Spread #2: The Magician Spread for Teachers

The Magician Spread I have designed invites us to get resourceful and look deeper at our creativity and passions, our emotions and relationships, our thoughts and communication skills, and our physical surroundings and physical work.

I am sitting here laughing because I shuffled this deck so thoroughly and I cut the deck in several places as I chose my cards and yet the cards I picked, well...look for yourself!

The Wand (creativity/passion): The Magician
The Pentacle (classroom/work): 8 of Pentacles
The Cup (emotions/relationships): The Fool
The Sword (thoughts/communication): The High Priestess

So yes, I do find it funny that three out of the four cards I pulled are the first three cards in the Major Arcana, but I feel they make absolutely so much sense for me.

So let's tackle the Magician first since he has to do with my passion and creativity. So I'm getting ready to go back to work from an extended maternity leave. I am using my last free week to gather some materials for some fun activities that I want to do in my first few weeks. I am starting in the middle of a term, so I need to be creative in terms of using that time to get to know my students while still keeping them on track with what they have been learning this unit. So I went to Home Depot to buy some craft paper so that we can do body biographies of the characters they have been analyzing this term. My goal is to get to know my students while they are getting to know their characters better. So I am tapping into Magician energy by gathering up my resources, creating some fun lesson plans, and goal setting. So this card is showing me that I need to focus my energy, creativity, and passion and organize them coherently so that I can manifest wonderful things in my classroom for my students.

Next we have the 8 of Pentacles when thinking about my physical classroom and the work I will be doing. The 8 of Pentacles depicts a man at a work bench who is busy at his craft. It actually resembles an assembly line.  This is a card of hard work and attention to detail. Look how engaged he is with his work! This is exactly how I need to be. When I'm in the classroom, I need to have my A game on and be completely engrossed with the lesson at hand and with my students. I can't be thinking about my to-do list, wondering what my kids are up to, wondering what I should make for dinner, or predicting who will be the next Supreme on American Horror Coven. I really need to get focused and feel connected to what I am doing when I am at work. I also like how he is chiseling in this card. It makes me think of how I will be writing on my white board and developing my bulletin boards.

The Fool card is so appropriate for the Cups position. I have been feeling a lot of anxiety about jumping into teaching in the middle of the school year. I am plagued with negative feelings that the kids will prefer their long term sub to me and won't connect with me. But the Fool is telling me to take that leap of faith, to trust that the kids will give me a chance, and to build my relationship with them from an emotional place of optimism and excitement. Instead of feeling worried about jumping in during the middle of the year, I should reframe it and look at it from the perspective that we will all be getting to know each other in the new year! So we can all reinvent ourselves, set new goals, and be whoever we want to be. This is also a positive card for my students because I will be meeting them with fresh eyes and with no preconceived notions about them. I opted not to be filled in while I was gone about particular students, so if some students had a rough start, well, now is their chance to start over fresh and make positive changes with a teacher who doesn't know their past mistakes! So it's win/win for everyone as long as we all maintain positive and optimistic attitudes.

The High Priestess card in the Swords position really speaks to me on a deep level. To me, this is a card about stillness, meditation, hidden knowledge, spirituality, and inner wisdom and power. I look at her as the female Hermit in many ways. Except unlike the Hermit, who goes inward in a way that causes him to be reclusive, the High Priestess goes inward in a way that still connects her to the world around her. Since this position in the spread is all about my thoughts and communication skills, this card is a reminder to really think before I speak. It is also telling me that I need to listen more, not just to my own inner wisdom and intuition, but to my students. I need to get in touch with the hidden knowledge of my students. I need to pay attention to their stories if I want to connect with them on a deep level that will benefit their learning. If I know my students well enough, then I will really understand their needs and learning styles. Differentiated learning  is a teaching philosophy that is becoming very mainstream. This card is suggesting that I follow my intuition, learn my student's learning styles and help them become self aware of their own learning styles, and then communicate my lesson plans to them in a variety of ways to connect with every one of my students.

So that is the Magician Spread in a nutshell. I hope you give it a try and let me know what you learned about yourself as a teacher in doing so.

All my best,

Amy