Over at Ricky B's Guests and Pro Snow Sport Insight blog, he's started talking about opening day and one of the more difficult points I've found as an instructor... convincing others. Read his full post
Ricky B's Guests and Pro Snow Sport Insight: Opening Day at Monarch.At the resorts near me, there is a large shortage of instructors as a whole, leaving each resort to cannabolize the other. The larger resorts obviously pay better, leaving the lesser resorts ill equipped for the season on staff. At the resort I work at, we have a burn rate of instructors that looks something like this.
While the director claims to do massive amounts of recruiting around the area, we typically find only a handful of instructors at a yearly ski and snowboard swap done in town. Occasionally we'll grab a few eager high school students as well, although this tends to backfire on us more often than not. We talk up the opportunity, introduce them to the rest of the regular staff, and feed them with great food all to sucker them into the family mentality.
Typically done one or two weekends before opening day, it's been sometimes skipped due to a massive dump forcing an early opening day. When it's skipped the new trainees are taken during the day by random instructors to fill the teaching stepping stones. The time is spent covering how to address the students, working on movement patterns for first time students, demos, and most importantly building instructing confidence. It's during this time that many opinions are formed about how well each will do. It also includes a drop out rate of about 2 or 3 students each season.
Instead of letting the fresh trainees lose on the populace, we require that they shadow a returning instructor for a bunch of hours (i.e. 10 or so). This gives the trainee a chance to practice what they've learned with supervision. The word from the director is the trainee is not supposed to interact with the class, but I've found that using the trainee for demos helps them feel more confident. I also spend time during this period to talk with them and see what they'd do next, or how they'd correct some problems being seen in a student. Usually we lose none of the trainees at this point.
After the shadow period we let them lose, and this is where the tie in to Rick's post comes. With all the training, many of trainees are afraid to take the plunge into actually instructing. Most are fearful of saying something wrong, teaching something incorrectly, or hurting a student. All of which are concerns that should constantly be in the back of the mind of any instructor. All of which are why instructors spend a large amount of time learning. Intructing is clearly a dynamic knowledge base, with minor enhancements, tweaks, and perception changes happening on a daily basis. I've likened this fear to another fear my students, the "It's too steep" fear. Telling them they'll be okay, their strong or skilled enough to handle the slope, etc has never worked. Talking to them, listening to their concern, and addressing it directly while applying it back to what we've learned has. The same works for instructor trainees. Remind them of the training techniques covered and let them know a safety net of an experienced instructor will be with them. Oh and that it's very unlikely they'll be taking a first time student off the rope tow / beginner lift area helps too. Instructor loss is kept to a minimum here as the thrill of teaching is still new.
Most of our new trainees disappear at the end of the season, having done one year and deciding "yep this is hard work, it's cheaper just to buy a pass". The sad point is, they leave before joining groups like the PSIA and receiving many of the benefits of working for a ski school. Out of the 10 or so trainees we had last season, typically one returns. At least it means more food for me at the recruiting day party. :-)
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