What can we as instructors do to help potential students make the proper choice? After all happy students mean more happy students.

#1. Accurately describe classes.

#2. If you say you are going to cover something, do it!

#3. Don’t confuse potential students with a lot of fluffy descriptions. A concise description will tell us more about the class than a lot of TV infomercial style writing.

When I was teaching my supervising teacher had me write lesson plans. These plans included a brief statement of what I wanted to accomplish in the class, how long the class was going to last, what I’d cover in the class, and what part of the school and state’s learning goals I was going to meet. Then I’d do a step-by-step plan of the actual classes. I’d include notes on what I would say to students and when. These were serious business, it allowed me to maintain my licensure. If I skipped on these, she’d make me do them again. They were  a lot of work. The thing is, they were so important and helpful for me to be able to accurately teach my students. It was so useful I have made them for all my online classes and classes I hope to teach one day.

If #1 and #2 are too hard, maybe a lesson plan would help. Summarize each lesson into a brief description. If you can’t summarize it, break up the class, add another day. A class can’t be all expansive. Teaching everything is impossible. This was the hardest thing for me to learn as a young teacher. I had each class for about 50 minutes each day. I had to be able to summarize my lessons into something my supervisor could figure out in a moment.

What I’ve learned from this discussion is that there is a viable and lively group of people looking for honest, in depth mixed media and art journaling instruction online. What this group wants is safe classes with art and no diving deep into the subconscious, no mind-body connection, no promises to jumpstart creativity, just honest-to-goodness mixed media and art instruction.We can all hold dear the idea that art heals, but we can all also find that in our own personal practice of art journaling if we want it.

I also get why some teach the healing they have learned. It’s natural to want to show this thing you’ve learned with everyone. It’s awesome and we should be proud of the deep internal work we’ve done. That is some powerful stuff. When we have spontaneous healing of wounds we’ve dug out of “the deep” of our subconscious, it’s mind blowing and even life altering. Personal revelation does not necessarily make a good class. Nor does self healing qualify us to take others on that journey. We need to modify what we teach so that it is safe for anyone who takes a class with us. I’m advocating for us to care more for each other, and with that to be careful with the possible hurts that people may feel.

I'm going to make a brief list of the instructors that I know who only do technique based classes but I'll post that in another day or two. If you would like to shoot me an email with a class you tink should be listed feel free. You can also add it in the comments of the post tomorrow.