Chapter 3

Finding and Screening Students

In his answers to my interview questions, Oberon Zell-Ravenheart offered his version of a saying you’ve probably heard: “When the teacher is ready, the students will appear!” It’s true that if you are ready—if your will is aligned to teaching—then you’re more likely to attract people into your life who want to be taught. But, like most things, it’s not as simple as it seems. Obviously you can’t camp out in meditation on your couch like a guru at the top of a mountain and hope your chanting and positive vibes draw people to you. A big part of finding students is marketing. And although many Pagan teachers find that idea dismaying or distasteful—even me, and I work in marketing—it doesn’t make it any less true.

In any marketing campaign, you need to know who your desired audience is so you can pinpoint your marketing plan. If you know something about the kind of person you would (ideally) like to teach, you can tailor your class to that kind of person, or focus on your particular strengths and skill set and market them to attract the kind of person who would benefit most from it.

If you’re teaching a one-off class, doing a podcast, or making a presentation somewhere, this might not seem very important, since chances are you won’t be developing any long-term personal relationships with your students. And, of course, in certain teaching situations you have no control whatsoever over whom you will be teaching. But even in those cases when you have limited interaction or no say about whom you are teaching, it’s good to think about what kind of student would benefit most from your teaching style, if only so that you can buffer up your less-developed skills in order to meet the needs of a wider range of people. Students are more successful if they’re learning in the right place, at the right time, in the right format, and with the right teacher. Even if you have little control over some or all of those factors, thinking about them will help you craft a better class. Here are some areas to explore.

Potential Student Demographic

Younger or Older Students?

Would you be more effective with younger or older students, or a mixed group? If the average age of your group skews higher, the class is likely to have different needs and a different feel than if it skews lower. There’s more information about age and learning styles in Chapter 4. And think about a related question: are you willing to teach minors? How would that change how you teach?

Beginners or More Experienced Students?

Beginners are often very eager learners, which can make teaching them seem easier and more fun. Their enthusiasm can be infectious, which can inspire you to be more enthusiastic too, especially if you’ve been studying the material you’re teaching for a long time and it’s not fresh for you. Their enthusiasm can also make them very willing to meet an inexperienced teacher halfway by overlooking nervousness and being more forgiving of mistakes. In addition, beginning students are also more likely to be “clean slates,” with fewer preconceived notions about the material than someone who has studied it before from a different teacher or a different angle.

Some teachers like beginners because they feel less threatened by them; if you always teach beginners, chances are you always know more about your subject matter than your students. (I wouldn’t encourage this mindset because I don’t think it’s healthy in the long term, but it’s fairly common and very human.)

Teaching beginners might not be for you if you get frustrated by questions and repetition. Beginners will have a thousand questions, which can be invigorating at best but can also be frustrating and put you on the spot if they come up with a question you didn’t anticipate. (It will happen, trust me!) They also need repetition to retain skills and concepts, so if you teach them, you’ll be saying the same things over and over again in different ways. And if you add new beginners to an established group, you will find yourself explaining the same concepts even more often.

Working with beginners might not be appropriate for you if you are more interested in engaging intellectually with peers than in building someone’s skills. By “peers” I mean people who know the same or a similar amount about the same things as you do. Some teachers teach because they are looking for others to discuss and debate Pagan topics with, to further the knowledge of both student and teacher. This is a legitimate way to teach, but it’s not a great way to teach beginners.

Teaching more experienced students also has its pluses and minuses. On the plus side, you are more likely to be able to have in-depth discussions and debates. All students teach their teachers, but experienced students can enhance your knowledge in ways beginners can’t. Experienced students often have a better idea of what they want or need from a teacher, too, and can ask more specific and detailed questions and narrow down the ways in which they need your help. And if you have a mixed class of beginners and experienced students, the beginners can learn a lot from the others.

Of course, experienced students tend to come to your class with higher expectations. If they had great teachers in the past, they will hold you to those standards. If they had terrible teachers, they will be worried that you will be terrible, too, and they might withhold their trust until you prove that you’re not.

