Instructor Training course – Results Day

  First things first though: Happy Birthday to Josie – officially a teenager today !

  Almost first thing, I went down to catch the first lift this morning and managed to get in a couple of runs practising my carved turns before we had to meet at 9:30.

  The first half of the morning was devoted to the remaining four practice lessons and then it was all Central Theme demonstrations: plough turns, plough parallels, parallel turns; with Dave looking on a grading us.

  Finally I got to do three runs showing off my carved turns, although my second run was pants so I was hoping Dave didn’t notice that as we are supposed to have fully acquired the techniques.

  Then the drag lift we were using broke down so we only got one run of short turns (my other bugbear) and it was all over.

  As soon as we’d all gathered at the bottom Dave saw us one by one and gave us the results.  Although we got a full breakdown later there’s really only 2 results; pass or fail.

  Of the 17 people on the course 12 passed – sadly I wasn’t amongst that group.

  I have to admit I’m disappointed although not surprised as I knew my carving and short turns weren’t really up to the mark – I was just hoping that on the day I’d nail them.

  When I was deciding which course to take it was a toss-up between a standard GAP course in Zermatt and this course in Méribel.  The difference is that on the Zermatt course I would have got the full 70 hours of shadowing, a second discipline and lots of time to practice the elements required for the BASI Instructor test.

  Although I didn’t know it then the Méribel course has such a focus on slalom that I only got 12½ hours of shadowing, no second discipline and virtually no time to practice the BASI stuff.  Still, I always knew that the Méribel course was the riskier option but I thought I’d go for it anyway because if I’d passed the Test Technique (which I soon discovered was going to be completely out of reach) I could have joined the ESF.

  So I suppose the question is what now ?

  The answer is that I’ll think about it – I’m not far off qualifying so I’ll have to see what courses are out there.

  In the meantime I’m going to do some snowboarding.

Instructor Training course – Penultimate Day

  The first thing Dave told us this morning was that we had all passed the written test, although he didn’t give us our actual marks.  To be honest it wasn’t that difficult; 15 questions with a possible 39 marks and we needed 30 to pass.

  The next thing Dave told us was that four of us would be giving practice lessons today so we had to think on our feet because he didn’t say who would be going first.  As it turned out the first lesson was required after about half an hour and it was my task to improve the turn shape and steering of snow ploughers.

  I decided to keep it simple (for a change) and get everyone to ski behind me, keeping as exactly in my track as they could – so as long as my turns were good everybody else would be forced to make good turn shapes if they kept to my track.

  Then I stopped them to check that they were managing the task and to ask them what they thought contributed to a good turn shape.  Since they gave the right answers (steering by rotation) I asked them to ski down one-by-one keeping to a narrow corridor (to keep the steering continuous) but at that point Dave stopped me (as I thought he might !).

  The review seemed fairly positive so perhaps this was a better lesson as my previous couple of attempts rather flopped from being over-ambitious.

  Apart from one other practice lesson in the morning and a couple in the afternoon we practised solidly, mostly Central Theme stuff but for the last hour I got to practice my weaker points: carving and short turns.

  There was no lecture this evening so I stayed out for another hour to practice my carved turns – I’m getting there but I don’t think it’s good enough yet so I’m not at all confident about passing and tomorrow is results day.

Instructor Training course – Week 2, Day 3

  Whaddya mean the titles of my posts have become boring and predictable ?  I’m a busy guy – you wouldn’t believe the amount of material we have to read (and understand) each night.  And I still have to service my skis, do my washing, etc.  There’s hardly time for dinner !

  Lots more practice on Central Theme stuff today; plough turns, plough parallel turns and parallel turns. Some work on carved turns and short turns – it’s these that I need to improve most if I’m going to pass.

   This evening we had the written test (could hardly call it an exam).  It went passable well I think – we’ll get the results tomorrow.

Instructor Training course – Week 2, Day 2

  More teaching practice this morning – my 8 year olds lived up to my expectations and failed to listen but I rounded them all up eventually.

  More technique practice on basic parallel turns this afternoon.  Still not good enough and they were better than my short turns and carved turns to begin with.

  Tomorrow we have a written exam so I’ve been revising this evening and didn’t even get out to watch the England game.

Instructor Training course – Week 2, Day 1

  Having spent most of yesterday practising plough parallel turns, I spent most of this morning doing the same.  Which is fine because I need the practise and I think I probably made some progress although further improvement is still required.

  In the afternoon we had a crack at the moguls on Bosses – a black run that never seems to get pisted so the bumps were pretty nasty; elongated and quite icy in places.  About the best that can be said is that I reached the bottom without falling – it was hardly a controlled performance let alone stylish.

  Tomorrow I’ve got to give a ‘fun’ 10-minute lesson to a group of 8-year olds who can ski parallel-ish and like nothing more than racing all over the mountain on red runs.  Well actually they won’t really be 8 years old; it will be the rest of my BASI group pretending to be 8 (shouldn’t be so difficult for some of them !).

