A Teaching Handbook for Wiccans and Pagans (12 page)

[contents]

Chapter 6

Creating a Class Session

By now you have some idea of where you might do your actual teaching and what it might require from you in terms of time, energy, and money (chapter 2), and how you might find students (chapter 3). But what are you going to teach, and how are you going to organize the information?

This chapter is about how to build a single class session and how to expand those concepts into building an entire course. Knowing how to structure a class is very important. You might be saying to yourself that it doesn't matter how you structure your class because it's going to be an informal course taught in your living room, or you're only teaching one person, or spiritual things shouldn't be so structured, anyway. And you're right, in a sense. You might choose never to use the information in this chapter. And if you've taught before, whether it's Wicca or Paganism or middle-school math, you might just skip this information and move on to another part of the book. But the great thing about knowing how to structure a class is that once you get good at it, you will understand how a good class works. Then you can choose to use the structure, or you can toss the structure aside and work free-form—whichever you determine will be most useful in the moment for your students.

Good teachers know that there is freedom within structure. It's kind of like using a recipe. Once you know the basics of baking bread—once you understand what gives it its structure, flavor, and form—it's easy to experiment by removing or adding ingredients. You know what you can remove or add to change the recipe but still have the result be some type of bread. In the same way, it's a lot easier to adjust a class mid-stream if you have a plan for it in the first place.

I like to structure classes in three parts. Part 1 is the introduction, where I set the stage for learning and tell the class what they're going to learn. Part 2 is the heart of the teaching, and part 3 is the wrap-up, where we summarize. It's sort of like writing an essay: you tell people what you're going to tell them about the topic, you actually tell them about the topic, and then you tell them what you told them about the topic. In this chapter I'm going to walk you through designing a class like this, but we're going to start in the middle, with part 2: the core. Although the techniques described in this chapter are geared toward teaching a formal class, the concepts can be used in informal settings as well.

Starting in the Middle :
Building Part 2, the Core

Step 1: Determining What to Teach

Sometimes it's hard just to figure out what you want to teach, never mind how to actually teach it. There are several approaches you can take to help you decide what the main content of your class will be. Using one of these approaches—or more than one—should help you narrow down what material you'd like to build a class or course around. Here are four:

Time-based approach.
If you know exactly how much time you have to teach—let's say, for example, that you managed to get a room to teach in, but only for three hours, or that you're presenting at a Pagan conference and you've been given an hour-and-a-half time slot, or you're really nervous, so you only want to teach one one-hour class to get yourself started—you can choose what to teach by what will fit into your time frame.

Talent-based approach.
You could decide to teach a class or series of classes about something that you are particularly good at or interested in, such as protective magic or using music in ritual. In this case, you would build your class and determine its length based on how much information you had to share on that specific subject.

Subject-based approach.
You might have a body of information to teach, such as a particular Pagan path or Wiccan tradition. In this case, you'd structure your class and content developmentally, starting with the foundational ideas and
/
or skills of the path or tradition and building on those.

Experience-based approach.
You might know who your students are going to be already. In this case, you could try to discover what they need or want to learn about Paganism, and design your class by identifying their relevant experiences and knowledge and building on them.

For first-time teachers, the time-based approach might be easiest, since planning material for a fixed period of time dictates how much you can and can't cover. The talent-based approach is good for beginners too, because you'd be presenting information that you know well, like, and are comfortable with. It's also a good approach if you are interested in starting with a one-off class instead of a series of classes. However, the subject-based approach can be good for first-time teachers as well. If you're passing on information that was taught to you—or if you had to teach it to yourself—you might already have some idea of how to teach it. The experience-based approach is possibly the most difficult for beginners—in part because it takes a little finesse to figure out what people need, how to give it to them, and whether or not you even can provide what they need—but it is also very rewarding. As we saw, adult learners like material that is immediately useful, and teaching to a group's experiences is a great way to ensure that the information is relevant.

For the next several steps in building part 2 of your class, let's assume we're building a class for a single session. Later in the chapter we'll talk about how to expand that to multiple sessions.

Step 2: Writing Learning Objectives

Once you have a general idea of what you'd like to cover, one of the most important things you can do is to write learning objectives for the class. Learning objectives are statements of what you want learners to know or be able to do when they have finished your class. Objectives are the basis around which your entire class is built. Why should you bother with this, especially if you're teaching an informal class? Writing objectives will help you determine:

How you want to teach the material.
That is, what teaching techniques to use.

What kind of resources you'll need.
Include teaching space; equipment, such as DVD players, flip charts, props, or projectors; and supplementary materials, such as handouts.

How many class sessions you might need.
Or, if you're only teaching one session, how long that session needs to be. Or the other way around: if you know how much time you have to teach, you can write enough objectives to fill the time.

There is a formula that people who teach adults use to write learning objectives. It's called SMART. In the SMART model, learning objectives should be:

Specific:
The objective should be to the point but detailed enough to be clear. There should be no vague language.

Measurable:
The outcome of the objective should be measurable, or there should be another clear-cut way of determining whether it was achieved.

Achievable:
The objective should present a challenge, so it's worth achieving, but not be so challenging that it can't be met in the time you have allotted or by the students you are teaching.

Relevant:
The objective should relate directly to the experience of the students or the material you are teaching.

