A Teaching Handbook for Wiccans and Pagans by Thea Sabin Page A

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
    â€œRed 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