PDR Week #1 - My reading for the new school semester

corrielle

This is my third year teaching English composition at local community colleges, and I did this spread to get an overview of the upcoming semester and how I might best serve my students. (I'm also using this reading to practice reading reversed cards, which I'm just trying to do again after not reading them for a couple of months.)

I used my Legend: Arthurian deck for this Celtic Cross spread.

1. (Central Factor) 4 Wands
2. (Supporting Factor) Knight of Wands
3. (Unconscious Influence/Root issue) Empress
4. (Past Influence) Knight of Pentacles (reversed)
5. (Conscious Influence) Ten of Swords (reversed)
6. (Approaching Influence) Seven of Cups (reversed)
7. (My part in the situation) Star (reversed)
8. (The environment's part) The Universe (my deck's version of the World)
9. (Hopes/dreams/guidance) Two of Wands
10. (Outcome) Three of Swords (reversed)

The two wands cards at the heart of this reading remind me that in order to be an effective teacher, I have to find ways to let my passion for writing and for language come across to my students. The Four of Wands is a card about celebration... and not a great many of the people who come through my classroom door feel overly celebratory when it comes to writing. More likely, they are fearful or apathetic. So, it's my job to show them a different way of thinking about the subject I teach, use the fact that I love what I teach to inspire them. (One would think that this might be obvious, but it is SO easy to forget when I'm teaching grammar or sentence structure or how to write a thesis statement.)

Other cards that greatly encourage me in this reading are the Empress and the Universe. The Empress, for me, represents a desire to nurture my students as writers. I have done a lot of examining of my own motivations. I sometimes worry that because I started teaching in order to pay the bills, I'm not giving my students the dedication they need. The empress reminds me that yes, I DO have their best interests at heart, and I do have the nurturing spirit that I need in order to help them succeed. The Universe reminds me that the two schools where I teach are both amazing places with great staff and a lot of resources that I know how to use. I'm not new any more, I know who to talk to when I need something, and I know how to get the best out of what each college has to offer. My environment supports me fully as I try to do my best for the kids in my classes.

The receding influence - the Knight of Pentacles - is interesting to me. I think that he represents the way that I used to do things. When I first started teaching, I had a very rigid teaching style and very broadly sketched assignments that ended up giving me a bunch of lifeless writing from my students. It was a practical way of setting up the course, but it wasn't very lively, and it wasn't serving my purpose of getting my students to produce thoughtful, original pieces. So I scrapped a bunch of what I've done in the past this semester, which leads me to the Seven of Cups as the "approaching influence." I love this card in my deck - it's The Questing Beast, which was a mythical creature that one of Arthur's knights followed all of the time without catching. I think that every teacher's "Quest" is to get everything "just right," the right assignments, the right supporting material, the right presentations... which of course never happens. Change is inevitable. I think that the fact that this "wishful thinking" card is reversed means that as I move into the semester I need to temper my shiny new expectations for my overhauled assignments with a realistic idea of what my students can actually accomplish.

The Ten and Three of Swords both appear in this reading, reversed. The Ten is a conscious influence, which feels very appropriate to me. I felt like I hit a pretty low place in a couple of my classes, and the picture in my deck of the aftermath of Arthur's last great battle captures how I felt about teaching towards the end of last semester. I was frustrated with the assignments I had planned and too busy to revamp them, and I think that my students felt my lack of investment in what I was asking them to do. New ideas I was coming into contact with clashed with what I already had set up, and I felt my failings very keenly. However, I think that the fact that both of these cards are reversed means that the disappointment associated with them does not have too strong of a hold on me. In fact, I take the Three of Swords' reversal to mean that if I learn what I can from my mistakes and do my best to provide a rich, fulfilling learning experience, the heartbreak and disappointment of past mistakes will fall away from me.