**The deadline has passed for this spring’s apprentice program. Please check our pages for the dates and application for our summer program, and stay tuned for details on our annual gathering!**

Every four months, we take on a new trouble-making crew of would-be social media troublemakers.

Want to spend the Spring (February 1st to May 1st) learning social media, and writing? Apply to join Elephant Academy’s Apprenticeship Training Program.

Like flaking? Flake off.

Still interested after reading the below?

Email [email protected] with “APPRENTICE“ in ALL CAPS in the subject bar.

Elephant Academy.

Apprenticeship in:  Social Media / New Media / Journalism Ethics / “the mindful life”

Do you have a crush on the alphabet? Interested in growing a community? Are you a stickler for punctuation? Do you condescend at emoticons and fear ALL CAPS?

Then we want you.

Maybe.

Every four months, we work with a new crew of elephant readers and writers who are self-starters, inquisitive communicators, respect the written word and are viscerally inspired by elephant’s mission: bringing together all those working (and playing) to create enlightened society.

Work with a community of like-minded apprentices from all over the world, as well as elephant’s team of editors.

We’ll train the hell out of you and send you a calligraphed, eco-printed “Elephant Academy: Certificate of Apprenticeship” upon completion of your four-month training program.

Payment: unlike many other social media/new media/journalism ethics training programs, your teachers are active in the field—a field that is constantly evolving, day to day. Fee: $500. Typical other programs cost $1200 for less. With elephant, you’ll get hands-on training, resources to study, and weekly meetings with editor-in-chief Waylon Lewis and elephant’s team of 7 editors. There’s no “busy work” that is extraneous to our duty to train you in social media, new media and journalism ethics. Note: no payment required until after we formally accept your application email.

Having won numerous national awards (#1 in US on twitter, twice, for #green coverage, among many others), and with 13.5 million readers a month (and growing), apprenticing with elephant is a feather in your career cap and can help you get a job or further your social media and writing skills for your existing job, company, or path.

~

Elephant Academy: Apprentice Certificate Training Program:

1. You’ll be trained to share via social media (Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Tumblr, G+, Instagram and the like).

2. You’ll put together one original weekly blog post. Can be a video, original poem, artwork, article.

3. You will take on one or two elephant journal focus areas (Green, Adventure, Wellness, Family, Ecofashion, Food, Bicycling, Politics, Culture etc.—we cover just about all aspects of the mindful life).

4. Your apprenticeship will be 12-15 hours a week with a commitment of four months (upon successful completion you can apply to continue as a paid Assistant Editor).

5. You will attend a one hour weekly meeting (time and day tba), which includes training, peer edits and random harangues by elephant founder Waylon Lewis or our team of passionate editors. If you can’t make it, you’ll have notes from each meeting to study.

6. You must have a reliable connection to the internet and access to a computer on a regular basis.

7. We have fun and laugh a lot, but we also take our work seriously. We have a one strike policy: (we are not here to work with one-foot-in one-foot-outers). One strike is not two strikes.

8. If interested in joining our training program, we require a US $500 non-refundable deposit. Deposit is lost (at our discretion) if at any time we do not feel our investment in you is worthwhile. That said, you get 75% of this deposit back in the first two weeks of the program if you decide we’re not for you. If you need to leave for health or other unavoidable reasons, you can complete a later apprentice program.

Note: We used to offer these trainings for free, but there was a flake factor. So, yes, now we ask for a low fee–which has cut the flake factor to zero. We put time, training and love into those who join. This is not a busy-work internship. This is a training program.

9. Elephant Academy’s online Apprenticeship includes $500 off our Curriculum fee (you still pay travel, accommodations) to our annual Elephant Academy Gathering in Boulder, Colorado–an in-person mindful communications training with various mentors from different areas of the mindful life–yoga, meditation, entrepreneurship, media.
Still interested? Send a (brief) cover letter (and resume, optional) explaining why you’d be a good fit to editorial [at] elephantjournal [dot] com.

(If you don’t hear back from us, feel free to nag us. That said, we do have limited spaces: if our team is full, we’d still be honored to invite you to contribute to elephant: elephantjournal.com/submit.)

Yours in the Vision of Enlightened Society,

Waylon Lewis