Because I Stutter

[ Contents | Search | Reply | Next | Previous | Up ]


Re: Toastmasters?

From: Russ Hicks
Date: 21 Oct 2006
Time: 18:15:30 -0500
Remote Name: 71.123.208.188

Comments

Hi Alisa, ..... Thanks for your kind words. ..... Now pardon me while I laugh a little. <smile> Quite a few students have asked me about Toastmasters, and after I answered the first one, I use the miracle of copy and paste (remember I'm a computer geek!) to tell other students - and anyone else I can get to listen to me - about Toastmasters. Here's what I've said... ..... So you want to know more about Toastmasters, eh? Stand back! I'm gonna pull my finger out of this dike! <grin> ..... Toastmasters International is an amazing organization. The Vision of Toastmasters International states: "Toastmasters International empowers people to achieve their full potential and realize their dreams. Through our member clubs, people throughout the world can improve their communication and leadership skills, and find the courage to change." The Mission of Toastmasters International states: "Toastmasters International is the leading movement devoted to making effective oral communication a worldwide reality. Through its member clubs, Toastmasters International helps men and women learn the arts of speaking, listening and thinking – vital skills that promote self-actualization, enhance leadership, foster human understanding and contribute to the betterment of mankind." ..... Their main website is www.toastmasters.org. It is a communication and leadership organization which is HUGELY successful in helping people overcome their fears of public speaking among many other things. Officially, "The mission of a Toastmaster Club is to provide a mutually supportive and positive learning environment in which every member has the opportunity to develop communication and leadership skills, which in turn foster self-confidence and personal growth." All those things sound like a lot of high sounding words, but they are absolutely true. We walk the walk as well as talk the talk. (No pun intended! <smile>) ..... Our Callier Communicators Toastmasters club in Dallas, founded in 1995, is the first Toastmasters club in the world dedicated exclusively to people who stutter. We have a special mission statement for our club which states, "The Callier Communicators especially understand the difficulty some individuals have in communicating. It is our mission to provide an environment that offers special support and understanding to people with communication difficulties or extreme fear of speaking." The URL for our club is http://www.geocities.com/callier3216/ ..... Toastmasters has about 200,000 members in over 8,000 (I think) clubs throughout the world. If you are scared of public speaking, Toastmasters is the best organization in the entire world to help you conquer those fears. It is a VERY friendly organization full of friendly and supportive people. It has nothing whatsoever to do with stuttering but people who stutter (and blind people, blondes, brunettes, bald people, tall people, short people, skinny people, fat people - you get the picture) are welcomed into the organization with open arms. And above everything else, it's FUN!!! You learn when you have fun. That's the fundamental basis for Toastmasters. ..... No doubt there are LOTS of Toastmaster clubs near you. If you want to know more about Toastmasters, go visit one of these clubs. They would LOVE to have you and any of your friends and classmates as guests sometime. See http://www.toastmasters.org and find a club near you. Click on Find a Club, then specify United States, then your state, then your city, and you can see all the particulars. I'll bet there are some clubs on your university campus. ..... Okay, I'll put my finger back in the dike now. As you can well see, I LOVE Toastmasters! It's the most wonderful organization in the world outside of the National Stuttering Association. ..... Thanks for asking that question, Alisa. I feel better now that I've had the opportunity to blow my Toastmasters trumpet for a while! <grin> ..... You also asked, "Now that you are more comfortable with the fact that you do stutter does it help you to stutter any less?" The answer is no, not particularly. Certainly I STRUGGLE a lot less and my COMMUNICATION skill is vastly improved, but my core stuttering is still there. I never used Toastmasters to improve my fluency. I used it to help my communications skills and to increase my own self-confidence. And it's certainly done that. ..... And you also asked, "Did you ever come to a conclusion as to why your stuttering got worse after four years of summer camp?" Oh yes, definitely. It was simply incomplete therapy. I went to camp in the 1950's - when the earth's crust was just cooling - and the speech "correctionists" as we called them back then simply didn't KNOW what we know today, especially about the stuttering iceberg. See my paper on the stuttering iceberg at http://www.mnsu.edu/comdis/isad6/papers/hicks6.html for details of this. The iceberg - one of the most fundamental breakthroughs in understanding stuttering in the last 50 years - wasn't even conceived until about 1970 and wasn't really publicized until nearly 2000. They were clueless on the emotional/psychological baggage beneath the waterline of the iceberg so they never even thought to treat it! No wonder my therapy failed. But it wasn't their fault. It wasn't anyone's fault really. We just didn't know. ..... I hope this has answered your questions, Alisa. Thanks for asking them. ..... I wish you the best! ..... Russ, my email is russhicks@mail.com


Last changed: 10/23/06