How to VPE the RDG Way

1. What is the VPE?

The VP of Education (VPE) is the second-ranking officer in the club, and is in charge of making sure members are striving toward and reaching educational goals. They plan out meetings and manage the mentoring program.

For this program, I assume your club has some online way of tracking member progress, goals, and mentors. My recommendation is to use Easy Speak for this purpose. If you are using some other system, just modify the material as appropriate. Having this will make your VPE life dramatically easier!

2. VPE Roles & Responsibilities In-Depth

• Manage the member site (Easy Speak, if you're following the RDG program)

You should be the primary point of contact and editor of your member site (i.e. Easy Speak). Get familiar with how it works. A cheat sheet is available in the resources section for common tasks.

• Manage rosters: Set up meetings, closes out meetings (closing may be handled by Secretary)
• Collect roles at meetings, via e-mail, etc. and update Easy Speak

You can print out sign up sheets from Easy Speak; make sure to bring one to every meeting. This will dramatically improve the quality of the meeting versus just hoping for the best when it comes to sign-ups. It's highly recommended you (at minimum) pre-assign the Toastmaster for meetings, and make it clear that if someone cannot be Toastmaster, they have to find their replacement.  

A process that works well is:

1. Set up meetings for the next three months
2. Pre-assign the toastmaster for each
3. Bring a sign up sheet to each meeting
4. Enter the sign ups into Easy Speak after the meeting
5. Send out the "Hello Toastmasters" mail (see resources for a sample); at this point the toastmaster for the meeting is responsible for filling remaining roles
6. At the top of a new month, pre-schedule another month of meetings

Your club may want to pre-assign more roles such as speakers, table topics master, and general evaluator; your club's culture will determine how well this works. Some clubs pre-assign all roles, some do very minimal scheduling.

• Assign members educational goals for the year

This can best be done with distributing Educational Award Promise forms to members at the beginning of the year (see resources), then entering these goals into Easy Speak. Easy Speak will track progress from there.

• Manage users on member site

As guests become members, members become former members, and so on, you need to know how to manage your members on Easy Speak.

• Track goals (use Easy Speak)
• Track mentors (use Easy Speak)

Pretty self-explanatory. Check in on these goals at least once every two months, if not every month.

• Orients new members to the Toastmasters program. (This may be handled by your VPM)
  

Signing up members is nice, but if they don't know how the program works or what is expected of them, there's a real danger of losing them.

• Attends and votes in Area, Division, and District business meetings.
  
• Votes at International business meetings. 

You'll do this at least once a year. Most of the time you'll assign a proxy in your name.

• Promotes and coordinates Speechcraft, Success Leadership, and Youth Leadership programs. 
  

These are specialized programs that you can get familiar with as you work through the Toastmasters year. 

• Chairs the Education Committee.

3. What's in it for me as a VPE?

Being an VPE can teach you skills and values such as:

• Meeting setup & logistics. You'll be in charge of filling agendas.
• Working with committees. You'll need to work with the executive committee as well as your own education committee. 
• Strategic planning. You'll learn how to arrange meetings as well as do more long term planning, such as keeping members on-track toward educational goals.
• Motivational skills. You'll need to motivate the club to earn their achievements, serve as mentors, and more.
• Computer skills. You'll learn to work with Easy Speak.

4. Education Committee

The VPE is not meant to tackle all the work it has alone. Forming a committee you meet with once a month is something that not only helps you, but also gets and keeps club members involved.

The president or VPM should distribute a committee sign-up form (a sample form is in resources) at the beginning of the term that lets people select which committees they are most interested in joining. Members of the VPE committee can be tasked with the following:

• Tracking mentors/mentees
• Encouraging mentor/mentee sign ups
• Providing new member orientation training
• Creating agendas on Easy Speak 
• Collecting roles at meetings
• Getting each member to commit to an educational goal and entering those into Easy Speak
• Being in charge of member recognition for members completing an educational award

Your first committee meeting should be spent distributing these tasks, and explaining how to do them as needed.

Be sure at the end of the term to recognize your committee!

Note: VPE committee members will need access on Easy Speak to perform these tasks. Contact your Easy Speak admin for assistance.

5. VPE Q&As

"My club doesn't have a lot of experienced members to mentor others. What should we do?"

This can often happen to new clubs. If you don't have enough experienced members available, an alternative is to have "accountability buddies", which involves pairing members together and having them motivate each other.

6. Your Two-Week Startup Plan

The VPE has a few tasks to get started on prior to beginning their term. Don't forget to complete the tasks in the All Officers section as well.

1. Begin forming your committee. You may work with the current president to distribute committee sign up forms.
2. Begin identifying candidates for educational awards and coordinate goal-setting.
3. Identify current and potential mentors and mentees.
4. Become more familiar with your meeting planning system (Easy Speak, Free Toast Host, or whatever you use). Know how to schedule meetings, adjust agendas, fill in roles, print out sign up sheets, and so on.