Teaching the Teachers

I had a chance to spend an entire day with one of the district clinician leaders (DCL) for my area. The only interruptions through the day were a handful of bathroom breaks and a lunch break. This scheduled session was to be attended by many of the local instructors, but turned out to be myself and one other instructor (a third joined us randomly through the day).

Several things came out of this session for me that were enlightening and disheartening.

First the bad. From the feedback, it sounds like this will be yet another year that I do not try to test for my next PSIA certification level. The general feedback went something like "you've got some obvious skills, now you just need to make them more fluid". I took this to be the standard "sugar coat the bad news first" approach, calling him out on it. He went to great lengths to prove otherwise. He pointed out several areas that would allow me to pass on the more difficult sides, but the easy stuff I wasn't fluid with.

This feedback only adds to my constant question of advancing skill sets, where advancing in the PSIA appears to favor those who work at larger destination style resorts. This favortism isn't really aligned to a school itself, but rather the fact that more clientele of various skill sets arrive requesting lessons at resort style schools. While the smaller resorts tend to get a lot of younger children and first timers, limiting the chances to work on advanced skiing and teaching. This is strictly my opinion, though it seems very difficult to prove otherwise. The DCL's approach to this comment is to take clinics at other nearby resorts, missing the point that our resort does not have the spare manpower to let someone go for a day. It's left me, once again, questioning if I will return next season.

Now for the good news, things I can work on.

• For the first time I've been told that my foot work is very solid, showing some great understanding of the angles needed between ankles and hips.
  
• Where I can stand to work a bit more is on the core, keeping it more engaged than I have. I haven't ever heard this as a comment on my skiing before, and is something I can easily work on.
  
• My hand position tends to crunch too much together. Keeping them further apart will do wonders for my ability to keep stabilized.
  
• I alternate between letting my skis ride out from underneath me and riding them very aggressively. There seems to be no pattern for it.
• My one foot skiing skills significantly out rank my two foot skiing skills. The DCL was very confused as to how I could do that.
• Jump turns, one day I will learn how to do these. For now, we sit at opposite ends of the table not talking to each other.