A Teaching Handbook for Wiccans and Pagans (14 page)

You might also want to set up a “misery is optional” rule and let students know that if they need to use the facilities or get some coffee, they're free to get up and do so without asking permission.

Doing an Icebreaker

Icebreakers are simple activities that help students get to know each other. The goal of an icebreaker might be to get the class to know each other a little bit, to get them moving, to get their brains working, or all of the above. There are probably thousands of icebreakers online. You can use games you find as they are, or modify them to reflect your class material. For example, a simple game is to have each person turn to a partner and learn the partner's name and three things about him or her. Then go around the class and have each person introduce the person they learned about. You can give guidelines for the things they should learn, such as, “Ask your partner what his or her three favorite tarot cards are” or “Ask your partner what his or her favorite sabbat is and why.” You can use the information you glean to tailor your class to your students' needs, too: “Ask your partner what he or she would most like to learn in this class.” If you can't think of or find a good content-related icebreaker, a brainstorming session might be a great substitute.

Doing Student Introductions

Going around the room and having students introduce themselves is a great way to find out what they hope to get from the class and what their skill level is. Both pieces of information can help you tailor the class as you go. It's also helpful for pairing less-experienced students with more-experienced students for partner and group work. Allow one minute or less for each student. It's likely you'll have one student who likes to talk a little too much, so it's important to politely but firmly keep things moving.

If you have a larger group, consider polling the class instead of having each person introduce him- or herself. Ask questions designed to give you information about your students' backgrounds and experience, like “How many of you are new to Paganism? How many of you have called the quarters in a Pagan ritual? How many of you have written quarter calls before?”

Setting the Intent of the Class

In addition to (or instead of) the icebreaker, you can take a couple of minutes to get everyone focused on the purpose of the class. Do a brief meditation where students leave the cares and concerns of the outside world behind and concentrate on what they want to get out of the class. Or simply have them ground and center, breathe deeply, and set their focus and intent on what they are about to learn.

For my theoretical three-hour quarters class, I would probably allow twenty minutes for part 1. Since I've included several interactive activities, I would reluctantly skip the icebreaker, but I would definitely do items 1–3 on
page 122
and have students introduce themselves, so I could get an idea of what they knew about the quarters and what they wanted to learn.

Part 3: The Closing

Part 3 of a class consists of one or more of the following elements:

1. Summary of what was learned
   
2. Answering any unanswered questions
   
3. Thanking students for attending
   
4. Evaluations
   

Summarize

Take a couple of minutes to go through your objectives again with the class and summarize how they were met.

Answer Questions

Students might have some leftover questions. Take a couple of minutes to address these. If you used the parking lot technique, go through the questions that were written down. Cross out the ones that you already answered as part of the class, and answer the rest.

Thank Students

Thank students for attending. If you feel moved to do so, describe or acknowledge what
you
learned from
them
during the session, or offer a group blessing or closing.

Evaluate

It's a good idea to evaluate how the class went. If you are open to taking the heat (and the compliments), you can do this verbally. But bear in mind that many students won't give you a bad review or bring up issues they had with the class in front of other students. A better way to get feedback is to create a short questionnaire and spend the last five minutes of class having students answer it. If you keep it anonymous, you'll get more honest feedback.

In the closing of my hypothetical class, I'd allow two minutes or so for summary and the rest for questions. If I wanted to do an evaluation, I'd trim a little time from the questions or possibly shave five minutes off of the mid-session break.

My final class outline might look like this:

Extending One Class to Several

The same principles that apply to creating one class apply to creating several. First, write out the topics you would like to cover, then put them in order. For your first try at this, I'd recommend putting them in developmental order; that is, putting the foundational topics first—the ones you need to cover to lay the groundwork for the others—and then building on them with subsequent objectives. You could also put them in chronological order if it applies, or list them from easiest to hardest.