Experienced students can also be a little more set in their ideas and less flexible, although this is hardly universal. They might also make assumptions that you need to work around or through. Sylva Markson told me about being in this position:

There was a guy who came to us looking for training who had been practicing a tradition that he thought was very similar to ours for quite a number of years, and he came to me expressing, “Well, I feel since I’ve kind of been doing this all these years anyway, I might as well be official and get the title and the whole shebang.” And I’m like, “Oh, dear; here is a guy who thinks he knows everything about our tradition already.” So the question to me is, “Is this someone who is teachable or not? Is this someone who is going to be able to shed some of those preconceptions?” So I threw out to him a couple of examples of things that are very common misconceptions about our tradition, and his reaction was, “Well, maybe I don’t know as much as I think I do.” And then I thought, “Okay, this is someone I can probably work with, then, if he is willing to set aside what he thinks—what he knows in his mind for all of these years.”

And obviously, if you’re going to teach more experienced students, you need to know your material thoroughly—not just at the beginner level—so you have something to offer them.

Your Biases as a Teacher

The word bias often has negative connotations attached to it, but let’s face it: we’re human, and we’re not objective. We all have preferences or leanings; we’re predisposed toward certain things. And it helps to know what these are if you are going to teach. For example, my husband and I teach Wicca from a fairly shamanistic viewpoint. Therefore, we incorporate a lot of shamanistic practices. People who aren’t comfortable with or interested in shamanic practices would probably be less happy or successful in our group than those who are. Similarly, we’re not as interested in magic, so although we try to give our students a solid foundation in the basics and practice in using the magical rites and spells our tradition provides, we don’t go much beyond that unless someone asks. A person looking for in-depth magical training would be better off with different teachers.

Sarah Davies talked about understanding her own biases:

I think that I require a lot more creation. I want people to write their own rituals and come up with their own meditations, as opposed to “here’s a meditation; go home and do it.” I also come more from an academic background, so I’m a little bit more structured about the curriculum, as opposed to “well, what do you want to know? I’m here, I’m your fountain of wisdom, ask me questions.”

Your biases and inclinations can often be used in positive ways. Melanie Henry told us about making use of her particular leanings in working with students:

I can deal with both dark and light energy, which is not unique by any means, but it is more rare than I first thought it was…. There are a lot of people who are more comfortable with one or the other, and there aren’t that many people who kind of straddle the line, and I do that.

Your Communication Style

Are you assertive? Passive? Do you speak quietly or loudly? Do you rely on body language to get across the full meaning of what you’re trying to say? Do you listen or interrupt, or both? What kind of student would benefit most from your teaching/communication style? Brian Rowe commented on trying to find students who could mesh with his and Sarah’s teaching style:

And we have looked at potential students that we’ve decided are not right for our particular communication style and our expectations, and in talking to them we try to be very clear that we’re not saying that they’re not necessarily right for the path, but they wouldn’t necessarily be a good fit with our group and our dynamic.

Your Material

Different people want and need different things from a Pagan class. What kind of student do you think could benefit most from the kind of material you teach?

Ellen Evert Hopman told me a story about what she teaches not meshing with what a particular student wanted:

I had another person who was working with me; she asked me if I would foster her so she could go through her initiation. I said sure, but I don’t know why she asked me, because I’m so into teaching the ancient ways. I want people to know the depths of what we do and the span of who we are and how our tradition goes back for thousands of years and the richness of it. All she wanted to do was her own thing. She wanted modern robes. She didn’t want to wear anything that looked at all ancient. She wanted her tools to look modern. She said she wasn’t interested in the ancient stuff, she was only interested in modern ritual. It finally got to a point where we just couldn’t work together because we just didn’t see eye to eye.

Your Tradition or Path

It sounds unfair, but the truth is that not every path is right for every person. Some people make, for example, better Druids than they do Alexandrian Wiccans because their natural skills, inclinations, interests, talents, energy, or whatever resonate more with the former than the latter. What kind of student would be most fulfilled on your path?

Some Ways to Meet or Find Students

Finding students is relatively easy for some Pagan teachers and much harder for others. For some it is a matter of logistics; there might not be many other Pagans where you live. As Sylva Markson commented, if you find yourself in this situation and you want to teach in person rather than online, you might have to adjust your expectations accordingly:

I live in a small town—I don’t live in a big metropolitan area—so there are not a lot of Pagans around here, let alone Pagans of like mind. And the consequence of that is that I have a very small group, and we’re not able to meet as often as we would like because we don’t all live right next door to each other, but you make of it what it is.

