Active participation in this class will require a high level of commitment on your part both in terms of time and effort. The following are required for successful completion of the class:

A Co-Counseling Partner

To complete the online Re-evaluation Counseling Fundamentals Class you must have a partner who is committed to completing the class with you. The class is not easy to complete, so it is important that you both are willing and determined to put in the required effort. The potential gains you stand to receive from the class are well worth such an effort.

The Co-Counseling partner you choose can be anyone. While it certainly is possible (and very rewarding) to Co-Counsel with a committed partner or parent, it may be easier to attempt the class with a friend.

Reading Materials

When a regular Fundamentals Class is taught, the teacher presents the reading materials to the class, usually during the first part of a class meeting. Because this class is online, you will have to read and discuss the articles yourself.

Each lesson will contain a list of reading materials that must be fully understood before you move on to the next class. These materials are divided into two groups:

·       Primary articles

·       Secondary articles

The primary articles are essential for your understanding of the ideas presented in the lesson. You should take great care in reading these articles and in making sure that you have grasped their content.

The secondary articles are listed as an aid in understanding the primary articles. These articles often contain commentary from the Re-evaluation Counseling Community at the time when the basic ideas being presented were developed. They are therefore valuable in providing you with a deeper understanding of the topic.

Some of the references are to sections of a book, "The List." This book is not available online, but must be purchased from Rational Island Publishers.

The following printed publications (including "The List" are required for participation in the online class:

·       The Fundamentals of Co-Counseling Manual

·       The List

·       A Subscription to Present Time

A Place to Meet

The place where you and your partner meet for your sessions should be private and with as few distractions as manageable. If you are a parent, for example, you may need to arrange for child-care during your sessions, or your sessions are likely to be disrupted too often for you to concentrate well on the class materials and on your partner.

Time

The effort required of you to become an efficient Co-Counselor is not small. To complete the class, you will need to meet regularly with your partner. A weekly meeting is preferable, although you could meet every two weeks, if necessary. If you meet less often than every two weeks, you will find it much more difficult to complete the class.

Each meeting should be scheduled to last 3 hours, of which 1 hour will be devoted to presentations and discussions, and the remaining 2 hours are for practicing what you have learned in a Co-Counseling session. You are likely to find it necessary to meet two or more times to complete a single lesson. Since there are altogether 12 lessons, you should count on 12-20 sessions to complete the online class.

Presentations

One of the best ways to learn a topic is to try to explain it to someone else. When you meet, one of you will therefore make a short presentation of some of the main topics for the class.

In a regular class, presentations are usually done by the teacher or the assistant. That role will be played by you and your partner. This requires that you are prepared before you and your partner meet. In other words, you must be willing to put in the time that is required to read and prepare to talk about the materials.

Another reason why this step is important is that many of the ideas that you are about to be exposed to are hard to grasp because they negate much of what you have learned elsewhere and now take for granted. Just reading this material is therefore not sufficient for a good understanding of these ideas.

You will often find that the primary articles for a lesson contain more material than you can reasonably cover in one session. That is fine. You may use as many sessions as you find necessary to fully cover the ideas presented in the primary reading material for the lesson. You may then optionally use additional sessions, if you like, to go through the follow-up materials.

Only when both of you are in agreement that you have understood the ideas in the primary reading material should you proceed to the next class.

Sessions

Each time you and your partner meet, you will spend a good amount of time (usually 2 hours total) practicing the ideas that are the topic of the lesson. While each lesson will contain suggestions for what to talk about during these sessions, it is not required that you follow those suggestions. However, it is important that you follow the instructions for how to conduct the sessions. In other words, the How is important, but the What is only a suggestion.

The session is the core activity in this class. You will not learn Re-evaluation Counseling without a lot of sessions where you and your Co-Counseling partner take turns paying attention to each other.

Confidentiality and No-Socializing Rules

To join RC you will be required to agree to two simple rules of conduct, the Confidentiality Rule and the No-Socializing Rule. The Confidentiality Rule states that everything that a client tells you during a session is completely confidential between you and that person, and must not be referred to afterwards in any way without the clients' agreement. The No-Socializing Rule states that you will not attempt to set up relationships other than the Co-Counseling relationship with people whom you meet through Re-evaluation Counseling. (If you partner is a friend or family member, of course you keep that relationship; the Co-Counseling skills you are learning can enhance that relationship.) Both of these rules are designed to improve the safety of the Co-Counseling relationship.

Protection of Passwords

The online class materials are invaluable and represent some of the best thinking of the Re-evaluation Counseling Communities. We therefore require that you treat this material with a good amount of care. Please make sure that the password you are given is kept in your hands only.