Mª del Mar Cano Mesa

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How is Toastmasters connected to my professional development as an educator?

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One of the reasons to become an active member of Toastmasters has to do with the development of my professional career as I started delivering educational workshops and I wanted to be an effective communicator. It is not only about the message you may be sharing with a larger community, but it is also about the way you deliver it. Once I got more engaged in doing the projects, I realised it was directly connected with me, as Mar the teacher, in a classroom environment, where I love spending my time.

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A turning point was when I attended GLC projects exhibition day and I realised that students needed to become effective communicators as well. Since then, I began sharing my knowledge with my students. For example, every day we had class a student checked attendance using our pot with the wooden sticks with our names and symbols on them. We focused on aspects like eye contact, body posture and volume, and the use of the English language too. After each student performed, we all gave feedback and feedforward to that student, from their peers’ perspective. In this way, I believe we raised awareness and the students became more and more aware. I even recall a student telling me ‘Mar, I kept eye contact all the time.’ I also have in mind those images from students speaking with their hands in their pockets or their arms crossed, shoulders down and eyes rolling everywhere.  Personally, little things which may see insignificant can make a big difference.

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Besides, apart from my belief this could benefit the students to turn out to be better communicators, this was tightly connected with one of the indicators in the ‘AERO English Language Arts Curriculum Framework’: “Use appropriate eye contact, adequate volume and clear pronunciation when speaking in front of any type of audience.”

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All in all, everything seemed to be connected.

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What new ideas or impressions do I have that extended my thinking in new directions?

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An idea that came to me not that long ago was to try to implement Toastmasters methodology in my classes, not only when it came to communication but also concerning leadership and roles. What if students could take different roles beyond the ones they were already used to? It means that apart from the roles of speakers and listeners (which could be considered speech evaluators in Toastmasters language) they had performed in Socratic circles, they could also perform as timers (signalling different moments before the ending of a discussion, Ah-counters (counting filler words, like 'Em...' 'Um…', etc), and grammarians. This naming also connected me with the language of identity, one of the key language moves. As Ron Ritchhart says,

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In using the language of identity, we are not only placing students in a specific role with an attendant set of behaviors and ways of operating but also tacitly rejecting other roles. Specifically, we are rejecting the role of the teacher as deliverer of information and students as passive receiver. (2015: 75)

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What is challenging or confusing? What do I wonder about?

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I wonder up to what extent I can implement and spread this methodology in my educational community, as well as I wonder if other teachers would be willing to try. So far I told the English teachers I am working with at this moment about Toastmasters club, and I even invited them to attend a session and see what it was like. However, even if I haven’t succeeded in that endeavour yet, I have faith that one day –maybe when our workload diminishes–, one or another teacher will attend and hopefully will see how powerful that could be for every single learner in a process of growing and development as persons, as communicators and leaders.

Mar Cano

(Toastmasters member Bogotá English Club from Barcelona, Spain)

May 2020