  So I need the lesson to be fun but before that I need to ensure their safety so I’ll have to contain their speed (without removing the fun) and then since it’s a lesson I’ll have to incorporate some learning (without making it boring).  Time to create a lesson plan…

Day Off

  I spent my ‘day off’ practising hard practising hard – 2 hours in the morning and 2 hours in the afternoon.  After which further practise seemed likely to be counter-productive so I went to the top of the Saulire lift for a blast all the way back to the chalet.

  I think I’ve made some progress – we’ll see if Dave notices any improvement tomorrow.

Instructor Training course – End of week 1

  We spent most of the day giving short (10 minute) lessons to each other and then reviewing the effectiveness of the instruction.  I’d been asked to do a session to improve rhythm and ease when skiing plough parallel turns.

  ‘Flow’ is the probably the most difficult of the 5 Fundamental Elements to explain in terms of how to achieve it although it’s components are not so hard to recognise; it has 3 parts: balancing the forces of the curve and terrain, co-ordination and rhythm, fluency and ease.

  Of these fluency and ease is probably the most nebulous.  So I decided to see what would happen if I gave the lesson without telling the group what we were specifically working on.  Instead I asked them to just relax and free ski a run using plough parallel turns matching in the fall line and think about what they felt their bodies doing.

  Then I tried to relax their bodies more with a breathing and muscle tensing exercise before I led them down the same run in a snake using a narrow corridor to force them to make quick turns and thereby make their movements quicker and hopefully more fluid.

  Unfortunately their comments were only that the slope wasn’t steep enough.  So we tried again on a steeper slope but I think their minds were on lunch more than my lesson so we packed it in and went for lunch.

  So the group didn’t do a lot of learning but I did – they wanted to have a single clear objective.  So that’s what I’ll use for the rest of this course, although I won’t abandon the idea of getting people to try and feel what their bodies are doing – I’ll just have to find a better approach in future and perhaps use it with a more receptive group.

  After the evening lecture (which was mercifully short) we had one-to-one sessions with Dave in which he graded us using the same scale that will be used for the final assessment in just under a week’s time.

  On a scale of 1 to 6, we need to score 5 on all elements of the Central Theme and on Piste Performance (essentially skiing at higher speeds).  Currently I’m scoring 3’s and 4’s so there’s some work to do there as well on Bumps, Steeps, Variables and Freestyle.

  What’s needed is practice; the question is whether there’s enough time left to reach the required standard.

An eventful day

  The original start date of the BASI Instructor Training course was doubled-booked on the same week as the last ESF week.  In the event the ESF only needed the first 2 days of their last week so the start of the BASI course was delayed by 2 days.  The upshot of this is that despite the fact it’s the weekend we’re still skiing with our BASI trainer.

  This morning we were focussing on carved turns and all was going well until one of the more immature members of our party decides to shower everyone in snow.  We’d had this kind of behaviour at the start of the course but after a big barny on the slope it had disappeared.

  The juvenile in question had been getting on my tits for some time and on this occasion I lost my rag and gave him an impromptu lesson in Anglo-Saxon.  I should have decked him but that’s not considered appropriate behaviour in front of a BASI trainer (but I reserve the right to do so in the future at a time of my choosing).

  In the afternoon Dave decided that we should work on something ‘Beyond the Central Theme’ and of the ‘Five Strands’ he picked Steeps and Variables.

  So we skied down the Grand Couloir in Courcheval, which was pretty challenging as it’s both very steep and rather variable too.  Towards the bottom it’s only moderately steep but then it’s also quite mogulled so in fact we did 3 of the 5 strands in one run.

  Then we skied off to find some more variable conditions, which we less challenging so rather more fun.  Before we finished though Dave decided he wanted to video us doing short turns – as if our legs we tired enough already.

  Now I’ve just got to read the manual and prepare a lesson on ‘fluency and ease’ in mid-matching plough parallel turns for tomorrow.

Instructor Training course – Day 3

  Today we all gave a 10-minute lesson to the rest of the class, going through all the elements of the Central Theme from Plough Turn to Parallel Turn.  With the feedback from Dave after each session, catching lifts, and having the occasional run to keep us entertained this actually took most of the day.

  I feel my lesson went quite well although unsurprisingly there were aspects that I could (and will have to) improve by next week if I’m to pass the BASI assessment.

  We also did some work on improving our demonstration of a basic parallel turn.  While we may not need to be able to do these perfectly in our recreational skiing we do need to be able to do perfect demonstrations so our pupils can see the right way to do it, even if they won’t be able to do it particularly well themselves they need to have the right image in their minds.

  Right now I think getting my demonstrations absolutely spot on is my biggest challenge although that’s not to say I don’t have a lot to learn about actually teaching and learning the theory that goes behind the teaching.

  It’s hard work but oddly I’m still enjoying it !?!

Instructor Training course – Day 2

  Having revised all the Fundamental Elements yesterday, today we went through all the parts of the Central Theme.  All we need to do now is cover all the strands Beyond the Central Theme and we’re done !

  Well, not quite… What we need is to have a in-depth understanding of the Fundamental Elements and the Central Theme and how they relate, be able to explain to our pupils what they need to do, practise until we can perform all the demonstrations perfectly, acquire a ‘toolbox’ of exercises to use in lessons, learn about class management, learn about mountain safety, learn about how people learn…

   So there’s still a way to go.