Throwing Out the Book

Among the many subjects that ski and snowboard instructors study as part of our professional development, to say nothing about the certification process, is the nature and stages of childhood development – both physical and intellectual. Piaget’s Stages of Development, Maslow’s Pyramid, the CAP Model and other scientific theories form an important part of these studies and of our understanding of what we do and the people with whom we do it. It’s interesting stuff, if not a bit dry and occasionally as effective as an Ambien. On the ground in the day-to-day work of an instructor, there are more basic and obvious concepts that play a more immediate role. Simply put, there are some well-known truisms about teaching kids and about childhood development that we encounter frequently. On Saturday, I ran smack dab into one of these.

Girls generally develop certain fine motor skills earlier than boys. As instructors, it is widely accepted that girls who participate in certain specified activities - gymnastics, martial arts and dance in particular, more so than common sports - take to skiing and riding faster than their peers. While we hate to classify kids and try our best to assess each child on their on merits as athletes and students, sometimes we just can’t help ourselves when we find one of these rare children whose rapid progress through our sports can be bewildering to even the most seasoned teacher.

At Saturday morning’s group ski lesson line-up, I was assigned to teach a 12-year-old girl on her first ever morning on skis. A family friend had taken her up our Magic Carpet beginner’s lift for a few runs before the lesson started and informed me that the girl – we’ll refer to her as “RockStar” – had successfully made linked wedge turns down from the top of the carpet with virtually no instruction. Bear in mind that it is not uncommon for a beginner’s lesson to end with successful completion of a run from the top of the carpet with linked wedge turns. My first question of RockStar was, naturally, what other activities she likes to do, anticipating the gymno-taekwon-dance-alete response. I was not disappointed. The next noise was that of me tearing up the level 1 lesson plan and moving into the accelerated “when are the next Olympics” mode for RockStar.

RockStar and I had a ball skiing together for two hours that morning. We skied a ton, explored terrain and saw some views of the surrounding countryside rarely seen by novice skiers. By the end of the lesson, she was skiing parallel on some of our more challenging green trails, using her super short rental skis in what quickly became shin deep slush as the day warmed up to near 60 degrees Fahrenheit. Honestly, making slow parallel turns in shin deep slush is hard enough on the long, wide skis and perfectly fitted boots I was using, so RockStar’s rental equipment, perfect for a true beginner, quickly became a handicap which, amazingly, did not seem to hinder her progress much. You try skiing in slush on a pair of 120’s!

There are two things that I try hard to bear in mind when teaching kids like RockStar. The first is to get the heck out of the way – if kids like this are going to succeed, a lockstep, technical ski lesson with drills and exercises thinly veiled as kids games is the very last thing they need. The second is to be patient and not get overly ambitious or exuberant - RockStar may have been a rock star, but she was still a nervous kid experiencing a lot of new stuff in a strange environment with a strange and scary-looking man as her guide. A little tweak here and there, some fun, conversation on the lift about what we’re doing and how it relates to something with which they are familiar, checking out the view, giving a tour of the ski mountain (no, the half-pipe is not a “ditch”), and enjoying our time outside in the mountains is what they really need to do once they get rolling. That, some mileage and strident avoidance of the Siren-like smells coming from the Waffle Cabin, and we can successfully welcome great kids to our sport and prepare them for a lifetime of sliding on snow. The sky is the limit.