Why I've Stopped Teaching Tarot

For the last five years, I've been teaching Intro to Tarot classes at adult ed centers around Boston. This has ranged from lectures to one-night seminars to three-session courses. In a lot of ways, it's been fun, but I've decided that I'm done with it--at least for now.

Why? Well, the main reason is that I just haven't been loving the last few classes I taught. And when I don't love what I'm doing, I don't do it well. If I'm going to teach, I want to be an enthusiastic and fully-engaged teacher. And over the last year or so, I've felt like I was starting to phone it in.

Part of this is due to the way my tarot work has evolved over time. I've become more and more focused on the coaching applications of tarot cards, rather than on parsing individual card meanings. And I've found that it's pretty hard to teach my tarot method in just one night, or even three. I mean, I wouldn't expect to learn to be a life coach from going to a three-session Life Coaching class--it takes years of study, and layers of experience. So lately, it's been feeling like there's a disconnect between what I'm trying to teach, and what my students want to learn.

Yeah, the disconnect. This brings up another issue with my adult-ed classes: no way to pre-screen my students. A wonderful characteristic of adult-ed centers is that they attract all kinds of people, from all possible backgrounds, drawn by the relatively low cost and low time commitment. But these are also factors that are tough for me as a teacher. Not everyone gets what I'm doing with tarot--and I don't need them to! That's why I screen my tarot clients so carefully: I only want to work with people who really, really get what I'm doing. Because they're the ones I can help, and the ones who are the most fun for me to work with.

So when I find myself in front of a class who just can't shake their prediction addiction--heh, just made that one up! You know what I mean: people who are only interested in the dreaded when-will questions, not in really doing work and making change in their lives. They make me cranky. And I'm not good at teaching them.

I've met and taught many delightful people over the last five years, and many of them have expanded my own understanding of what tarot is, how it works, and what it can do. Thanks to all of you--and for those of you who've become my clients, now you know (if you didn't before) how picky I am about the people I choose to work with!