PSIA-AASI

Kathleen - 23 January 2009 01:53 PM

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?

Kathy

Kathy,

This is not an isolated issue.  I’m sure many folks have experienced this to some degree or another.  I agree with James that changing the attitude and environment at a school can take some time.  One of my goals when joining my current school a few years back was to create a learning community (my previous school already had one), where a majority of folks were interested in improving their riding and coaching.  It was part of the culture at my previous school to really live the passion for riding and coaching, so I guess I thought it would be a no-brainer type of project. 

It’s taken a lot of work, time and patience to develop the ‘new’ culture (and we’re not done yet!).  I’ll list a few of the things I did that actually got results (I know you stated you don’t lead the clinics, but you maybe able to share this info w/ the coachese who do):

- I took time to really find out who the people were on staff

I went beyond their riding and coaching skills/goals and spent time socially w/ them and found out about their lives outside of the resort.  I really understood what most of our coaches go thorugh to participate in the school (most are part time weekend coaches who have ‘real’ jobs). This helped me create a more ‘user friendly’ clinic schedule and at the same time let me directly address the coaching/riding needs of the staff.  This also let them see I had a sincere interest in their improvement and enjoyment at the school.

- Used the ‘perpetual’ clinic attendees to my advantage

The folks who always show up for clinics are your best advertisement.  If you really change their riding or help them achieve a new cert level, they will promote the clinic system for you.  Their attitude and excitement in the locker room can influence others.  A quick example would be a coach who had zero freestyle skills (and was not too confident about doing so either) learned and successfully performed a few frontside lip slides in one of our clinics.  This dude would not stop talking about it in the locker room for a long time.  His stoke got other people thinking “maybe I can learn that too” and “wow, didn’t know we’d learn something cool in these clinics”.  The excitement actually spread to the ski side (I’m the board tech director) and a few of the alpiners would join us for freestyle clinics.  They wanted to get involved w/ all the fun too!

- I rode w/ groups and individuals and used that time to talk about their personal goals

I spent some chairlift time (and some locker room time) talking to folks directly about their attitude, participation and expectations w/ clinics and training (what do you want?).  I would take the opportunity to set up plans for reaching the goals during these discussions too.  I guess w/ a little ‘rah, rah’ behind it to get them fired up a bit.  This was a great opportunity to also invite them to clinics (some people feel ‘left out’ for whatever reason and need ‘invited’ to participate).  While we were out on the slopes for fun, I’d also help them with their riding w/o them knowing it.  Typically by dropping a random (well timed) suggestion or comment and let them play with it on their own.  No pressure, just fun.  You’ve got to deliver after these discussions though or you’ll loose the coach. 

The big mistakes I made initially were assuming people would show up if I just threw up a sick clinic schedule.  And just telling people “c’mon, sign up for a clinic, what’s your hold up?”.  That didn’t go over too well.  It’s almost been a one coach at a time process, but it’s worked and is probably better that way.  Now that we have a majority of folks who clinic and/or want to clinic it’s a bit easier to get the new person involved as it’s more part of the whole culture.

Jb

My take on how I coach a clinic.

When coaching a clinic, unless it is designated topic specific by the SS director and then I try and have colorful guidance handouts ready for the group and shift. I let the group dynamics choose where we go and allow group dynamics to lead us there. I am the coach and facilitator of the group. While standing is never something we want to do for very long, I also explain this is a clinic and some, hopefully minimal discussion is necessary. This allows them to understand we need verbal communication more so than our classes would ever use.

Additionally, since these are pros, in general I NEVER make negative examples of anyone in the group; only positive comments. In my coaching I may ask someone to try something for the experience but I remember, these are pros so I lean towards coaching how we a coach guest in a similar situation and let the group/individual gain from that image.

I also attempt to be human. IF I do something “stupid” everyone is free to laugh and let me know what I just did or spoke. However, I refrain from doing same.

I regard clinics as a time to have fun learning with each other through our professional experiences during many years of facilitating our guests. It is not very easy to approach a clinic in this manner and unfortunately I sometimes fail miserably; we have fun and learn from each other I hope.

Kathleen - 23 January 2009 01:53 PM

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

Our mountain, Liberty Mountain Resort, near Gettysburg, PA, has a very active clinic program.  Every day starts out with an available clinic on personal skiing.  On weekends there can be as many as 35 attendees, but more typical would be around 20.  Usually on weekend mornings in early and late season there are more instructors at clinics.  Our alpine clinicians include several level 3 instructors, an examiner and two or three members of PSIA-E ed staff.  Occasionally a Level 2 instructor will lead a clinic, but this is generally limited to members of the resort training staff.  Instructors who are going for the teaching portions of exams will shadow these clinics.  Weekday morning clinics generally only have one or two clinicians.

Snowboard clinicians include level 2 and 3 instructors and one examiner, following a similar schedule to alpine clinics.  Adaptive clinics are conducted during the day as time permits, by one of our two level three adaptive instructors, one of whom is designated by PSIA-E as an adaptive clinic leader.

Other clinics occur as demands on the staff allow usually at each lineup at 10 am, noon and 2 pm.  Seldom are evening clinics offered on weekends.  If enough instructors are available, the technical director will attempt to organize clinics based on preferences.  Some clinics are designated teaching clinics, others skiing clinics.  Every instructor must take a minimum of 7 clinics a season, including three teaching clinics, three skiing clinics, and risk management, an indoor clinic.  The teaching clinics must include one clinic on teaching beginners and one on teaching children.

Exam prep clinics for all level 2 and 3 Alpine and snowboard exams are conducted on an
appointment basis on weekday evenings.  Each type of clinic is offered once a week if anyone signs up in advance.

Our instructors are also coached on the hill.  One member of the training staff is designated to coach instructors teaching beginners lessons.  Other members of the training staff circulate and observe lessons as resources allow, giving instructors feedback.

All of our instructors are encouraged to participate in PSIA.  We have over 30 level 3 instructors, and around 110 level 2 instructors out of a staff of around 350.  We have around 600 vertical feet, so with some modest growth we could have more instructors than vertical feet.

Our resort typically sends around 60-70 instructors to Sno Pro Jam, the week=long season beginning event held by PSIA-E.

We also do off season video analysis clinics, especially used to prepare candidates for teaching exams.  Half of the clinics are held at the resort, the other half in Annapolis, MD.

In my opinion the participation in clinics occurs because the quality of the clinics is almost always very high, and because management encourages participation.  The resort’s business model depends on a high quality snow sports school giving the highest quality experience to some very demanding day-trip guests.  Our resort is the closest to DC and Baltimore, and many of our guests come with very high expectations, which we do our best to meet.

Interesting information in this thread, thanks.

We have about 200 instructors at my mountain, mostly part time, clinics are voluntary and not paid.

I have put more thought into clinics this year, I created 21 different clinics for the snowboard staff.
The first one I ran, three skiers showed up and had a good time.  The second one had a topic change due to the particular
slope being closed and no one showed up.  But, listening to the other instructors ideas about what they want really helps. 
I hear a lot of requests for freestyle clinics and not much for the other stuff… even though when I work with instructors on a one-on-one basis, they really get stoked and are appreciative.

I hope for a better attendance as time goes on.  I am offering midweek night clinics, but I may have to move them to early afternoons.  We’ll see.