Timed:
The objective should state when the students should have learned it—for example, by the end of the course or before the next class.

Let's say, for example, that I am planning to teach a three-hour class about the symbolism of the four quarters, or four directions. Some of my learning objectives might be:

• Not SMART: Students will learn about the symbolism of the quarters.
  SMART: Students will be able to demonstrate verbally or in writing a basic understanding of each of the four quarters, including the symbols associated with each, by the end of the class session.
  
• Not SMART: Students will learn about quarter calls.
  SMART: During the class session, students will work in groups to write simple quarter calls based on what they have learned in class and on their own experiences of the quarters.
  
• Not SMART: Students will learn to call the quarters.
  SMART: Students will practice calling and dismissing the quarters using
  X
  technique during the class session.
  

All of the SMART objectives give specifics about what students will learn, are “measurable” in that you'd be able to tell if the objectives were met by the students' performance, are achievable with a little work, are relevant to the topic (the quarters), and specify the time frame in which students will achieve the objective. The time frame is more important for classes with multiple sessions—it's pretty obvious in a one-session class that the objectives should be met in one session—but I included it here as an example.

Once you've written your objectives, look at them carefully again. Do any of them need to be broken down into smaller pieces? If so, take some time to do this. Breaking objectives down makes them easier to work with. Objectives often need to be broken down if you're trying to achieve more than one thing in them. For example, if I had an objective that said, “By the end of the class, students will be able to list five correspondences associated with prosperity and write a simple spell using these correspondences,” I would probably separate the part about listing the correspondences from the part about writing the spell: “By the end of the class, students will be able to list five correspondences associated with prosperity,” and “By the end of class, students will write a simple spell using their five correspondences.” I would do this because the method I would use to teach the first half of the objective would be different from the method I'd use to teach the second. If you think you can teach both halves of a two-part objective together, then there's no need to separate them.

Step 3: Putting Objectives in Order—
Creating the Core Framework

Breaking objectives into their smallest parts makes it easier to do the next step, which is to put them in a logical order. This might be very simple, because you might only have two or three of them, or it can be complicated if you are writing objectives for multiple class sessions.

Depending on what you're teaching, a “logical order” for your objectives might mean chronological order, categorical order, or listing them from the simplest to the most complex or the most general to the most detailed. The way you choose to order them will depend on their content. For example, if I were teaching a skills-based class like spellcasting, where one of the objectives might be dependent on another, I'd make sure the foundational objectives were listed first. I personally wouldn't teach students to do a spell until I had taught them how to feel and move energy, so I'd put objectives related to energy work before those related to spellcasting.

Once you have put them in a logical order, your list of objectives—and their “sub-objectives,” if you broke some of them into smaller pieces—should form the beginnings of a basic outline. This is the core of your class.

Step 4: Fleshing Out the Core

Next, look at your objectives and think about what would be the best way to ensure that your students achieve each one. What will your students need to know or be able to do in order to meet the objectives? And what is the best way to teach that knowledge or skill?

Patrick McCollum told me that it's very important to choose activities or class components that will set up a situation in which students can't do anything but learn:

Teaching is the art of placing a student in a situation they cannot get out of by any other means except learning. I've made that my motto, and so I look at the people who are around me and kind of judge who they are, what motivates them and such, and I then try to set up whatever it is that I'm going to share with them so that it's presented in a manner where they have no other alternative but to learn it….

Each person has different skills for figuring out how to do that, but instead of just getting up and talking and figuring there is some kind of osmosis going on and everyone will get what you have to say, you have to spend a little time thinking about it, maybe doing some research about the audience you're actually going to be working with, but figure out the best way to present it to them so that they will get it for sure. That's an art.

Think about each tool at your disposal—activity, media, lecture, guest speaker, etc.—and try to determine which will not only help you meet your objectives but make it difficult for students
not
to absorb some or all of what you're trying to get across.

Are you teaching something where you'll need to impart chunks of information, like the history of Paganism? Then maybe you'll need to do some lecturing. Are you teaching something more hands-on, like energy raising? Then maybe you'll need to weave in some small-group or partner-practice sessions. Bear in mind that you might need to use more than one teaching technique to teach a single objective. For example, to teach my first SMART learning objective, “Students will be able to demonstrate verbally or in writing a basic understanding of each of the four quarters, including the symbols associated with each, by the end of the class session,” I might break them up into groups and assign each group to discuss one quarter, then have them jigsaw (see
page 105
) to explain to the other groups what they came up with. I might present some information in lecture form. I might have them do timed reflective writing (see
page 107
) about each quarter. I might have them do a gallery walk (see
page 105
) to brainstorm correspondences for each quarter. I might combine one or more of these techniques, depending on how deeply we were going into the material and how much time I had.

Think about what you learned about learning styles, adult learning, and teaching techniques, and choose techniques for teaching each of your objectives. Write them down with your objectives. Remember to mix things up so you are meeting the needs of multiple learning styles. In other words, don't have a class entirely composed of group work, or one of lecture. Don't worry if you don't pick the exact “right” technique for each objective for your first try. Teachers don't always like to admit it, but much of what they know, they learn from trial and error. If you're a beginner, your first students are going to be guinea pigs, no matter how much inherent teaching talent you have.