A Teaching Handbook for Wiccans and Pagans (16 page)

On the Day of
Your Class

Check equipment.
Test any audiovisual equipment you are planning to use. Have a backup plan in case it doesn't work.

Check your media.
If you are using a video or a slide presentation such as PowerPoint, run through it before students arrive to make sure it works. Set videos to the correct starting point, and check the volume on the speakers or DVD player.

Get a feel for the room you'll be teaching in.
If possible, have someone stand at the back while you practice the opening of your presentation and tell you if he or she can hear you.

Create a welcoming environment.
Check the lighting and temperature of the room. Adjust it if necessary (and if you can; you might not have access to the thermostat). Arrange chairs and tables.

Take a deep breath. You're ready to go!

[contents]

Chapter 8

Giving a Great Presentation and Interacting with Students

The way in which you interact with your students can be as important as the information you're passing along; in some cases, it can be even more important. This chapter is about putting on a great presentation to maximize student learning, using ethics and boundaries to create healthy relationships with students, and fostering a positive class climate.

Tips for Making an Effective Presentation

There are several things to think about when you're presenting in front of a class, from how you speak to students and hold your body to how you monitor what's going on in the class. Here are some tips to help you interact effectively with students during a class and knock your presentation out of the park.

Communicating with Students

Use names.
Students will feel more at home with you and respond to you better if you learn and use their names. Learning and remembering names is difficult for some people. (I know it is for me!) Cheat, if you have to. If you're doing a one-off class, have students fold a sheet of paper in half (into a “tent”), write their name on both sides, and place it on the table in front of them. Use the table tents to learn names quickly. You can also bring a drawing of the layout of the chairs in the classroom and write in names as you learn them.

Use active listening.
See
Chapter 5
.

Don't pontificate.
Talk
to
your audience, not
at
them.

Define terms.
Be sure to define any terms in your presentation that your audience might not be familiar with. If you're teaching something with a lot of jargon, like astrology, you might want to write definitions on a flip chart or pass them out as a handout.

Get personal.
If you can, and if it's appropriate, add some personal anecdotes or stories to your presentation. People like to know that their teacher has “been there” and understands what it's like to be a student. Brian Rowe talked about the importance of sharing personal experiences with students:

I also think it's important to relay personal experiences about how different aspects of the path have worked as part of teaching. And those might be some very private thoughts or memories that you're opening up to a new student, and you don't know how they will react yet. But I think the only way that you can create long-term trust is through that sharing and openness.

Use repetition.
Reviewing and repeating important concepts throughout the class can be very helpful for students, especially if you're teaching a multi-session course. Don't expect students to fully “get” the more complicated stuff after hearing it only once. Christopher Penczak states:

I find myself using repetition more and more. I think previously I assumed once I taught it, people got it and were using it, but I realize that's not always true, so I review more, and make each previous building block a little more noticeable in review.

Attend to your body language.
Students learn almost as much from your body language as they do from what you say. Keep your hands at your sides when you're not writing or gesturing, but make it look natural, not stiff. Avoid fidgeting or pacing. This takes practice. Making and watching a video of yourself will help you see what your body language is saying to students.

Speak slowly and smile.
Remember to breathe!

Monitor and Adjust

In teacher-speak, “monitor and adjust” means to observe your students while you are teaching and change course if you notice something that indicates you need to. You can go into a class with a great plan, but if the students don't have the background to understand what you're talking about, or if they need you to deliver your information in a different way than the way in which you'd planned, your detailed outline and copious notes won't do you any good. It's not enough just to deliver a great class; you also have to keep your eyes and ears open and notice if students need more information or help. Ellen Evert Hopman spoke to me about shifting midway through a class:

One thing I can say is no matter how well you plan, you have to be able to adjust to your audience. Like you might plan this gorgeous lecture talking about Indo-European cosmology and find out that that's not what they want to talk about. They want to talk about how you became a Druid, what is a Druid, what kind of robes do you wear, something like that. So you have to be able to adjust.

A huge part of monitoring and adjusting is listening. As teachers, sometimes we're so focused on talking—on saying the right things—that we forget to listen. Brian Rowe commented on the importance of listening:

Listen to students for feedback. No matter how wonderful you believe a recent discussion went, until you find out a week or two later whether a student got it and is able to implement it, you might just be talking to yourself. So listen to students and learn from them.

Sarah Davies mentioned the importance of:

… making sure that you're really listening to them and not pushing them too far, or that they're not quietly freaking out and uncomfortable, and that what you're doing is helpful and challenging.

Remember, it's much, much easier to throw your plan out the window and improvise a new one in response to student needs or feedback if you are well-grounded in your material. This is one area in which preparation really pays off. And as you become more comfortable with teaching, your class structure can become much looser, and you can respond in the moment to students' needs. T. Thorn Coyle told me about being flexible and responsive to the audience:

I feel out what the community I'm visiting might need and check in with the local organizers. So theme comes first. Then I try to make sure there is a mix of meditative work, time to share insights and experiences, some music and movement to engage the nonverbal parts of us, plus energy workings or ritual to round things out. My lesson plan used to be much more structured when I began. These days, there are some things that need to be covered, but the rest can flow according to the needs of the group and inspiration from my guides or the Gods.

