How do you find instructors?

In keeping with the theme of open service learning, workshops have been comprised of educational offerings from the community, by various independent instructors, operating under their own direction, and scheduled together in an interwoven fashion as synergistic parts for each student’s Earth Masters experience.

In addition to personal knowledge and practical experience in the field, the most important single qualification for our instructors is that they provide a comfortable “feeling” for our grassroots, hand-on learners (of being among friends and equals). This is a people’s school, albeit without bricks and mortar. Teachers need to have a very practical devotion to their craft and a non-assuming attitude that will make even the most shy and reclusive student feel confident and in charge of his own lifestyle and knowledge gathering. The second requirement is that the presentation style is dynamic, clear and can penetrate simply and easily while keeping focused on rapid material delivery (and without the need for a lot of notes, memorization and research homework). The third important characteristic is that instructors have the openness to seek out different viewpoints and gather expert speakers with varied experiential knowledge to relay a lot of examples of different possible project applications, while the fourth is the passion to inspire and, fifth, an insight and ability to pick up on and work with very different individual student interests and goals, mentoring students in their future outcomes.

Back to EM FAQs