Reported by Catherine Feng
Greater Princeton AYLUS (GPA) highly promotes School Leadership among its members, therefore Catherine Feng and Sophie Wang both actively volunteer and lead a student-facilitated Toastmasters club. The club is composed of many middle and high schoolers, and has a parallel for the younger members. The club provides many opportunities for Sophie and Catherine, as well as many others, to serve the community and help their peers grow into better speakers and communicators.
Sophie Wang serves as the club’s Vice President and helps to run and organize meetings, while Catherine Feng often serves as an evaluator and mentor, giving oral and written feedback on others’ speeches and advice on how they could become better speakers according to the project and component of speaking that the speaker is working on. Catherine has also served a term as the club’s secretary and treasurer, learning to coordinate with the host family to prepare meeting locations and ensure that meetings would run smoothly. Club meetings are held on every other Saturday, lasting for two hours from 7:30-9:30 pm. They are held in the homes of different members who’d volunteered to take on the duty.
In February 2019, Sophie and Catherine served on Saturday, 2/23, 1 hour from 8:30-9:30 pm (listening to and preparing evaluation speeches with feedback for club members). In March 2019, Sophie and Catherine served on 3/9 and 3/23. On 3/9, Sophie spent 2 hours creating the meeting agenda, and served as general evaluator and provided feedback on the entire meeting and all the speakers from 7:30-9:30 pm. Catherine spent 2 hours serving as timer, and providing feedback on timing and speech content (also from 7:30-9:30). On 3/23, Catherine spent 2 hours as general evaluator (7:30-9:30 pm). Sophie spent 0.5 hour as a mentor to the younger club members from 7:30-8:00, and gave a presentation, as well as valuable feedback to them.
