8 Posts in 30 Day...

You’ve Got To Start Somewhere

Welcome to what had been a placeholder site for far too long…

Hi. My name is Oren and I am a member of Washington Park Toastmasters in Newark, NJ and am working on level four of the Strategic Relationships path right now. “Great!” you’re saying. “But so what?”

One of the elective projects for level 4 is to write a compelling blog by posting at least 8 articles in 30 day. My plan is to post twice a week from now (July 7, 2019) through August 6, 2019. Right now my road map looks like:

Why Pathways?

With that out of the way, I want to jump into the primary focus of this post - why Pathways? I’m going to assume you are familiar with Toastmasters International. You may be a long-time member who has completed your Distinguished Toastmasters (DTM) in the traditional education program or you may have recently joined and only know the Pathways education program. Many of us are in the middle of the spectrum. Under the traditional education program, you started by working toward your Competent Communicator (CC) and your Competent Leader (CL) projects. Once you were done with your CC, you could continue down the communication track by working on your Advanced Communicator Bronze (ACB), Advanced Communicator Silver (ACS), and finally your Advanced Communicator Gold (ACG). On the leadership side, you worked toward your Advanced Leader Bronze (ALB) and Advanced Leader Silver (ALS). Completing both education tracks earned you your DTM award.

In Pathways, the distinction between the communication track and the leadership track has been removed. There are eleven paths to choose from and while some paths lean more toward communication skill and others lean more toward leadership skills, each path includes both communication and leadership skills. Each path is made up of five levels (Mastering Fundamentals, Learning Your Style, Increasing Knowledge, Building Skills, and Demonstrating Expertise). Completing two paths (and some additional requirements) earns the DTM award in the new Pathways world.

As Toastmasters International has switched from the traditional education to Pathways, members who were active before Pathways rolled out to their region are given 2 years to complete projects under the traditional education program. As someone who had completed my ACS and ALB awards and was reasonably close to completing the ACG and ALS awards, I had a choice to make - should I continue working toward my DTM under the traditional program or start over in Pathways?

The answer was surprisingly easy for me. As Vice President of Education for my club last year, two of my responsibilities were to help club members toward their education goals and to be the primary Base Camp Manager for the club (the other two Base Camp Managers for a club are the President and Secretary). As Base Camp Manager I was responsible for marking members progress complete for each level of their path. Between these two responsibilities I decided that without immersing myself in Pathways I would not be able to effectively fulfill these aspects of the Vice President of Education roles for my club and my members. I have found the Pathways program to be well designed and hope to share information with you here in the hope that you’re journey down the path of your choice is more effective as a result.

Finally

Much of the value in Toastmasters comes from the evaluations. Fellow members telling you what they found effective in your presentation and what where they see areas for improvement. I’m hoping you will provide me feedback on this post and the ones to follow. You can reach me at oren (at) orenlevin.com.

Until next time, thank you for reading and I look forward to hearing from you.

Oren

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