A Teaching Handbook for Wiccans and Pagans (5 page)

Indoor Public Spaces

There are a lot of options for teaching in indoor public spaces—many cheap, some free—but you might have to think creatively to find them. Creative space-finding reminds me a little of those old Judy Garland–Mickey Rooney “let's put on a show” movies from the late '30s. Mickey says something like, “Hey kids, let's put on a show!” and Judy says, “We can use my dad's barn!” You might have to explore a lot of options—some of them seemingly crazy—until you find one that works for you. I've seen classes or rituals held in such diverse places as a parking lot, a garage, the back of a VW bus, a tent, a fake Irish cottage on the grounds of a renaissance festival, a literary convention in a hotel, an abandoned grocery store, and, yes, an old barn. I hope you won't have to be quite that creative, but you've got to do what you've got to do, right? Just don't trespass! Here are some of the better places I've seen used to teach Paganism.

Pagan or Pagan-friendly bookstore.
Pagan bookstores are an obvious choice because they are “friendly space.” I have also seen classes taught in (non-Pagan) used bookstores, and I've taught a few myself, even in the Bible belt. In my experience, people who truly love books and learning tend to be fairly open-minded.

Coffee shop or pub.
You might be able to run an informal class, study group, or Pagan meet-up in a coffee shop or pub, as long as you keep your meeting low-key, don't disturb other customers, and buy some coffee or beer. Being good, courteous customers is the key.

Public libraries.
Many public libraries rent meeting rooms, which can range from small rooms with a table and a few chairs to large spaces with audio-visual equipment. Some libraries will let you use their space for free, and others will charge.

College campuses.
It is often possible to rent or borrow space on a college campus, especially if the person teaching or the students go to the college. Contact the student union on campus or the community education program office.

Unitarian Universalist churches.
Unitarian churches are sometimes willing to allow Pagans to use their meeting spaces.

Masonic halls.
I know of more than one Pagan group that has held events in a Masonic hall. Some halls might allow you to use their space for free or with a small fee. Others will charge more. If you know a Mason, you should get a better rate.

Retreat centers.
Retreat centers can be very expensive, but don't rule them out. Not all retreat centers are huge facilities with lots of buildings and lodgings on-site. Some are much smaller and less posh. If the owners are at all Pagan-sympathetic, or if you're willing to schedule an event at an off-peak time, they might cut you a break.

As you read this list, you might be saying to yourself, “This is all well and good, but I can't use any of those ideas because the people running those places won't rent to Pagans/allow Pagans to use their space.” But you'll never know until you ask. Taking risks and putting yourself out there for possible rejection can be scary, especially if you're not out of the broom closet. There is no way to teach Paganism without risk. But sometimes people are more open-minded and open-hearted than we give them credit for, and you (and they themselves) might never know how open they are until they're given a chance to prove it. As for the rest of the people, they might be willing to put aside their biases to make a few bucks. The point is, don't rule out a perfectly good potential teaching space before you ask if you can use it.

Time

One big mistake that I see many beginning teachers make—and that I have made myself, more than once—is underestimating how much time it will take to teach or overestimating how much free time they have in their schedules to devote to teaching. Even seemingly small commitments—teaching a one-off class, creating a single podcast, or mentoring someone over coffee—take time, and sometimes it's not obvious how much until you're in the middle of it. I know that when I'm thinking about making a teaching commitment, my immediate response is usually, “Oh, sure, it'll only be a two-hour class; I can do that!” and I completely forget or ignore the time it will take to get to the class and back, research, prepare, and acquire any materials I might need—and do any follow-up, such as answering student questions after the class or even making notes for myself about what worked and what didn't. All of that other stuff adds up. A two-hour class is not a two-hour commitment.

Remember to take all the prep and follow-up tasks into account before you decide you have the time. If you haven't taught before—or haven't taught the kind of class you're thinking about teaching before—and aren't used to estimating the time it will take to do all the tasks required for a class, ask someone who has taught to help you. When I'm considering teaching a class, I've found it helpful to actually put all of my commitments on a paper or electronic calendar (Google Calendar is great for this), with different colors for different commitments. The places where I'm overcommitted and the holes where I might be able to squeeze something else in become very apparent.

Energy

Although many of us act as though this isn't so, the sad truth is that like our space, our money, and our time, the amount of energy we have to devote to anything in our lives is finite. The energy we have for teaching at any given time is affected by a lot of factors, including the energy required by our other commitments, our health and age, our stamina, and—perhaps most important—our attitude and morale.

Obviously, if you teach, you will need to have enough energy left over after your other responsibilities are met to create an effective learning experience. But this requires more than just the substantial amount of energy it can take to put together and lead a class.

In addition to all your prep work, you will also need energy to engage your students and keep them interested. Students aren't going to listen to you if you're drooping in front of their eyes, and if you don't have much natural charisma, it really helps if you can fake it. (Trust me: I'm speaking as one of the introverted charisma-challenged here; we need our own support group.) You can do this with good presentation skills, eye contact, and a big smile, but it also requires quite a bit of energy output. (There is more information about presentation skills in
Chapter 8
.)

You will also need to be strong enough to have healthy shields and boundaries. Sometimes when Pagans talk about using shields, they're thinking about protecting themselves from malevolent energy or all-out attack. Usually you won't have to deal with anything that extreme when you teach; however, some students can project a lot of disruptive energy, and others can inadvertently leech energy off of you, so knowing how to deflect or defuse with shields and good boundaries is very helpful.

