Hi Dave:
Toastmaster's at least this club here in Arnprior, is a friendly, accepting , safe enviroment where to learn how to give speeches.
There are evaluators that will evaluator your speech.
The evaluator is a sandwich type.
Where they will praise you what you did well.
They will point out at least one thing were you need to improve
They will then leave you encouraged.
Our meeting is 2 hours Wednesday Evenings.
The Sergant in Arms will open the meeting.
The meetings starts promptly.
Then the changes in the agenda is read.
They then follow the agenda.
There usually is a Toastmaster/chair of evening,
There will be a timer, with timing lights or coloured paper.
There is also a general evalutor who evaluates how the evening went.
There is usually a 10 minute break after the first hour, to socialize with the fellow toastmasters.
You may notice that each opportunity to speak, starts with greetings to chair, and fellow toasters master, and to honour guests.
There may be table topics which is impromptu speaking for 1-2 minutes on various subjects.
There maybe a grammarian/au counter, to catch the various english(language) mistakes.
Jokes are to be squeaky clean nothing that be constued as racist, political, religious etc.
Toastmasters is a great place for confidence boosting and building. The principles for Toastmaster kind of follows the principles for the work place.
I hope this helps. Each club can run a bit different.
Toastmaster is a place where accepting, valued, and respected is a key for growing and learning.
There is a web site on Toastmaster International.
That you may be able to get more information.
Lenore