Once you have listed the topics and put them in order, break up the list in logical places. Each clump will become a single class. For example, if I were teaching an introductory Wicca class in six sessions, I might arrange and clump my topics this way:

Session 1: History and Background

Define Wicca

Define Witchcraft

History of Wicca

Session 2: Foundations of Practice

Grounding and centering

Creative visualization

Meditation

Ethics

Session 3: Deity

How Wiccans define deity

Pantheons

Honoring the gods

Invoking the gods

Session 4: Altars and Tools

Wiccan tools and their uses

Creating an altar

Session 5: The Wheel of the Year

Sabbats

Esbats

Session 6: Ritual Basics

Cleansing sacred space

Casting and taking down the circle

Calling and releasing the quarters

Once you have everything clumped, you can use the formula we discussed for single classes to create each individual session. First, write objectives for each topic on your list. You might have several objectives for one topic, or only one. You might also discover in doing this that you have way too much stuff crammed into one session, and you need to move it to another. For example, in my topic list above, session 6 covers a lot of ground. I might want to move some of the objectives I write for session 6 to session 4 and align them with the appropriate tools. For example, I could discuss casting a circle in session 6, or I could move some of the objectives related to that to session 4, when I'm discussing the wand or athame (which are often used to cast a circle).

Once you've written your objectives, follow the remaining steps for fleshing out the core and creating an introduction and closing. Soon you'll have a full syllabus.

[contents]

Chapter 7

Preparing to Teach
an In-Person Class

Creating the content for a class or series of classes is essential, but it is only the first step in putting together and presenting a great class. Preparation and presentation are as important as planning out what you're going to say and what activities or teaching techniques you're going to include. You can have the best material on the planet and still be tripped up by preventable problems like faulty audio-visual equipment and poor presentation skills. This chapter covers some tips you can use to prepare for your class and present your material in the best possible way. Like chapter 6, the focus is more on formal than informal presentations, but many of the concepts you can apply in the classroom can be used in your living room too.

Media

One way to break up your class and keep things interesting is to include media in your presentation. Media—such as video, audio, and slide presentations in PowerPoint or other software—can help grab and hold the attention of your students, and it might help them understand concepts in ways that lecturing can't. Ellen Evert Hopman told me about some of the challenges involved in keeping students interested:

I have spoken on college campuses, and the professors tell me that because the current students in colleges were raised on video games and television, they literally have a five-minute attention span, because every five minutes there is a commercial. So they have to bring all kinds of props and things to look at, and every five minutes they have to do something, otherwise they lose the audience. Teachers have to compete with television and videos. They have to have all kinds of bells and whistles.

Brian Rowe points out that using media is a great way to “bring” extra teachers into your class:

Using movies really allows us to take an expert on something like mythology—Joseph Campbell—and bring him into the discussion in our home, and then use that as a starting-off point to talk about different references of mythology.

It's still possible to teach without much media, and many of the
people
I interviewed told me that they were pretty “low tech,” including Ellen Evert Hopman:

I don't have a laptop. I don't do PowerPoint. I don't do any of that stuff. It's just me with a blackboard. Sometimes I'll put up a map I have of Celtic Europe that I've been hauling around since the 1980s. It's getting pretty wrinkled.

However, I encourage you to try to include media, as long as it's relevant to your class and helpful to students. Don't do it just for the sake of having a few bells and whistles.

Get to Know Your Media Technology

There are a lot of different kinds of media and media-related equipment you can use to teach a class. You might already own some of these items, such as a laptop. Other items might or might not be provided at the venue.

If you are teaching in a place that might provide equipment, such as a convention in a hotel, call the event organizers or venue ahead of time and find out what equipment they can provide for you and whether you can reserve it. Don't just show up with all your material on a USB flash drive and expect there to be equipment ready for your use.

Unless you are already a pro at using the equipment, ask someone at the venue to help you set it up. Venue staff should know how to do this efficiently, although you can't always bet on it. They can also often warn you of potential glitches with each particular piece of equipment (“The cord on this projector falls out if you bump the table” or “The scan button on the DVD remote sticks”) because they've either used the equipment themselves or seen others do it.