Pagan students and teachers who are isolated can now at least find like-minded others on the Internet. Online teaching and learning aren’t for everyone, but at least it’s an option, and one that I think Pagans in the 1970s and 1980s would have given their athames for. But whether you’re teaching entirely in person, entirely online, or somewhere in between, the better connected you are—both in person and on the Internet—the more chances you have to meet students. Networking and advertising—two more evil, soulless marketing terms—really are the keys.

Networking and “Advertising”

Chances are, you will need to use multiple networking techniques to find students, not just one. Here are some of the networking and “advertising” (I use the quotes because they’re not necessarily advertising that you pay for) techniques that have been most successful for me and many other teachers I know.

Use Witchvox/The Witches’ Voice. It’s hard to overstate the impact the Witches’ Voice (or Witchvox) website has had in both education and networking in the Pagan community. In fact, every single one of my current students met my husband and me through a posting we had on Witchvox.

If you post a listing for a class or group on Witchvox, describe what you’re offering clearly, and don’t give out too much personal information—even a great site like Witchvox can attract some creeps. Provide an email address so people can contact you.

Put the word out on email lists. Email lists can be good forums for you to get the word out about your teaching services, and you can also learn about other events going on in your community and possibly network with other teachers and event organizers. If you don’t have a local list, check out the Pagan email lists in Yahoo Groups and other list services. When you join a list, be sure to follow list rules; some list owners do not want people promoting goods or services on their lists. Ask the list owner what the policies are if you can’t find the information easily on the list website.

Use word of mouth, in person and online. Tell your friends and anyone else who will listen about your class. Word of mouth works pretty well in the Pagan community. Every Pagan you know probably knows others you don’t know. Like I said, all of my current students came to me initially through Witchvox, but everyone in the coven I was a member of before that was there because of word of mouth. They knew someone who knew someone who knew someone.

Consider asking people who organize Pagan events in your area to mention your class or that you are looking for students. Some people will be more receptive to helping you than others, but it’s worth a try. Be gracious, not pushy, and you might be surprised at who will help you.

If you are on good terms with any Pagan elders in your community, they might pass along the information for you. I have found other Pagan teachers to be one of my best resources not only for finding students, but also for getting information about troublesome people in the community whom I might not want to take on. And if you have connections with other teachers and you find a great student who isn’t a good fit for your teaching style, you can refer him or her to another teacher you trust.

In addition to telling people in person, tell them on Google+, Facebook, Twitter, a blog, or whatever other social networking tools you use. Also see if you can get others with blogs or websites to mention your class. If you’re not doing social networking, start now!

Go to public Pagan events, and don’t be shy. Pagan events—classes, open rituals, Pagan Pride, camp outs, conventions—are some of your best bets for finding potential students. These events are often full of new or even experienced Pagans looking for teachers; in fact, that’s the primary reason some people go. And sometimes these events include forums for teachers to meet students, and vice versa.

Whatever event you choose to attend, see if you can get on the docket and do a presentation or class for greater visibility. Remember, though, that it’s not appropriate to shop for students at all events. Some groups frown on people “poaching” their attendees, and some groups hold events for the specific purpose of finding students or members themselves. Tactfully ask around beforehand if teacher-student networking is okay.

Make flyers. Yes, flyers are old school, but they work. Give flyers to friends to pass along, and ask the leaders of Pagan organizations in your area if they’ll do the same. Also try distributing them at places like these (but ask permission first):

Build a website. Check out other Pagan teachers’ sites to see what kinds of features they have. Create a basic site with an introductory page, a page about your class(es) or teaching, an “about” page describing yourself, and student testimonials. Post any articles or podcasts you’ve done, too, so people can get an idea of your background and philosophy. Link your site to your Facebook, Google+, and Twitter accounts, and ask owners of other sites, blogs, or email lists to link to your site. You can also offer to put a notice on your site about someone else’s services or products in exchange for them doing the same for you.

Actually advertise. Consider placing an ad about your services, either in a free publication or website or in a paid one. There are still some great Pagan magazines, and some communities still have local Pagan newspapers and newsletters. You could also create a Facebook ad and limit how much money you want to spend on it (you pay according to the number of hits you get).

