A Teaching Handbook for Wiccans and Pagans (23 page)

Some other teachers told us they believed we'd made the right decision, and some told us we were cowards. I suspect the truth—if there is a truth here—is somewhere in between. But I think the important thing was that we recognized that we were in over our heads, and we did what we thought was best to protect our student and our group. The good news is that by releasing that student from our group, we freed her up to find a group with a structure that was a better fit for her situation and needs. She was initiated into a local coven and is thriving as a member of that community.

If you have had a bad experience with someone who has drug and alcohol issues or a mental illness, try not to make the assumption that everyone who has the same condition as the person you had a problem with will also cause problems. For example, if you had trouble with a bipolar student, it doesn't mean that all bipolar students will act exactly the same way or be problematic. When you are thinking of taking on students, consider each one individually as a whole person with unique strengths and challenges, and try to look at the big picture when you make your decision. It doesn't mean that you shouldn't listen to your instinct or past experience when considering working with someone with addiction or mental health issues, but it's important to know that each person is much more than his or her problems and consider them on their individual merits.

As with dealing with students in crisis, it's good to have a list of places where you can refer students with addiction or mental health problems for help. It's also good to know what you can handle and what you can't. I know from long, hard, heartbreaking experience that there is absolutely nothing I personally can do to help addicts who are still using and refuse to stop except kick them out of my class and hope that this is one of the many acts of “tough love” that eventually inspires them to go to rehab.

If you take on a student with known addiction or mental health issues because their behavior is normal, and that behavior changes after they're in your class, talk to them as soon as you can after the behavior change. If the person has a mental illness and has stopped medication, make their participation in your group contingent upon them seeing their doctor and resuming medication right away or, if the medication was problematic, starting another doctor-prescribed treatment regimen. Whether it's a mental health or addiction issue, do not allow the behavior to get out of hand. Be firm with the person and make it absolutely clear that they must follow your group's accepted rules for respectful, consistent, reliable behavior. If they can't or won't keep their behavior within acceptable limits, ask them to leave. It might feel very cold to boot them—after all, nobody signs up to become an alcoholic, and mental illnesses are not the patient's fault—but that doesn't mean you can save them or that it is your job to try.

And it's likely your other students didn't sign on for that either. You need to think of them and their well-being too. Melanie Henry told me, “The people I've learned the most from have often been the most disturbing.” She is absolutely right, but don't let that learning come at the expense of your other students. Remember, too, that if you really want or need to help someone with mental health or addiction issues, you can always find ways to do it outside of class and the student-teacher relationship.

Trolls

The sad truth is that the Pagan community has a certain appeal for people who thrive on conflict. Our community tends to encourage everyone to explore his or her own personal spiritual path and ethics. We tend to be tolerant and accepting of personal differences. And although we have some large umbrella groups, we tend to avoid centralized authority. These are wonderful traits for the most part, but they also make the Pagan community very appealing to people who like to cause problems for the sake of causing problems and getting attention.

People in the Pagan community who wreak havoc in groups—setting fire to the city just to see it burn—are often called trolls. This term is particularly used online for people who enter a discussion group or online community and purposefully derail the discussion, start fights, or insult and flame others. But it also applies to people who do the same things in person. Trolls are often very likable at first—charming, even, with the gift of glamour (meaning the ability to make themselves seem to be something other—and more appealing—than what they are). They are also often excellent liars. Frequently they have a personal set of “ethics” that either changes to suit their purposes or otherwise doesn't mesh with others'. They can be very good at playing the victim in a situation and making you believe it, even if they actually instigated the problem, and nothing is ever “their fault.” They're also often very good at making you question your choices as a teacher and a leader.

Several of my interviewees told me stories about trolls. Melanie Henry told me about a student she worked with who tried to “glamour” her whole coven:

She was just a huge liar. I mean, she would say three opposing things about the same thing, like, for example, why was she wearing the wedding ring—there were three different stories within about six weeks. It wasn't the thing you would catch on the first instance. The story would be internally consistent during the interview, it just fell apart pretty quickly afterward.

Sylva Markson also told me a story about a woman who created a subculture of secrecy within their coven, and whose lying and manipulation blew up the group from the inside:

As all of this started coming out, we realized that we had all been part of it unwittingly. She would say things to me—“Well, don't tell anybody, but…” and then she'd tell me something that she had heard or something that she believed or whatever, and then she'd do the same to other people. When we started talking to each other, we realized that there was a whole kind of underground culture of silence going on inside the group—that we all had little bits of secrets of things from her that none of us knew that everybody else had different versions of.

She was kicked out of the group.… She brought it to the larger community and besmirched our trainers in a lot of ways that were completely wrong and unfair and outright lies. And some of the ways in which she was not completely wrong she at least grossly mischaracterized or exaggerated the reality, and basically hurt everybody in the group horribly. And it was all politics.

I don't think most people would have the kind of agendas that this person had. But again, I'm left feeling like I'm questioning my own judgment because I adored her. I did not see this coming at all. Nobody saw it coming.

Trolls are in a whole different league from regular disruptive and needy people or people who don't get along. Most disruptive people can change their behavior when they find out it's a problem, or at least tone it down. Trolls don't have any incentive to change, because their behavior gets them the attention they crave. Their goal is chaos. If you ask them to stop their behavior, they might take it underground, say you've misunderstood them, or accuse you of being a bully—but they will not stop. Like the woman in Sylva Markson's story, they will turn friends against each other, bring your dirty laundry out into the greater community, and make you question yourself as a teacher, a Pagan, and a human being. The only way to truly deal with a troll is not to feed it—meaning stop giving the person your attention, boot him or her out of your group or class, and cease all contact. It's possible that the troll will badmouth you in the community, but dealing with that is better than having him or her destroy your group from within. The “difficult conversation” doesn't work at all with trolls. Don't waste your breath. Save your compassion for someone who will benefit from it.

