Interning Teacher Application

Trillium Awakening Teachers Circle

Interning Teacher Application and Maintenance Guidelines

Ratified by TATC (formerly WDTA) 4/11/07

Updated August 2008, October 2013, December 2013, July 2014, November 2015, February 10, 2016, Jan 9, 2019, February 17, 2019

Welcome! Thank you for applying to become an Interning Teacher (IT)

Please read, consider, and review the application process with your Sponsoring Teacher (who can be any full teacher). We acknowledge and want you to know in advance that, although we don’t intend it to be so, the application process is often challenging and can trigger issues around worthiness, inclusion, authority and judgment. Reviewing the application process with your sponsoring teacher can help you better understand how to work with such issues should they arise.

Your application might be delayed for a number of reasons. These could include the need to obtain more information from you, your sponsor or others, or perhaps more experience in mentoring would be needed. A delay does not mean that your application has been declined, but simply that more time, information or steps are needed before your transition can be brought for a vote.

Please note that the application process generally takes a minimum of 3 months.

The process includes:

· Selecting a sponsoring teacher.

· Reviewing the application process in one or more paid private sessions with your sponsor.

· Verifying in one or more paid private sessions with your sponsor that you have completed the objective requirements or adequate substitutes and discussing your readiness to transition to Interning teacher.

· Completing any additional education, deepening work, or engagement in mutuality, private sessions or therapy sessions recommended by your sponsor.

· Submitting your written application materials to your sponsor.

· Receiving in one or more paid private sessions feedback, questions or suggestions your sponsor has regarding your written application materials.

· Refining your written application materials based on input from your sponsoring teacher

· Trillium Association therapist approval

Your sponsoring teacher then forwards your written application materials to the Mentor Teacher Evaluation Committee (MTEC) who will have 6-8 weeks to review the materials.

The MTEC may request of you or your sponsor additional information or ask that you complete other work to ensure overall readiness.

After MTEC approval of your application, your sponsoring teacher will send a copy of your objective guidelines and your letter to the TATC to all of the teachers a minimum of 4 weeks before your transition will come to a vote. Voting takes place at monthly TATC phone calls. Your full application will not be sent to all the teachers, however any teacher may request to review it. During the 4 weeks before your transition is voted on any member of the TATC may contact you and/or your sponsoring teacher with questions or concerns.

During the TATC monthly phone call one month prior to the call on which your candidacy for Interning Teacher is to be reviewed, a member of the MTEC or your Sponsoring teacher shall announce your intention to transition.

Discussing your readiness to transition to an Interning Teacher may take more than one teacher meeting. Voting does not take place until the discussion is complete.

Below are the steps that all applying to Interning Teacher will complete. Many candidates will be asked to complete additional work not specified below.

1) Consider your time as a mentor in the light of the Objective Guidelines. The Objective Guidelines are to be taken as just that, “guidelines” for your reference, and not “absolute” requirements. Some degree of substitution or other compensation for any missing elements will be given due consideration.

2) Write a letter of your intention for the TATC members stating your desire and readiness for becoming an Interning Teacher and member of the TATC. This letter and your objective criteria will be forwarded to the teachers circle.

3) Write your most thoughtful answers to the questions below, to be included in your application. These will be reviewed by the Mentor and Teacher Evaluation Committee (MTEC), and verbally summarized for the teachers circle when you are being considered. Your entire application will be made available to any teacher who requests it from your Sponsoring Teacher.

4) Review with your sponsoring teacher and determine if you can be in accord with the “Interning Teacher Maintenance Guidelines”, the TATC bylaws and member agreements. Please request from your sponsor a copy of the most recent TATC bylaws and member agreements.

Objective Guidelines: Indicate if you have completed, or to what degree you have completed, the following items since becoming a mentor. There may be equivalencies that can be substituted for some of these guidelines. Your sponsoring teacher can check with the Mentor Teacher Evaluation Committee for current acceptable equivalencies.

