The Speak Easy Gavel Club VPE Redux

Remember how much I enjoyed my first days in ERDCC's Speak Easy Gavel Club, and soon after being elected a Gavel Club officer? Well, get ready to read even more about speechifying, honing leadership skills, and cultivating self-betterment, because yours truly has been elected once again to the position of Vice President Education in the organization.

Our club's normal period for elections is the month of June. COVID-19 cramped everyone's style. When the Department of Corrections allowed groups to meet again a couple of months ago, Gavel Club's old guard were itching to vacate offices too long held. (In the case of our now-outbound president, extraordinary – really, absurd – circumstances made him the longest sitting president in club history, at two and a half years.) Fresh faces were all too happy to step in and fill some of those offices. Whether out of others' deference or their fear, I ran for Vice President Education unopposed.

The VPE is the club's scheduler. Part of the duties of office involves tracking members' progress though Toastmasters speech and leadership projects, and helping them meet their goals. Other responsibilities include organizing club meetings and planning monthly themes for the year. It's a nice vote of confidence to be installed in such a position of influence, to be empowered to direct thirty-odd people's transformation into more effective, confident communicators.

My membership began as a lark. Probably because I was never really involved with Corporate America, I had only the vaguest idea of what Toastmasters did. Joining up with its affiliate, Gavel Club, was simply a matter of trying something new in my prison life. I spent almost seventeen years at Crossroads Correctional Center, a facility that offered almost no positive, structured activities. Then I came to ERDCC. Suddenly: stuff! Why not give this speechifying thing a go?

Delivering speeches never compelled me before. More accurately, I never considered public speaking as something that I might do. I'd certainly given performances – musical theater, violin recitals, making awful spectacles of myself – but of course I'd written plenty of essays. Coherently presenting series of structured thoughts aloud, using meaningful body language, maintaining eye contact with an audience, employing the right vocal inflections to express my intended message, and all the other aspects of good speechmaking involve a skill set I'd barely used before that morning, three years ago, when I delivered my Gavel Club icebreaker.

Honing my interpersonal skills, exercising a different type of mind-body harmony, building my improvisational abilities, and, most importantly, helping others do the same, are what the Gavel Club experience is all about. I can hardly wait to start this new facet of it.