So how do you tell if someone is a troll or just behaving badly because they're having a bad day or in a crisis of some kind? This is tricky, because trolls are masters of what I like to call the “theater of one.” They always show you, the teacher, exactly what they want you to see, and nothing else. If they were actors on a stage, you, as the teacher, would always be sitting front and center. If you moved, the trolls would move to maintain the position directly in front of you. They will avoid letting you see them from the side or behind the scenes at all costs. They will always put forward their most charismatic face. The good news and bad news about that is if trolls have you in the theater of one, it's possible that maintaining that is taking up enough of their attention that others might be able to see “backstage.” If you think that someone might be playing you or is simply too good to be true, you can ask a friend or another teacher to observe the person as you teach. It's possible the friend will be able to see a side of the maybe-troll that you can't, because you're busy teaching.

Melanie Henry told me she likes to have another person around to help her see through the glamour:

I am really bad at seeing through glamour, so I try to have someone who's good at seeing through that stuff. One thing you learn as a teacher is that it's good if you can identify things you're bad at, not because you'll suddenly become good at them, but if you can find someone else who's good at that who can watch your back, that's a really good thing.

I generally don't ask students to be that person watching my back, because it's unfair to ask them to “spy” on one of their peers. But sometimes other students are the best eyes and ears you can have, and if it's a matter of putting a student in what could be an uncomfortable position versus having a troll destroy your group, you might decide it's worth it to ask the student to be uncomfortable. It does put an unfair burden on the student, however. As with most interpersonal things, this is a judgment call, and no two situations are the same.

As Melanie Henry points out, it's important to listen to students, too, if they approach you with concerns about another student or about anything class-related, for that matter:

One of the key things there is, too, is if somebody says that there is a problem, listen…. People are doing a great favor if they disagree with you and tell you why. They could be wrong, but there's generally something going on.

They might be wrong about the other student or they could be seeing trollish behavior that you are missing. I once booted someone from one of my classes for a reason other than being a troll, and afterward several of the remaining students came up to me privately and told me that the person had been doing things behind my back that could have done a lot of damage to my class if left unchecked. I had no idea, I felt like an idiot, and I wished that my students had told me earlier, but I understood why they didn't. The person in question had them in thrall too, to a certain extent, but they also just weren't sure they should speak up. I could tell in retrospect that the student we booted was very good at the “theater of one” routine.

If the person appears to be extremely self-centered—to the point of having a very different reality from “consensual” reality—or not to care about the feelings of others, keep an eye on him or her. Part of the reason trolls succeed in causing so much trouble is that they just don't care who they hurt in the process. They will say and do just about anything to perpetuate their version of reality and make themselves appear to be the victim if you start to get wise to them. Another telltale sign is people who give different accounts of the same event to different people. You won't necessarily know this is happening unless your students or someone else tells you, but keep your ears open. Sometimes the troll will tell the same story differently in your presence, or at least within earshot.

One of the best ways to deal with trolls in your class is to not allow them to get there in the first place. The screening techniques in
Chapter 3
aren't foolproof, but they can help you weed out some potential trolls beforehand. There is absolutely nothing wrong with asking potential students for references. If they've burned a previous teacher, be careful. It's possible the teacher was at fault—and there are certainly cases where a student leaves a group because he or she doesn't get along with the teacher and then gets along fine in a new group—but it's also possible the person is a troll.

Some Teache
r
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Specific Challenges

Students are only human, but so are teachers, and teachers can have as many problems as their students do. The bad news is that the pitfalls in the section below can happen to nearly any teacher. The good news is that using the ethics and boundaries section of
Chapter 8
and the self-care tips in
Chapter 11
can help you avoid some of them and recover from others.

Hubris and Believing Your Own Hype

As a teacher, it can be easy to slip from a more modest place—where you take pride in knowing that you're facilitating others' learning—into an arrogant hubris, where you erroneously think that the good stuff happening for your students is all about you. It is particularly easy to do this if you have been teaching for a while with success, or you've begun to make a name for yourself, or if you haven't found anyone who knows more than you do (yet).

Oberon Zell-Ravenheart told me a story about hubris:

In my earliest days of teaching Paganism and the Craft (in my late twenties), I was stunningly arrogant in my assumption of how much more I knew than anyone else. I recall a particularly embarrassing (in retrospect) incident when I had really only been studying the Craft myself for a year or so. Since this put me way ahead of everyone else in the Nest, they looked to me to teach them and expected me to know all the answers. One time they brought in a young guy who wanted to meet me, having heard of me as a great teacher. He said he was a Witch, so I started asking him questions. But I was so ignorant that I didn't know anything about his tradition (Alexandrian, as it turned out), and I cut him down mercilessly when his answers differed from what I had been taught and learned through my own studies—which was heavily based on Crowley and Leland. Later on, when I learned about Gardnerian and Alexandrian Trads, and realized he had been perfectly right, I felt like a total fool. It was a very humbling experience, and I've always wished I could have tracked that guy down and apologized profusely to him. Many years later I even wrote a cautionary editorial about this in
Green Egg
.