· Approval to advance to Interning Teacher from the teacher who has been leading your small group (AMS or mentor group), and sponsoring teacher, (if different)

· Completed Advanced Mutuality Skills Course

· Regular participation in monthly AMS mutuality circle phone calls, or comparable mentor group

· 12 months minimum total as a mentor

· 100 hours - one-on-one mentor/mentee sessions

· Attended 12 sittings in which you assisted at least 6 times (Check with your sponsor if you don’t have availability in your local area to attend sittings)

· Assisted TA teachers twice at workshops that:

· Are a minimum of 2 consecutive days

· Include large group meetings that have a focus on one or more aspects of our core teachings

· Include small group meetings of (preferably) 4-8 participants

· As a mentor, assisted members of the TATC at a Trillium Awakening event (see https://glassfrog.holacracy.org/roles/1965 for current definition of a TA event) that:

· Is a minimum of 6 consecutive days inclusive of break days

· Includes meetings that have a focus on one or more aspects of our core teachings

· Includes a minimum of 5 small group meetings of 4-6 participants where you assist a full teacher in leading a group

· Includes debriefing with the small group teacher that you assist

· Includes staff meetings

· Completed 25 service hours (during mentoring period—does not include the 20 service hours needed to become a mentor)

· Review the IAM Foundation Course

· Had 1 private session per month with a full teacher: 6 of these private sessions with the teacher who leads your AMS or mentor group

· Completed any therapy sessions which may be required of you, to work with your core issues as they arise (up to 6 may be recommended by your sponsor or Trillium Awakening therapist)

· Secured therapist approval from a Trillium Awakening teacher who is listed as a licensed therapist on our resource list

Letter to Trillium Awakening Teachers Circle. Write a letter of intention stating your desire and readiness to become an Interning Teacher and a member of TATC. This letter should be shared with your Sponsoring Teacher and sent to the MTEC along with your application. It will be shared with all the teachers, along with your objective criteria, once the MTEC approves your application to go forward.

Questions to Address in Your Application. In your written application submitted to the MTEC please include the following:

What have you learned about yourself during your mentorship in terms of boundaries (issues of relatedness in the field of self and others)?

Please comment on holding the other in the mystery of Being, holding tension within yourself, and holding tension between yourself and the other.

How are you recognizing your conscious nature in times of stress, in normal day-today life?

How do you perceive and support the spaciousness and divine nature of your mentees?

Describe a mentee session where you were face to face with the mystery of the other. What was it like for you?

Please describe your most rewarding mentoring experience(s).

Please describe your most challenging mentoring experience(s). What were your edges in it? How did you work with it with your mentee, with yourself, and/or with other support?

How is it for you to receive feedback?

How is it for you to give feedback?

How is it for you when giving feedback to people who are senior and junior to you in this work?

Please write about your awareness of your current personal edges, and how your relationships are affected by them.

What is your current relationship to authority in this work (how are you currently around the give and take of authority in this work)?

Interning Teacher Maintenance Guidelines

How to Stay an Interning Teacher in Good Standing

Ratified by the WDTA (now TATC) 9/13/06

Updated August 2008, October 2013, Feb 2016, February 2019

Responsibilities that apply to all TATC members:

1) Members agree to familiarize themselves with and abide by the TATC bylaws and member agreements including:

· paying dues as specified in the TATC member policies

· adhering to the Ethics Policy

· participating in monthly mutuality group meetings

2) Members agree to be responsive in mutuality to their colleagues and members of the community at large.

Responsibilities of Interning Teachers:

3) Interning Teachers in their first year of membership in the TATC agree to participate in at least ¾ of the monthly TATC calls which are held on the second Wednesday of the month. After the first year of membership, Interning Teachers may fulfill their participation requirements by choosing any of the options listed in our TATC Member Agreements document - Section 2B.

Recommended for Interning Teachers (to further their development as teachers):

4) Interning teachers are invited to post a photo and bio for the website

5) Interning teachers are invited and requested to conduct sittings (and gaze!), at least monthly, in order to gain experience and competency.

6) Interning teachers are also invited and requested to participate in monthly IT Supervision Groups with a full teacher of Trillium Awakening, where the focus will be on discussing topics relevant to their work with students. Participation does not have to be for the entire length of time that one is an IT, but at least six months is recommended. Cost for this supervision group will be $25/month. We recommend that this training be taken towards the beginning of the IT period, if available.

7) IT’s will continue to work with a supporting full teacher (who may be different from the leader of the IT Supervision Group) and/or a TA therapist as appropriate to their process, with a minimum frequency of once every three months.

8) It is desirable for IT’s to continue to study core teachings such as the Orientation Course or the IAM’s foundation course.

9) Recommended: assist or co-lead TA events and retreats led by other teachers.