PSIA-AASI

There seems to be a real lack of interest at my mountain with instructors taking clinics to improve their teaching and personal skiing. We have a few who always show up but the majority don’t. I have heard quite of few say they feel it is a waste of time.

Anyone else experience this attitude? Have any ideas of how to turn this attitude around?

BTW, I am not a clinician, just an attendee.

Kathy

Are you talking about PSIA clinics or clinics conducted by your snowsports school trainers?

clinics conducted by our snowsports school trainers.

It appears that your instructors don’t see value in self-improvement. As teachers, we are life-long learners so it is puzzling to hear that your instructors don’t see value in clinics and continued education.  If your training staff is genuinely excited about learning and teaching, those traits should become a culture within your school.  Additionally you can reward the instructors for continued education with lessons they want and by tying the pay scale to their qualifications.  You could also invite PSIA/AASI trainers to conduct clinics at your area (schedule them through PSIA) and see if the pros who are outsiders could inject quality and some enthusiasm into your training.

We are at Powderhorn, which is a small resort and even the local clinics with our own, single-person educational staff and non-ed staff trainers are very popular.  Special clinics with educational staff that visit our area are quickly “sold out.” Assuming that your local trainers are as good as PSIA/AASI educational staff, I would say that you may need to address the culture in your snowsports school. But again, hearing that your instructors think that local training is “a waste of time” may indicate that the quality and relevance of your local training is inadequate.

I have often wonder about local schools having lack luster participation at clinics. Perhaps the clinic leaders are not attracting return business, perhaps ski and snowboard instructors would rather free ride any time they have time on their own. It seems that anyone who teaches would be open to being taught?? I turns out that may not be true, and I think that is the biggest cause of the lack of interest. I have been at three ski schools, one small with about 30 part time instructors, and about 5 or were involved and interested in clinics.
one medium with about 150 instructors, and about a dozen were psyched on clinics.
one very large of about 1,000 pros, and about 100 were really in to it.

Not sure what to do, it takes a bit of time to build a culture of clinic involvement, ask Chris Fellows I guess. Maybe less hop turns too?
Greg

Think of all your instructors as volunteers and then see what would motivate them to participate in a clinic.  In other words, ask them what they want and give them some ownership of the clinic so it would be *their clinic*. Relevance and quality is the key. You can always explore what you (the school) want to explore in a clinic while making the experience relevant to each participant.

The way we handle this at our hill is to require a minimum number of clinic hours be attended in order for the instructor to qualify for certain benefits. We have opportunities for our instructors to receive passes or lift tickets for family and friends based on the amount of teaching hours they have as well as a clinic hours.

What we do is loosely “require” update clinics be done throughout the season, there is a rule about how many hours of clinics each returning instructor must go through. at times a clinic time is assigned to you. The same way a supervisor will tell an instructor to take a lesson group out, they would be told to go with this trainer for an hour of clinic time.

The culture is difficult to change. At our smaller east coast mountain there wasnt a presence of certified snowboarders. it took years for there to be consistent AASI presence on the mountain. It also took a while for the veteran instructors to accept that, and it took a while for the new kids to realize that the certified people are the trainers and the ones that could talk your head off related to snowsports instruction. It has taken, I think 4 good years for the culture to change. ll incoming instructors now understand clearly who the trainers are, and value more than ever what they can learn from them.

The greatest obstacle is convincing others that there is something to learn. That these clinics can make me a more effective instructor and personally a better rider. I’d be willing to pay for a trainer on my mountain. the problem is that it s me who is the trainer… who trains me? Who trains the trainer? I got to an AASI clinic…and I’m not all that good to act like I am the head trainer or something. How nice it would be to have a trainer above me. I’d like that.

I’m one of those guys who doesn’t go to clinics much. This year it’s because I’ve been teaching during night shift on Sat. so miss the clinics. Often in the past it was because, as somebody above said, I didn’t see the value in it, not because I wouldn’t get incentives, but because the clinics often sucked. Sometimes it was because the clinician would focus on one or two peoples skiing and i felt ignored, sometimes it seemed they had prepared a lesson plan and taught it regardless of the needs of the group, and perhaps worst of all they would be talking too much, spewing all kinds of nonsense and generally mucking things up.

So I’d suggest making sure of the quality of your clinics before all else.

Great feedback,
Thanks Roger.
Although it is difficult to give 8 private lessons at the same time, we can strive to make sure that it is not a canned program and that everyone gets feedback that is specific to their situation.
Greg

It seems that most of our in-house clinics are well attended. The motivating factors are mutliple:
Preparing for PSIA/AASI certification. Requirement by the school to attend a minimum of clinics to remain in good standing. Interest in a new way/view on teaching the same material we have been teaching for years. Attempting to improve our own skiing and in order to break boundaries.
Many of our clinics are planned ahead, but the school also has 45 minute early bird clinics before the mountain opens to the public, and impromptu clinics for days when there are more instructors than students. This helps solve the problem of “I am too busy teaching” or “I don’t have time”. Being in a fairly large ski school I suspect there is interest in taking a clinic from a skier or rider that has the skill or look that an instructor strives for.
Ultimately, it seems that the degree of commitment to teaching and perfecting the demos and presentation combined with some excellent clinicians is what drives above par attendance.