Screening and C hoosing Students

Screening—systematically examining your potential students to see if they have or don’t have certain qualities or abilities that would make them a good fit for your class—is completely unnecessary, impractical, and impossible for some teachers and absolutely essential for others. If you are teaching in a situation where you have no control over who shows up, you can’t screen, and you have no need to. Some examples of these situations are:

However, the following situations can warrant screening:

In these cases, you will want to know more about your potential students before you take them on because they need to fit in well with a group, have previous experience, or you might work with them over a long period of time or become very involved in their lives.

Screening can be as simple as making sure students meet some basic prerequisite requirements so they’ll understand what you’re planning to teach (for example, understanding basic energy work before you teach them more advanced magic) and as complicated as interviewing people in depth to determine if they’re a fit for your class or teaching group in terms of their skill level, temperament, preferences, and overall personality. Unless you are unbelievably psychic, can foresee every possible problem you might have with anyone and screen for these problems accordingly, or have your own polygraph machine, no system for screening that you come up with will be perfect, and you will not be able to truly tell with absolute certainty how your students are going to work out before you really get to know them. Anne Marie Forrester talked to me about this:

I’ve also found—much to my dismay—that you can’t always predict when you first meet them. There’ve been people I thought were going to be awesome who turned out to be full of B.S., and then there was a student of ours who we were initially not sure about, but the longer she’s been with us, the more awesome she becomes. So it’s a hard thing to predict who’s going to work out.

That said, screening can help you make a solid, educated guess as to whether or not someone is a good fit. It’s certainly better than taking on strangers you met online just because they express interest or going solely with your gut (although your gut reaction is important too). Screening can help you determine if a potential student:

One thing I’d like to point out here: you do have the right to choose not to teach people you don’t want to, or who you don’t think would work out in your situation. There are some people in the Pagan community who seem to believe that you must take on any poor soul who crosses your path, and some who seem very critical of teachers who don’t teach everyone who asks. But we are educators, mentors, guides, and leaders—not saints. Taking on the wrong person for the wrong reason can be a waste of their time and yours if your teaching and learning styles don’t mesh or if you clash personality-wise. It can be disruptive to your other students too.

Some Things to Screen For

So, when you screen, what are you looking for? Since every teacher’s strengths, interests, situation, personality traits, and material will be different, different teachers screen for different things.

Here are some of the main things teachers screen for:

History and Previous Teachers

Knowing what Pagan subjects or traditions your potential students have studied in the past can help you tailor your teaching to build on the foundation they already have and fill in any gaps. And knowing who taught your potential students before can give you further insight into the students’ background and mindset, particularly if you know their former teachers personally or by reputation.

Another benefit of finding out about a student’s past teachers is that, if it’s appropriate, you might be able to contact them and find out where the student left off, so you can pick up from there. You can also contact their former teachers for references. This can give you valuable insight and also help you avoid taking on a student who has caused trouble for another teacher in the past.

Commitment and Willingness to Do the Work

If you as a teacher are going to put in all the work to create, teach, and follow up on a class or lead a group, then you want to know that the people you’re teaching are committed to the degree you need them to be. Melanie Henry’s group is a tight-knit family, and commitment is very important:

To enter the inner grove, they have to be known to us for a year and a day and have to be accepted by everybody else in the inner grove. It’s a big commitment because it means that you’ll be doing ritual on new moons, full moons, and sabbats potentially for the rest of your life. You can go on leave of absence, but the assumption is that you are committing to doing this indefinitely. There’s a little bit of a problem in that people want to join up without fully understanding what that commitment means in practice. Although that’s one of the reasons it’s good to have people stay in the outer grove longer—until they’re sure—because if you’re in the outer grove, it’s like you’re dating us, whereas if you’re in the inner grove, it’s like you’re married to us.

Not every class or group requires that kind of dedication, but it is important to find out if your potential students are willing to make the level of commitment necessary for your particular situation. Nothing will take the wind out of a class’s sails more quickly than a group of students who are not willing to do the spiritual and intellectual work you set out for them.

Brains and Competence

Your students don’t need to be rocket scientists, but it helps if they have intellectual curiosity and are competent enough to grasp the information you’re going to present. Sylva Markson commented:

I don’t think that you necessarily have to be a genius to be a Witch, but I think, for myself, in the kind of Craft I practice and want to practice, there has to be a level of experiential exploration as well as intellectual exploration.