It's true that you can actually derive energy from teaching—that interacting with your students can be motivating and energizing. This is where morale and attitude come in; you're more likely to be energized by teaching if you go in with a great attitude. But you probably shouldn't expect that the energy you get from teaching is going to immediately replace the energy you put into it, as if it were an energy paycheck being direct-deposited to replenish the investment you made. It's better to learn how to manage and preserve your own energy than to rely on your teaching to energize you. Then any energizing effects you get from teaching are gravy.

Money

Money is a touchy subject in the Pagan community. It's kind of silly, really, although there's also a certain sense to it. We all need money to pay the rent, eat, and get transportation. Most of us also want money, but there seems to be some sort of stigma attached to admitting it, as if you're not a spiritual person or you're not being true to your spiritual path if you are concerned with money. It's a little ironic that many Pagan paths seek to find the sacred in the mundane, but lots of people in our communities can't reconcile the “baser” things in life, like money, with their spiritual goals. The topic of money rears its ugly head in two ways for teachers: the money it might cost you to teach, and the money you might charge for your teaching. You'll have to make some decisions about money if you are going to teach. Let the uncomfortable squirming begin.

Teaching Costs Money

Teaching can cost very little money in the right circumstances, but it is almost never free to teach. Even if you're simply mentoring someone at a coffee house, you should at least buy a cup of coffee there. In other cases, you might have to rent space or equipment, cover transportation or lodging costs, and provide supplies and handouts. Even if you teach out of your home there are costs, from coffee to printer cartridges. And don't think you'll escape without cost if you're teaching online. You will definitely be paying for Internet access, and—depending on what tools you use—you could very well be paying for server space, software, technical support, and a computer, along with other equipment such as speakers, a digital video recorder, or a microphone.

So one of the big questions you'll need to ask yourself is whether or not you can afford to teach in the manner and setting that you'd like to. Before you start teaching, I recommend taking a hard look at your budget and determining how much you can afford to spend on teaching and how much you're willing to spend. Of course, you can recoup some of your costs and maybe even turn a profit by charging for teaching. But that isn't necessarily as simple as it sounds.

Charging for Teaching

Some people charge for certain types of teaching or for teaching in certain circumstances, but not for others. Some people charge only enough to cover the cost of their space and supplies. Some Pagan traditions flat-out state that accepting money for teaching is against the rules. Some people feel that teaching Paganism is a gift to the community that they shouldn't charge for. And some people are happily making a living (or part of a living) teaching Paganism.

Whether or not you charge can depend on your costs, but there are social factors to consider as well. Many people in our community are perfectly fine with a teacher charging, as long as the fee is reasonable, and are happy to support a Pagan teacher if they can afford to. But other Pagans feel that in sacred settings money truly is the root of all evil—that it corrupts and has no place there. And some people have very unrealistic expectations of teachers when it comes to things like money. They put their teachers on a pedestal and think of them as somehow more connected to the sacred than the rest of us. As paragons of Pagan-ness, their teachers (and elders and leaders too) should be unsullied by (or unconcerned with) such vulgar things as money, and they should be willing to give their time and share their knowledge for free for the good of the community. These people forget that we're Pagans, not religious ascetics. And we all need to eat.

Spiritual communities do not always value their teachers enough to pay or support them. A Hopi friend of mine told me once that “the priestess is the lowest one on the mesa.” What she meant was that the priestess supports the community through thick and thin, but the people only support the priestess when they feel they can. If they fall on hard times, feeding their families becomes a higher priority than feeding the priestess. The priestess doesn't have a “day job,” so in lean times she suffers. I have seen this theme echoed in the Pagan community. There are a lot of Pagan elders who have given a great deal of time and energy to the community but who are not helped or paid by those they serve.

My tradition strictly forbids charging for teaching. I have never charged my students and coven members, and I am perfectly fine with that. Teaching can be, and is for me, an act of love and community service, and I'm fortunate enough to have a regular job that pays the mortgage, so I don't need to look at teaching as a source of income. But in my opinion, Pagan teachers have every right to charge for their time. In fact, unless their traditions say otherwise, there are several good arguments why they
should
charge for their time:

Time is money.
When you spend time teaching, you give up the option to spend that time doing something else—including something else that could make you some money.

Student investment.
It has been the experience of many teachers I know, both Pagan and non-Pagan, that if students pay for a class, they're more likely to show up, pay attention, do the work, and get something out of it.

Perceived value.
A related point is that although many people would welcome free teaching, some people—especially here in the United States—only value what they pay for. If your teaching is free, some
people
will be grateful—and some will assume it's not worth charging for, and therefore not worth their time.

Boundaries.
Charging can help create positive boundaries. Not the kind of boundary that makes a teacher seem unapproachable, distant, or holier-than-thou; it's more like the kind you have in a respectful professional relationship. In a professional relationship there is a different set of expectations, which can make it easier for the teacher to teach and for the student to believe he or she is going to get something out of the class. (There's more information on boundaries in
Chapter 8
.)

Legitimacy.
Having paid teachers in a spiritual community increases that community's perceived legitimacy among people both outside and inside the community.

“Follow your bliss.
” This isn't exactly what the late Dr. Joseph Campbell meant by that phrase, but you can argue that you have a right to try to make a living doing something that is meaningful to you. Aligning your source of income and your spiritual work—as long as you do it ethically—can be extremely fulfilling.