Handling Questions

Student questions can provide excellent “teachable moments” or be challenging enough to throw you off your game—or both. Here are some tips for handling questions:

Listen.
Really listen to what your student is asking you. Don't jump the gun and assume you know where he or she is going. T. Thorn Coyle told me about how she tries to listen:

I try to listen a lot, both in order to follow the energy better and to sense the questions beneath the questions. This is an ongoing practice for me, and not something I could have done when I began teaching. I needed to learn to slow down and trust the process.

Tell participants when the best times to ask questions are.
Some teachers answer them along the way, while others wait until the end. Use the parking lot (as described in
Chapter 5
) as necessary.

Postpone questions.
It is sometimes best to postpone answering questions that only apply to one person or involve solving a personal problem until the end of the class. Getting wrapped up in one person's question can take up valuable time and throw your agenda off track. On the other hand, sometimes one person's question pertains to the whole class, so monitor your class to see whether you should answer immediately or wait until the end. Poll the class if necessary. According to Christopher Penczak:

Finding the boundary between course questions and sharing and personal healing is also important. A large group class is not the place for one individual to get the healing support they need unless that is the purpose of the gathering. Many people in public classes will fail to get private personal [help] but try to use class as a forum for their own emotional and psychological help. Strong verbal boundaries, and sometimes energetic boundaries, are necessary, and even a private talk on the break. I offer my services—or if in a store/center, there are a whole host of private-practice healers that might help them, depending on their need—but I emphasize the need to do it outside of the class.

Repeat participants' questions.
This helps ensure that the entire class hears and understands them.

Ask students questions.
Rather than just answering students' questions, pose some of your own to give them a chance to do some critical thinking. Ellen Evert Hopman uses this technique:

I like to use the Socratic Method instead of me just pontificating. I ask them, “Well, what do you think a Celt is? What do you think a Druid is?” and then I let them all answer, and then I put in my opinion. I enjoy doing that because I think it helps people to stay on topic.

Asking the right number of questions at the right time is important, too, as Anne Marie Forrester pointed out:

The goal is to get people thinking for themselves without looking for any predetermined “correct” answers. Ideally your students should develop critical thinking skills and confidence to explore ideas based on their own study and experiences. If you don't give them enough information up front, you can leave them floundering in the dark without understanding what you're asking. But if you give them too much, you're simply feeding them answers they can parrot back to you. The trick is finding that line for each student, even when in a group setting, because every student will require a different balance of information and questions.

Admit what you don't know.
If someone asks a question you can't answer, be honest about it! You can always offer to find the answer after class and get back to the student later. You can also point them toward resources where they might be able to find the answers for themselves. Patrick McCollum has a philosophy about this:

There is an old saying which I like to use a lot: “Wisdom is the recognition of the absence of knowledge.” So I sign on to that to be a teacher. And to be a person who's wise enough to share what it is that I know, I have to first accept that I know very little and be able to be humble enough to accept that.

Following Up

Pass out handouts.
If you haven't already done so during the presentation, pass out any handouts you've created that summarize important information or terms from your presentation.

Provide contact information.
If you're comfortable doing so, provide contact information that participants can use to ask you questions later.

Ask for feedback, either verbally or in writing.
Remember that
people
are more likely to be honest with you if you give them an anonymous form to fill out.

Stage Fright

I think it's fair to say that most people get at least a little nervous when they're going to talk in front of a group. I've been teaching various subjects for a long time and I have a background in theater, so you'd think I'm immune, but it's not so. I'm a private, introverted person, and I still get nervous when I'm in front of a new audience. So don't feel bad about it, but definitely do something about it!

This is where it's really handy to be a Pagan. Pagans know how to work with energy and visualization. Before you begin speaking, there are some energy-related things you can try to help get rid of your nervousness.

Visualize yourself giving a seamless performance.
If the image is in your brain, you're more likely to make it real.

Visualize yourself as relaxed and at ease.
Then act that way, even if you don't feel it on the inside. Use what you know about energy to
project
calm. If you act calm, you will begin to feel calm. (This is sometimes called “fake it until you make it.”)

Channel your nervousness into an inanimate object.
Some
people
carry a chunk of obsidian or hematite in their pockets and
visualize
putting
all of their nervousness into the stone before they start their class. I keep a piece of jet for this purpose.

One important non-energy-related trick for fighting nervousness is keeping the content of your class within the bounds of your knowledge and experience. If you're knowledgeable and comfortable talking about the subject, you'll be much more confident than if you go out on a limb. Experience makes some people feel more confident, too; the more you present, the easier it should get. But whether you're experienced or not, it helps to not focus on how you feel. Instead, put your focus on what you're saying and pay attention to your students to make sure they understand you. If you're thinking about that, rather than how scared you are, you'll do a much better job.

It's important to remember that most of the time when you're teaching adults, you and the participants have the same goal: for them to learn whatever you're teaching. They're on your side. They want you to succeed. They've usually chosen to take the class, and they're (usually) not a hostile audience.

Students at Different Levels
in the Same Class

A challenge many teachers face—whether they're teaching Paganism or fourth-grade math—is having students with widely different levels of experience and competence in their classes. It can be difficult to meet the needs of the more advanced students and the less advanced students at the same time, and the “average” students can get lost in the shuffle.

One way to reduce the width of the range of ability of your students is to make sure your class description is very, very clear. Call out what students will need to know in order to have the appropriate background to participate in your class—books they should have read, energy work they should be able to do already, prerequisite courses, etc. This will give students some guidelines for determining whether or not they belong in your class. If possible, include an email address where students can contact you with questions about your class content and whether or not it's appropriate for them.