Goals

In long-term or intimate teaching settings, it’s vital to know what a student’s goals are in studying with you so you can determine if your teaching might meet their needs, and you can help them meet those goals. It’s also important to find out if a potential student’s goals are completely out of line with what you’re offering or if they have goals you don’t approve of.

One example of this is “initiation hunters”—people who study with a teacher only long enough to acquire a title or degree, just so they can say they have it, and then move on to another. These people aren’t worth your time and energy. Anne Marie Forrester told me a story about one pre-initiate student (a student studying toward initiation) she worked with briefly who was more interested in the title of “Witch” than in actually being one:

A couple of years ago at a large community event, one of our pre-initiates came in with a gaggle of her friends, and our coven was sitting at a table in the big main hall.… From across the room she points at us, and I could clearly hear her say, “That’s my high priestess, and I’m in her coven.” And she puffed up with pride, and everybody appreciatively ogled us from across the room, and then she sort of shushed them into the dealers’ room, which was out another door, and she never came over and said hi to us, and she never came over and spent any time with us.

Later, in private, we asked her, “Why didn’t you come over and say hello to us?” And she got all embarrassed and upset. So we talked it through and mutually agreed that she needed a month off to reevaluate her commitment to her studies and our group. But after that evening she never came back; that’s the last we saw of her. I think she wanted the title and the pride of title more than she wanted to actually be part of our coven or do the work.

Why They Want to Study with You

Asking a student why they want to study whatever you’re teaching, and also why they want to study with you in particular, can give you a lot of insight. Asking them why they want to learn the content of your class can be very helpful in tailoring the class to their needs. It can also help you determine if you are the right person to teach that particular topic to them; there might be a better teacher for them out there. For example, my husband and I had a woman approach us about teaching, and we asked her what kind of group she was looking for and what she hoped to learn. She was interested in a lot of things, but she kept coming around to magic; she had a deep interest in it and a lot of previous experience. Our group, however, is not magically focused; we’re a teaching coven. Magic isn’t high on our agenda. So I sent the woman to some other people in town I knew who offered a more magically oriented study group.

Speaking of magic, it can also be helpful to ask potential students how they plan to apply what they’ve learned. Do they want to learn about magic to create positive change in their lives or to hex their ex-lovers? If you don’t agree with the way they are going to use the information you give them, you might not want to teach them.

It’s also good to know why they want to study with you in particular. Is it to work with you, or do they just want to hang out with their friends, who happen to be in your class? It’s helpful to know what they’ve heard about you or what they think you can offer them so you can determine if you really have the qualities they think you do. If you don’t, it’s good to get that information out on the table right away.

It could be that you’re the only teacher in their area, or that you’re the only person teaching your particular tradition or topic. This can make you very popular by default. My husband and I were the only people of our tradition teaching in our city for a long time, and it felt like every seeker in town who was even a little bit interested in our trad talked to us at one point or another.

It might also be because you have a good reputation or they feel comfortable with you. These are good reasons for students to want to study with you. But if they suck up to you or try to butter you up while you are discussing what they think you can offer them, take that as a red flag. They might only be trying to show you how interested they are in learning from you, but people who suck up to you—who are disingenuous about what they think of you or what they’re after—usually make poor students at best, and can have ulterior motives at worst. It’s also good to be careful with people who are sucking up to you because you might never live up to their expectations. They need to know up front that you are human, you will make mistakes, and you don’t expect them to put you on a pedestal or pander to you.

What’s really sad are potential students who prostrate themselves in front of you not because they’re trying to manipulate you or get something out of you, but because they think that’s what they’re supposed to do. It’s an unfortunate fact that there have been some Pagan teachers who have acted like they walk on water and like they are superior to their students and deserve accolades and adulation. This is a good opportunity to show your potential student that you are not one of those. (Because you’re not, right?)

Compatibility

Screening to find out if a potential student’s personality is compatible with yours and those of your other students is very important in any longer-term teaching situation. Sylva Markson explains:

I look for basic compatibility of personality—I mean, they have to be someone we like, because ultimately a coven is in a lot of ways an adult family. We throw around the term “family of choice” a lot, but ultimately it’s really true in that these are people you’re working with on a deep level. You have to be able to let your guard down with them. You have to be able to trust them. You’re going to have a level of intimacy just by virtue of the fact that you’re dealing with your spirituality with these people. So they have to be people that you like, that you are willing to work with on that level.