If you are teaching in a place that you don't think will provide equipment, you will need to find your own or go without. You might want to consider investing in some of the pieces you don't have if you think you will be teaching a lot, although it's expensive. If you get a business license for teaching (see
Chapter 2
), it's possible equipment can be written off as a business expense.

This might not need saying, but I'm going to say it anyway: if you are planning to use a certain type of equipment in a presentation, such as a digital projector,
know how to use it before you show up at the venue
. Twenty minutes before your class begins is not the time to learn how to play a video from a PowerPoint deck or project things on an interactive whiteboard. Know what kinds of cables are required, how to connect one piece of equipment to another, and how to use the remote, if there is one. Here is some of the equipment you're most likely to use:

Laptop:
You can store all of your media here or use it as a glorified DVD player. It's a good idea to bring your laptop's power cord to your class so you don't need to rely on the battery.

Speakers:
Built-in laptop speakers are usually awful and are not adequate for projecting sound to a large (or even medium-sized) room. External digital speakers are a must for good sound quality.

Digital projector:
There are many kinds of digital projectors, and they all seem to have their quirks. If you are borrowing one or bringing your own, make sure that it includes the power cord and the cord to connect it to your laptop or MP3 player. With some digital projectors you need to turn on the projector and get it running before you turn on your laptop and open your media file; with others this isn't an issue. Be sure to practice setting up and using the projector well before your presentation. The bulb in some projectors can get very hot and crack, so it can be a good idea to turn off the projector but leave it plugged in so the fan can run for a while after you're done using it.

DVD player and monitor:
Always, always, always test the remote.

MP3 player:
Not necessary if you've got a laptop, but if you just want to play music, this is a great option because it's so portable. Don't forget the speakers.

CD player:
Feels a little like a trip back to the '80s, but if it works for your purposes, who cares?

Microphone:
There are many different kinds of microphones. The stand-up kind, lapel mics, digital mics for use with computers, and headset mics are probably the most commonly used by educators.

Interactive Whiteboard:
A common brand is the SMART Board. You project media onto it using a digital projector, and you can highlight text, take notes right on the board, print out content from the board, and open and use various applications. They are astonishing tools for educational purposes, but it takes a little time to get the hang of using one. There are some great tutorials on using interactive whiteboards on websites and YouTube. Once you understand how the features work and what you can do with them, you can create class content specifically for interactive whiteboards.

Using Audio and Video

Back in the dark ages when I started teaching Paganism, there was very little Pagan-friendly audio or video readily available, short of a few Gwydion Pendderwen or Kenny and Tzipora albums and bootleg copies of
The Wicker Man
. Things have changed, and now you can find Pagan-friendly music and video, to purchase and for free, on websites such as iTunes, Amazon.com, and YouTube. As with anything else on the Internet, some of the material is excellent and some of it is absolute crap. If you are interested in incorporating audio or video into your presentation, make sure to listen to or watch the piece in its entirety before you show it to students to check the quality and ensure that it covers the material you need it to. Many websites also display user comments or reviews, so you can get an idea of what others think about a video before downloading or buying it. Remember, too, that you don't have to show an entire video; you can show only the part(s) pertinent to your class.

Using Digital Slide Presentations (PowerPoint Decks)

Another media tool you might wish to consider if you are teaching a more formal class is a slide presentation using software such as PowerPoint or Keynote. Although these tools might feel too business-y for some Pagan teachers, they can still be useful for displaying important information, main points, and photos; projecting instructions or questions for small-group work; posting definitions of new terms (so students can both hear you define the terms and read them for themselves and thus have a greater chance of remembering them); and many other functions.

These types of slide presentations have gotten a bad rap because
people
who create them sometimes rely on them too much during their presentations, cram too much text onto each slide, or overuse the templates that come with the program, so all of the presentations start to look the same. If you want to try using PowerPoint or Keynote and you're not a designer, there are still ways to make your presentation readable and useful.

