Student Teaching

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Student Teaching

Information on what it is to be a Reclaiming teacher, what the process is to student teach, applications, etc. will continue to be posted here as it becomes available!

August 9, 2002

To those who’ve wondered about witch camp teaching, I offer the following thoughts. Others may have very different views on this stuff, so, please ask around!!

Application forms for witch camp teaching will be posted to Spider list. Those who receive the application, please pass along to others not on Spider. Thanks!

Blessings, Sage

How to Become a Reclaiming Witch Camp Teacher (in Sage’s opinion!)
1.	Teach Reclaiming style classes in your home community. Practice giving and receiving feedback. Keep asking yourself - “what is the work I’m supposed to do in this lifetime?”
2.	Ask for feedback and mentorship from experienced Reclaiming teachers. Work with their recommendations. Stay in contact with your mentor.
3.	Work on the craft of teaching. Read books, ask questions, watch and listen with beginners mind. Stay curious.
4.	Take courses to expand your skills and develop your strengths. This could include: voice lessons, psychic skills, conflict resolution, meditation practices, drumming, public speaking, creative movement, storytelling, facilitation training, the creative process, constructive critique.
5.	Do your personal work, in whatever form that takes. The more energy you run, the more visible you are as leader, the more projections are thrown your way, the more you need to stay grounded in the truth of who you are.
6.	Examine your expectations and motivations regarding witch camp teaching.Check them out with those who have had experiences as witch camp teachers. Ask several different people - seek out a diverse range of responses.

What to Expect, What’s Expected of You (Sage’s opinion!)

Student teaching at witch camp is an amazing, challenging experience, but it is not the first step on a career path that automatically leads to becoming an established witch camp teacher. It is an opportunity to experience witch camp from a very different perspective and will likely change your understanding of camp, forever. It is an opportunity to learn a huge amount about creating magic with a group within an intense and provocative environment. It is likely to push your buttons and challenge you, personally, in surprising ways. Witch camp teaching is fundamentally service work. Sometimes it might look glamorous from the outside, but, truly it is rigorous service. It is also team work - one’s ability to add to the smooth functioning of the team is a highly valued skill.
Here are some suggestions that might be helpful:
*	As a first year student teacher, focus on your path teaching. Take on pieces that you have some confidence in and ask for feedback and suggestions from your path partner. As the week progresses, take on some thing you’ve never done before.
*	In your second year, take more leadership in your path teaching and push your edges a couple of times in evening ritual.
*	Seek to support the work of the team as a whole. Do your best to focus on serving the work, rather than getting your personal needs for recognition met. This might mean taking on some rather pragmatic tasks, or more supportive roles.
*	Develop an ongoing practice of moving through your emotional reactions and triggers (“I’m not good enough”, “I’m better than her”, “No one notices me”, “I wish I was invisible”, etc. etc.)
*	Seek out and utilize a mentor on the team. Ask for, and work with, challenges to help you grow and develop as a teacher and as a priest/ess.

Here’s Katrina Messenger’s take on the subject:

Here are some of the things I say to prospective/new student teachers.
Please feel free to use (or not use) any of it you find useful.

1. Take responsibility for yourself and be accountable for your own emotions, experiences and growth. The people who get selected to student teach generally are selected because they act responsibly and take on the grunt work of priestessing. They volunteer in class/path for things such as creating sacred space, they respond well to feedback, ask for/require appropriate amounts of space/time, and take on non-glamorous roles.

2. If the only reason you want to teach at witch camp is to anchor, aspect or be in the center of a big camp ritual -- you really need to check your motivations. The main difference between teaching in community and teaching at camp is that you are part of a team -- a large team. A team consisting of folks with differing levels of experience, skills and talent. The role you play on a team will be more likely dictated by the magic and/or the needs of the camp rather than your personal needs or expectations. As a student teacher, your role in the process is expected to be revealed over time, not dictated up front.

With rare exception, student teachers are expected to focus on path work at least initially until their specific role in the magic is revealed.

3. Prospective student teachers are often given loads of advice concerning what they need to do before applying to teach. Most of the advice is really personal feedback aimed at helping the person develop or demonstrate areas of personal responsibility. IMHO the single best measure that uniformly applies to all student teachers is the depth of their personal work. As a member of a selection team, I uniformly looked for evidence of a personal practice. But officially a person need only to have attended 2 camps and submitted an application to be considered as a student teacher. Everything else suggested is feedback targeted mainly at individuals by individual teachers.

4. The main reason a person is not selected to teach is that the number of teachers far exceeds the teacher positions at witch camps. As the number of teachers increase, it becomes less likely that a successful run as a student teacher will translate into a witch camp teaching position. Because of this fact, we are increasingly positioning the student teacher process as an intern or apprentice position. Everyone needs to reflect upon and comprehend this fact BEFORE they apply.

5. A successful run as a student teacher is dictated by one key behavior - responding well to feedback. It is the paradox that student teachers must confront.

A) You are a peer to all the other teachers.
B) And you are expected to act as a student of the process.

The only way to navigate this paradox is via feedback. You must check in with your gut, your path co-teacher and your mentor continually. Do not wait till the end of camp to
get feedback, start asking for feedback during the initial team bonding process as well. And it often needs to be stated out loud -- pay attention to the feedback, especially if the same feedback is repeated over time by several senior teachers. The biggest mistake I have seen student teachers make is to assume that feedback is either a personal attack or just one person's opinion. Always check in with both your co-teacher and your mentor about specific areas of feedback you are unsure about.

6. It also helps to enter the process with 'beginner's mind' and allow yourself a period of adjustment where you relax and rely on the experience of the senior teachers at least initially. And as you discover the flow of energy, try flocking or adding your energy slowly till you can ride it with confidence. The period right before camp is when most teams start to bond and reach the cohesion necessary to take on the rigors of camp. This is the time for student teachers to relax and slowly come up to speed. No matter how long you have been attending/organizing witch camps or teaching in community, remember that being on a witch camp teaching team is a NEW experience.

7. And finally, although teaching at camp can be a rewarding and nurturing experience, it can also be strenuous, nerve wracking, emotionally/physically draining, psychically numbing, and it will push all of your buttons. It is not for everyone. If you are finding it difficult to deal with the energy of camp as a student, then consider that as a teacher you will more than likely have to deal with same energy multiplied by up to possibly 140 other campers. It can be daunting to consider, but that is why witch camps have teaching teams that are selected together. All are expected to be competent as teachers and priest/esses, but each team is intended to be a balance of skill levels, experience and magical depth. A student teacher is expected to add to the strengths of the team, not just shine as an individual.

Katrina Messenger

Last update: February 21, 2008

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