And, as Melanie Henry points out, if you are doing any sort of energy work, it really helps if the student can gel with your energy and/or that of your group:

We’re very flexible and have very few hard and fast rules, but you have to get the energy right to work with us. That might sound like sort of a loosey-goosey boundary, but it’s not really. What I find is that people who do not hang with the energy kind of get ejected. That can be painful for everybody, unfortunately, which is not something I would desire, but it’s an interesting process.

Brian Rowe also talked about the importance of new members being compatible with an existing group because of the impact that group members can have on each other:

When we’re dealing with a small-group coven, each personality and each communication style has the ability to magnify other traits in people in the coven. If somebody brings something forward, it can ripple through the group.

This is not to say that everyone has to be a perfect fit. Flexibility in dealing with others’ personalities and quirks can be a very important trait in potential students, and willingness to meet others in the group halfway can make up for some inherent differences in preferences or opinions. Sylva Markson commented:

Open-mindedness. I’ve talked about how you have to allow each individual to be an individual, but they have to allow the other people in the group to be individuals too. They can’t come in with such firm ideas about what everybody has to believe or what everybody has to do, because if they do, they’re going to wind up having lots of conflicts with other people in the group who don’t fit in their mold.

Again, it’s impossible to tell for certain during a screening process whether someone will be compatible with you and your group. You can try to ensure that people have the basic qualities you’d like up front, but the rest unfolds as people get to know each other.

And you can at least rule out people who have obvious compatibility issues with your group. For example, my husband and I once interviewed a potential student who had just moved to our city. During the course of our conversation, it became obvious that she wouldn’t get along with our existing group for two reasons. First, she told us that she wanted a group that was “all business,” with little socializing and chatting. However, our group is a coven, and socializing is critical to building bonds between covenmates. The real clincher, though, was when she told us that when she decided to move, she had simply dumped her dogs, because it was too much of a bother to pack them up and bring them along. She didn’t try to find a home for them or even bring them to the Humane Society or another shelter. I was appalled and furious and practically in tears, and wanted to report her for animal cruelty. There was no way she’d ever get along with our pet-loving coven. This story also told me something about her ethics as well. It’s often said that you can judge people by how they treat children, the elderly, and animals. This woman would not have passed the test.

You might not have the same ideas as I do about caring for animals, but if there are other issues that you really care about that you think will affect how you work with someone, it doesn’t hurt to find out where your potential students stand before you take them on.

Stability and Commitments

Unless you’re teaching a very informal class, during a screening process it’s good to get a sense of what a potential student’s other commitments are, where they are in their lives, and how stable things are for them. If their lives are in chaos or transition, it might not be a good time for them to be studying Paganism with you, depending on how intense or challenging your material is. On the other hand, if they are in crisis, your teaching might help provide them some stability to get them through it.

Ethics

Although you will never be able to ascertain without a doubt whether a person is ethical during a screening, asking questions about ethics is very important. The more intimate the setting of your class or group, the more you want to know that your potential students have a sense of right and wrong, and, preferably, a personal ethical code that is compatible with yours and with those of your other students. You don’t have to pose ethical puzzles or grill your potential students about every little choice they have made or would make, but getting some idea of the students’ sense of ethics can save you a lot of trouble in the long run. The closer-knit your group is, the more important it is to try to avoid taking on people who are either unethical or whose sense of ethics clashes with those of the rest of the group members. An unethical person in a situation like this—or in any teaching situation, really—can be a time bomb.

Red Flags and Obvious Nuttiness

“Red flags” are clues—usually odd behaviors or weird comments—that tip you off to the possibility of undesirable behaviors or traits in a potential student, or that the person is not in possession of a full set of marbles. Some of these can be fairly obvious, scary, funny, or all of those combined, like one that Melanie Henry mentioned in our interview: “The guy who told us he was a bounty hunter and that we had to have him in the class.” Anne Marie Forrester also mentioned an obvious red flag she encountered:

Not everybody who writes us are people we end up being willing to meet … like one person who told us all about their Michigan vampire tradition and how they already knew everything there was to know and we could just initiate them via the mail.

And some of the red flags are more subtle, such as when people you’re screening contradict themselves, repeat themselves a lot, or are generally twitchy. This can be an indicator that they are withholding information or even lying.

