As a mentor you learn that your guidance comes by helping your seekers on their path with your experience. You can’t force them onto your path. You might give them things that you’ve found helpful and useful, but they have to walk the path they are on.

As teachers we try to force kids to learn what we have been told to teach them. They don’t get to choose what they want to learn. We say here read this, learn this and be on our path of learning. We don’t say what would you like to learn and how can I make sure you get the necessary skills.

The problem is what we try to force them to learn can be uninteresting and disengaging to them. Occasionally  we hit a gold mine and they are all right there, and then for that brief glimmer you can see it…the learning, the engagement, the joy. It warms your heart, and then the next moment all that is gone.

Today I asked my kids if they could study anything what would it be? History of gangs, being a nurse, animation, professional …(insert sport).  So now I have a starting point, somewhere to connect Martin Luther King, Jr. to what they want to learn. A place where what I need to teach, meets them on their path.

Like those I mentor in Wicca and at Sacred Mists, teaching is a passion. When I lose my kids and I lose myself because of disconnect I come back to what I know best and who I am. So looking at my students as seekers changes how I approach them. Yesterday was a challenge. Today was a beginning.