a great speech entitled "Stop Making Excuses and Start Making Changes".
We also had a visit from our Area Governor, Gregory C.N. Smith.

Shown left: Area Governor, Gregory C.N. Smith presents Brent Jemmett (Sergeant At Arms) with the first place trophy for winning the Area Humorous Speech Contest.
Congratulations Brent!

October 13, 2011 Theme: Books, Magazines, Papers Worth Reading

Lucy D'Arcey presents a Literary Reading.


















Sharon D'Arcey presented her speech. Sample speech about being a master of ceremonies.

















Leo Brisebois was the Table Topics master for the meeting. He had a theme of "Get rid of the monkey on your back".

















Sharon D'Arcey participates in Table Topics and speaks about how to get the monkey off her back.

October 13_2011 Theme: Books, Magazines, Papers Worth Reading.

Toastmasters

We had a fun filled meeting last night with plenty of laughs and good jokes. The theme; Books, Magazines and Paper was a good theme for last night's meeting. We had myself and Lucy bring a box of paper-backed books. Keith Stoltz brought his IPAD 2 to show us that you can read books and run a meeting paperless.

Joke of the day, by Lucy D’Arcey, was about a children's story where the children thought that God had been lost and they were the ones to blame.

Grammarian, by Jane Stoltz, provided the word "Ambiguous". It was used 3 times which was very ambiguous on every one's part.

Speaker, Sharon D’Arcey, practiced her speech introduction for an event that she will be hosting. She used this opportunity to get feedback and she received good grow points to take with her for the event night.

Table Topics, lead by myself, had a theme about "The monkey on your back". This monkey was something that nobody wanted and each person had to pass it on to the next toastmaster with a good reason why they couldn't keep it. We are given Monkey’s from other people everyday and it’s how we delegate them to others which frees us from those tasks or "monkeys on our backs". The Table Topic winner was Jean Van Der Straeten, our guest and returning toastmaster for the evening.

Quiz Master, Audrey Orth had us thinking a lot of the phrases that each of us used throughout the meeting.

Literary Reading, from Lucy D’Arcey was about good help books and literature about children.

Lorna VanderPloeg, General Evaluator, gave us some good grow points to take home and improve our next meeting with.

Brent Jemmett helped out by stepping in to fill the agenda roles by introducing our guest for the evening and Calling the meeting to order.

All in all, we had over 75 laughs. Everyone had a good time.

Have a good week and hope that all the toastmasters that were not in attendance for this weeks meeting can make it next week for our Youth Leadership Workshop this Thursday.

Let’s make a good impression for our Youths.

Thank-you,

Leo Brisebois

October 6_2011 Theme: Fall Colours

Lucy D'Arcey presents her speech # 6 entitled "Thank-you for Thanksgiving".

















Lorna VanderPloeg evaluates Lucy's speech presentation and provides some "glow" and "grow" points.

















Sharon D'Arcey was the Grammarian for the evening. She provided a report on the usage of the word of the night "pilgrimage" as well as a report on the group's overall grammar usage during the meeting.















Audrey Orth was the general evaluator of the meeting. She provided the club members with her views on what she liked about the meeting and suggestions to enhance future meetings.

October 6, 2011 Theme: Fall Colours

Linguist of Listowel

The meeting last night finished with over 75 laughs! What an increase over the last meeting by 25 laughs. What a boost to the meeting. Great joke by Keith Stoltz, if you are a speaker always make sure you are not the last one to speak if you want a guarantee that there will be anyone left to hear it.

Grammarian by Sharon D’Arcey, provided us with the word Pilgrimage which means; a long journey. The way the word was presented was that Sharon was going to pay close attention to it's proper usage. We did use the word and had a lot of fun with it. The word pilgrimage was used over 7 times or more during the evening.

We had a Thanksgiving reading from Heidi Menzi. She read about saving habitat for pheasants and how they were preserved in the wildlife. We had one speaker; Lucy D’Arcey, who provided us with a motivational speech on Thanksgiving that added humor and inspiration.

Table Topics, led by Jane Stoltz, was about things that we are thankful for. The winner was between myself and Keith Stoltz. Keith won because I voted for him and he did have a better mini speech than mine.

Quizmaster; Keith McCluskie did a good job and had us puzzled on some of the comments or statements made by people during the meeting. It was good that he had some easy ones in the mix.

We also had an award for Lucy D'Arcey who gave her 6^th speech tonight and she was recognized for her achievement. Great job Lucy! We always enjoy listening to your speeches.

Audrey Orth, General Evaluator only had good things to say about the meeting which was full of laughs and good times.

Happy Thanksgiving to you and your loved ones.

Leo Brisebois

September 29, 2011: Humorous Speech and Table Topics Contests

Table Topics Contest Winners;
Left: Jane Stoltz (2nd place)
Centre: Brent Jemmett (3rd place)
Right: Keith McCluskie (1st place).










Humorous Speech Contest Winners;
Left: Valrie Hummel (2nd place) - Speech entitled - Racoon Race.
Right: Keith McCluskie (1st place) - Speech entitled - Family Re-union

September 22, 2011, Theme: Fall Harvest

Valrie Hummel (left) takes part in the induction ceremony presented by Lorna VanderPloeg (V.P. of Membership).

















Lorna VanderPloeg (right) welcomes our newest member Valrie Hummel (left) to the Linguists of Listowel Toastmaster's club.

















Valrie Hummel provides us with a literary reading about Fall Harvest.

















Karen Bott provides us with a series of poems about Fall Harvest during her literary reading.

















Marilyn Miller (left) and Karen Bott (right) provide Heidi Menzi (centre) with some suggestions for her next speech during the Coaches Corner.