When we were talking about red flags in our interview, Melanie Henry commented, “It’s not the obviously insane ones that’ll get you. It’s the subtly insane ones that’ll get you.” Although she said it half-jokingly, we laughed about it more because it’s true than because it was funny. People who are obviously unbalanced aren’t likely to make it past your screening, so they’re less of a danger. People who are able to hide symptoms, or whose condition creeps up on them so even they don’t know what’s going on until it’s too late, are much more problematic than the person claiming to be Elvis or an ambassador from Venus.

Unless you’re a psychiatrist, chances are you aren’t going to be able to tell if someone is “subtly crazy” during a screening. But one thing you can look for in advance that can be an important key to determining if someone’s behavior is going to be a problem or not is empathy. If students display a lack of empathy—an inability or unwillingness to be aware of and sensitive to what another person is feeling or experiencing in a situation—chances are their ethics and behaviors aren’t going to meet your standards. Lack of empathy can be an indicator of anything from an overinflated ego or selfish nature to full-blown narcissism. It can also be a sign of other mental health issues. In my experience, of all of the problems you can come across when working with people, lack of empathy—people who just don’t give a damn about others—is probably one of the most subtly destructive and difficult to work with.

Remember, though, that sometimes people do weird things when you meet them for the first time not because they’re nuts but because they’re nervous, or, if you’re meeting them in person, because they just don’t interview well. So you need to take wacky behavior during a screening with a little bit of salt sometimes. And you need to think about your own behavior—how you might be coming across to the potential student—and how that might influence how he or she acts.

As Sarah Davies points out:

As far as mainstream society is concerned, what we [Wiccans] do is freaking weird. You bring people into your home, and you’re pointing knives everywhere and making geometric shapes. I can see where someone can go, “This is not what I signed up for.”

We had one potential student who met us for coffee and attended one class. During both the coffee and the class, she repeatedly told us that her friends knew exactly where she was, what she was doing, and who she was with. It was obvious she wanted us to know that she’d be missed if we decided to kidnap her, indoctrinate her into a cult, and use her as a ritual sacrifice. After the first class she never came back, and she never called or emailed to let us know she wouldn’t be returning. We can only assume we scared the hell out of her—not at all surprising, because she was already nervous and we’re a loudmouthed, strong-willed group of people, and we were very vocal during the one class she attended. She probably wasn’t a good match for our class, but even so, we knew she was nervous, and we should have toned down our discussion a notch. The point is, yes, she was acting a little weird, but our behavior didn’t help.

This is one of those areas in which you really should rely on your gut. If you are uncomfortable with a behavior a potential student is exhibiting during screening, don’t ignore that feeling, especially if you think they are being disingenuous or lying. They don’t need to tell you every little detail about their lives before you take them on, but what they do tell you should be the truth.

Mental Health

Screening for mental health is tricky. On one hand, your students’ medical situation is none of your business. But on the other hand, it is your business, because it can affect their behavior and ability to do well in your class, it can have an impact on your other students, and you as the teacher will need to deal with it directly if their illness causes problems. The phrase “mental health” spans a wide range of meanings, and most people don’t like talking about their mental health status for fear of judgment or because they consider it private. But the more intimate your teaching setting is, the more important it is to at least know the basics of your students’ mental health status.

Christopher Penczak told me:

I have a questionnaire that I use for my long-term classes, and mental illness is not necessarily prohibitive to taking the class, as some of my most amazing students have had some serious clinical diagnoses, but the questions allow me to see if they are aware and are receiving support or will try to minimize or deny it. Some have been a problem in short-term public workshops and even a couple in long-term training. Usually when the person refuses outside aid or support from the mental health community it tends to end badly, and all you can do is bless them and hope they find a healing path.

There is more information about dealing with students’ mental health issues in C hapter 10.

Drug and Alcohol Use and Addictions

If you are going to be involved in students’ lives in any more than a passing way, it’s a good idea to ask students about their drug and alcohol use and whether or not they have any addiction issues. There is more information on dealing with students’ drug and alcohol issues in C hapter 10.

Arrest or Prison Record

It might seem extreme, but for your own safety and the safety of your other students, it’s a good idea to ask potential students if they have an arrest or prison record. As with the mental health and addiction issues, you can decide on a case-by-case basis whether or not you’re willing to take on someone with a prison record or rap sheet. In some cases, Pagan teachings can be very helpful to ex-cons and people who have committed crimes in the past who want to get their lives going on a better track. Just be aware of what you are taking on.