So why should you care if your PowerPoint slides don't look professional? Confusing, jumbled slides are hard to read and will not convey the information you need them to—in fact, students might even infer the
wrong
message from a lousy slide. Remember too that students might be reading your slides from the back of a classroom. And your students will get an impression of you and your knowledge from your slides, so you want them to be clear and professional-looking. Here are a few tips for making clean, readable slides.

Use “boring” fonts and stick to one or two at most.
Don't make your slides look like a cut-letter ransom note or a letter from the Unabomber. Slides with too many fonts are jumbled, unprofessional, and confusing. Using one font in several sizes, using all caps and italics, or using light text on a dark background can look almost as crazy as using too many fonts. When it comes to fonts that you are going to project, boring is good! Commonly used fonts such as Times New Roman, Arial, Verdana, and Helvetica might not be thrilling, but they're easy to read. Serif fonts—the ones with the little “feet” on them, such as Times New Roman—usually convey a more conventional style, while sans serif fonts, such as Verdana, appear more modern. If you might be projecting your slides using a computer that's running a different version of the software than you created your presentation in, using commonly available fonts—fonts that are likely to be included in older software—should help your presentation render better.

Don't fill your slides completely with text.
Consider using the
6 x 6
rule—a maximum of six lines of text per slide, six words per line. Personally I think this is way too much type, but this is a common guideline.

Avoid cutesy clip art.
There is a lot of free clip art on the web or available on CD-ROM, and most of it is free for a reason—it's cheesy or ugly or both. It's better to have no art than bad art. Your art, like your font choice, conveys a message to your students; don't turn them off with it. If you are an artist or know an artist that you can sweet-talk into doing some work for you, consider using custom art instead of clip art. If you have your heart set on using clip art, choose pieces that are very relevant to your material. If people don't see the connection between your art and text immediately, the art will distract them. Try also to use the same style of art throughout your presentation.

Consider photos.
Photos run the gamut from good to terrible, but in my experience you're more likely to find a decent photo than you are a decent piece of clip art. Although people frequently “borrow” photos from the Internet to use on everything from school projects to Facebook profiles—and chances are nobody is going to come after you if you do the same in your slide presentation (unless you package it and start selling it for profit)—it's best and most fair to the owner of the photo to stick to photos you can use legally. One way to find photos that are okay to use is to do a Creative Commons search on Flickr. (Creative Commons is a nonprofit which provides free licenses to artists, writers, and photographers that allow them to retain copyright while giving others permission to repurpose or share their works.) You can also find Creative Commons photos on other websites. Photos with a Creative Commons license can usually be used as long as you credit the photographer at the end of your slide presentation. Some of Creative Commons' licensed photos have other restrictions, so if you go this route, be sure to determine which kind of license the photo you're considering has.

Leave margins.
This is especially important if you're using a computer, monitor, or projector you're not used to. If the display properties of your computer are different from the projector, it's possible the slides will be cut off at the edges. Leaving a margin around the edges makes it less likely that this will obscure any of your text or graphics.

Preparing Your Materials

Title and Course Description

The title and description of your presentation or class can attract potential students, give them a good idea of what they're going to learn and what kind of teacher you are, and help them decide whether the course is right for them. The title and description can also turn potential students off completely.

Writing a title and course description that are appealing and informative without being intimidating or off-putting can be harder than writing the presentation itself. Think about the kinds of people you'd like to have at your class, or the kinds of people who might be interested, and try to write for those groups. Play around with multiple titles and descriptions. Get input from friends. Find course descriptions for similar classes online and try modeling yours from theirs (without plagiarizing, of course).

If you are teaching at a specific venue, such as a bookstore or a Pagan conference, ask the owner or organizer what kinds of descriptions appeal to the people who usually attend classes there. Ask to see course descriptions from past events, or check them out online. Many event organizers will list course descriptions on their websites. In some cases it's appropriate to talk about your background and experience in the class description, but in some cases it isn't. Again, ask the organizer what the standard for the event or store is.