After reading this thread I feel some other situations are adding to the lack of attendance at clinics. I am the technical director at a ski school, and have the same problem. Our clinics 5 years ago were well attended, and then a few things changed. First we were no longer required to be on snow at 8:15am. Try to get people to be at the ski area BEFORE they are required to be there.
Second, before people felt they had/ wanted to go to clinics until we had an accident in a clinic. Litigation in sued, and now the staff of mostly younger, less the 21y.o, know that they do not have to come to clinics.
Also, some instructors feel that if management wants them to clinic, they should be paid to clinic.
So, I feel, with these 3 main factors, our clinic attendance has dropped dramatically, but right into the 10% range. We have about 100 part and full time instructors, and about 10 active participants in our clinics. We did train approximately 30 people before Christmas, so that would put us at close to half.
  I don’t feel it is the quality of our clinicians. We are all level III; one of us is a former PSIA-E ed staff member. We practically hit spot on the skills and movements people need to work on. When we have people go to PSIA events, what we are working on in their skiing is what the examiners help them with. We have a very high successful pass rate at exams with the people who ask for our input and take our advice. I have stopped giving upper level lessons to people who do not clinic, and state the reason why. Although this has little affect because we mainly have beginner lessons.
  We have made up questionnaires to our staff to see what they would like to see in clinics. We have offered afternoon clinics. We posted a schedule of topics and made it group choice in the morning. We put up a sign up list so people can write in the topics they would like to see in clinics. We have advertised clinics with flyers. We have all day clinics and the beginning of the year that are well attended. I really don’t know, I am at a loss with attendance at clinics. I am welcome to any advice to boost attendance.

Art

Art - 06 February 2009 08:32 AM

After reading this thread I feel some other situations are adding to the lack of attendance at clinics. I am the technical director at a ski school, and have the same problem. Our clinics 5 years ago were well attended, and then a few things changed. First we were no longer required to be on snow at 8:15am. Try to get people to be at the ski area BEFORE they are required to be there.
Second, before people felt they had/ wanted to go to clinics until we had an accident in a clinic. Litigation in sued, and now the staff of mostly younger, less the 21y.o, know that they do not have to come to clinics.
Also, some instructors feel that if management wants them to clinic, they should be paid to clinic.
So, I feel, with these 3 main factors, our clinic attendance has dropped dramatically, but right into the 10% range. We have about 100 part and full time instructors, and about 10 active participants in our clinics. We did train approximately 30 people before Christmas, so that would put us at close to half.
  I don’t feel it is the quality of our clinicians. We are all level III; one of us is a former PSIA-E ed staff member. We practically hit spot on the skills and movements people need to work on. When we have people go to PSIA events, what we are working on in their skiing is what the examiners help them with. We have a very high successful pass rate at exams with the people who ask for our input and take our advice. I have stopped giving upper level lessons to people who do not clinic, and state the reason why. Although this has little affect because we mainly have beginner lessons.
  We have made up questionnaires to our staff to see what they would like to see in clinics. We have offered afternoon clinics. We posted a schedule of topics and made it group choice in the morning. We put up a sign up list so people can write in the topics they would like to see in clinics. We have advertised clinics with flyers. We have all day clinics and the beginning of the year that are well attended. I really don’t know, I am at a loss with attendance at clinics. I am welcome to any advice to boost attendance.

Art

I’ve worked at four different ski areas in my 40 years of instructing.  Where a minimum amount of clinicing was required, there seemed to be more interest in volunteering for additional clinic opportunities.  Where there was basically no requirement for clinicing, interest lagged.  I’d guess that exposure to good clinic leaders tends to encourage a desire for more clinicing.

I think it’s the quality of the clinic leaders that’s your problem, Kathleen.  When you get the same-old, same-old every week it’s not a quality experience.  In the east our best skiing is the first few hours the mountain is open so our 8am clinics are well represented and we have four Ed Staff members who keep the content clean and fun.  Rotating among the four gives you a really good amount of feedback.

Think of the attendees as customers.  Ask what they want and give it to them.  If you are having trouble attracting your own instructors to take a lesson, what must the real customers be thinking?

We tie our clinics part of the requirement to receive a year end bonus and make sure most are scheduled in the down times of Holidays and or early season. All the clinicians are posted with the clinic so you could avoid those you prefer not to work with. Safety clinics are always mandatory. Clinics were on and off snow as well.I also believe only allowing so many per helps a lot, starting on time, and then sticking to those rules.