Screening Methods

So now that you know what you’re looking for, how do you screen students? There are several useful techniques. Which one(s) you use will vary depending on what you’re teaching and in what context you’re teaching it.

Informative Emails

A high-level screening tool that many people use is a basic informative email that gives potential students background information on you—and your group, path, or tradition, if applicable—and details what you will be covering in class and what you expect from students. If students don’t like something you talk about in your email, or if they don’t think they’d fit in, they usually either ask clarifying questions or break off the conversation and start looking elsewhere, thus screening themselves.

The informative email that my husband and I send to people who contact us about possibly joining our group started out simply as a description of our group, tradition, and teaching style, but as people asked questions, we added more and more information to avoid answering the same question over and over again, and now the email has gotten quite long. We jokingly refer to it as “the scare-off email” because it has helped more than one person decide that our group was not for them. For example, it states up front that we practice skyclad after initiation (the training leading up to initiation is done clothed so people can get to know each other before they get naked together), and that there are no exceptions. This makes a lot of people uncomfortable; it certainly made me feel that way when I was new. Some stop talking to us right there, while others ask questions, and still others come to class even though they’re nervous about it (and invariably get over it once they know everyone and are comfortable). Disclosing things like this up front gives students who might be bothered by it or who simply don’t want to do it a chance to bow out before they’ve invested too much time.

References and Google

You can—and should—check out your potential students by word of mouth and online. Talk to their past teachers, if any, and ask around in the community to see if anyone knows them and would give them a reference. You can also ask potential students to provide references themselves. Don’t go as far as cyber-stalking them, poring over their Facebook pages and tweets, but at least Google them and see if any red flags come up, and encourage them to do the same to find out more about you. (Remember, though, that several people might have the same name as your potential student, so it’s possible that the information you turn up when you Google someone’s name is about someone else.)

Weeder Classes

If you’ve got the time and resources, it can be very helpful to run a beginning “weeder” class or seminar to find students who might be good candidates for longer-term or more in-depth study with you. I think of it like Journalism 101 at my university, which was an entry-level class designed to be difficult. The class gave students a chance to show their stuff, and people who couldn’t pass it didn’t move on to more in-depth study or major in the subject. Melanie Henry’s group has a fairly in-depth thirteen-week beginner class from which they draw new students for their coven. However, a weeder class doesn’t have to be difficult or run as long as thirteen weeks, and it can be much less formal. My husband and I ran a Pagan arts and crafts class at the local bookstore for a few months both as a community service and as a way to meet and work with potential students.

Questionnaires

Questionnaires can be used alone or as a preliminary technique in conjunction with personal interviews. You can use them to whittle down a large group of potential students to just the ones you want to invite to your class or spend time interviewing. Questionnaires can be designed to give you very in-depth and personal information or simple, high-level information. They can also be less nerve-wracking for a potential student than an in-person interview, and of course they’re much easier to administer online. Melanie Henry’s group uses a questionnaire as a warm-up for personal interviews. “[Potential students] fill out a very long form, in which they tell us all their deepest secrets,” she told me, laughing. “We ask them a lot of questions in the interview because we would rather ask a bunch and not be surprised.”

Interviews

As you might have gathered, my husband and I—and a lot of the teachers and group leaders I know—use in-person interviews to screen students. In-person meetings are harder to organize and they take time, but you can get a lot more information than just using a questionnaire. You can ask follow-up questions in the moment and read body language—both very valuable when you’re trying to find out if someone is a fit for you, and you for them. It’s best to meet for interviews in a neutral public place rather than your own home, in case your interviewees turn out to be people you don’t trust. Try to make your interviewees as comfortable as you can so you get answers that are less tainted by nervousness or the desire to impress you.

Like questionnaires, interviews can be fairly superficial or very comprehensive. Melanie Henry described the interview process her group uses:

We have a rather intensive interview process. We do our best to weed out the really difficult ones before they even get in the class. We’ve had some real wackos come to our class interviews. By the time you’ve gotten through an interview, if you are a difficult person, at least we know what kind of difficult person you are, by and large.

There are some sample questions in Appendix A that can be used in questionnaires or interviews or as a starting point for creating your questions.

[contents]

The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.

ding.jpg

William Arthur Ward