03/08/05 Geospeakers Meeting Summary

Ann opened our ‘Bring a Guest’ meeting after we all filled our plates with yummy salad, sandwiches, cookies and chocolate and our cups with sparkling cider (many thanks Ann, Carol and Fran for providing goodies).

Club business: Area C2 contest coming up; Thursday, March 31 6:30-9PM at the Allstate Planning and Research Center. All are encouraged to come.
Dues are due to Chris ASAP ($27 made out to Geospeakers)
Voting ballots will be sent out soon for Geospeaker of the Year 2004.

Our guests were introduced by the members who invited them: Pat came with Neil, Imelda with Ann, Sulley with Carol, and Janice (long-time previous member) came with Stephanie. A big WELCOME to all.

We galvanized to Fran’s Family Rules; all the things you may eat, ‘but not in the living room’. Gretchen then introduced the theme, Parents and children’, then followed with the evaluation team intro.

Our two prepared speeches today were: Carol Reiss, ‘Coaching the Coach’, an Interpersonal Communication Advanced Manual speech. This included a role play between Carol and Neil, who graciously stepped in for double duty today.

Chris Gutmacher gave an Advanced Manual speech but from the Interpretive Reading manual, ‘What are they thinking?!’. A wonderful reading/rendition, complete with exacting body language, of a 14-year-old girl’s trials and tribulations of life in general.

Shane gave a detailed evaluation of Carol’s speech, and Cynthia stepped in at the prime opportunity to evaluate Chris’ speech. Welcome back Cynthia (a former USGS employee now working at NASA, but still a Geospeaker!)

As for Table Topics, led by parent Neil: Shane was Most Humorous with his most ‘embarrassing the parents’ story (answering the phone at age 5, naked, and stating so in his hello to a ‘very important person’); Mitch, Most Eloquent for his descriptions of parental challenges in the availability of online information; and Pat Most Interesting, for her poignant account of her parent-teacher partnership for her 8th grader, when asked what a parent’s role should be in schools.

Mitch gave a ‘pricey’ report on ah’s, Fran reported on the word of the day, brainium, of which, most of us were brainiumless, and Steph provided an excellent timers report on both speeches, table topics, and evaluations. Everyone was within time, although with the lengthy speeches and numerous table topics contestants, the meeting did run just a tad over (apologies to all).

For those of you unsure of the definition of Brainium (as defined from a student’s exam): "One of the three parts of the body, which include the brainium, the borax and the abominable cavity. The brainium contains the brain, the borax contains the heart and the lungs, and the abominable cavity contains the bowels, of which there are five—a, e, i, o, and u."

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