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Reprints From The Professional Skier

Spring 1997 - "Mix Your Methods for Level 1 Lessons" by Mark Weinberger

This article is reprinted from The Professional Skier. All copyrights apply. Please see our copyright and disclaimer notice page.

It was a warm New Mexico afternoon, and I was entering the last hour of a Level 1 Yellowbird lesson, a full-day beginner program at Taos Ski Valley. I stood in the middle of the beginner hill, scanning the chairlift and slope for my far-flung group. Suddenly two smiling students zipped by making beautiful wedge turns.

On the chairlift I found four other clients, paired up and chatting away as a warm breeze caressed the lower mountain. Turning around, I saw two others over on the gentlest part of the beginner hill doing slow, gliding wedges to a cautious stop. Mentally taking attendance, I realized I had my group right where I wanted them: spread out on the two gentle slopes, skiing and practicing at their own pace. Several years ago I might have asked myself, "Are you nuts?"

When I first began teaching skiing, I couldn't imagine this type of scenario developing in one of my beginner groups. No, I'd keep my students together until the end, having them practice each maneuver as a group no matter how quickly each individual advanced. Since most of my classes were only one hour long, there were few instances where I needed to have students practice independently.

But as I gained experience, I started taking students who were making decent wedge turns up our beginner hill chairlift near the end of the one-hour lesson. I helped them ski down once and encouraged them to ride the lift and practice while I went back to help the slower ones.

Encouraging independent practice time during the short span of a one-hour lesson gave my faster students valuable mileage before moving to steeper slopes. And it allowed me to spend extra time helping those who weren't ready for a trip down from the top. Without realizing it, I was blending teaching styles in a one-hour lesson.

I taught my first full-day beginner lesson several years ago. Faced with students of an incredible range of abilities and interests, I now had the added challenge of keeping the entire group stimulated for four hours instead of one. Common sense dictated that I do whatever it took to help my clients reach their skiing goals during the lesson. In many cases, that meant mixing teaching styles so each student could learn as much as possible in four hours. I still find it very useful to "mix it up" during lengthy lessons.

The Usual Scene

We're all familiar with the scene on the beginner hill during weekends and holidays: new skiers lining up three deep at the bottom, looking apprehensive about clicking into a pair of long, slippery boards. At first glance, it doesn't appear to be the place or the time to experiment with a variety of teaching styles.

If you're like most instructors, you'll take a group of seven or more beginner students, line them up, and begin a command-style presentation of your Level 1 lesson plan. You've done the progression many times, and it is still the best method for introducing the basics to beginner skiers for the first hour or two. But what do you do when the lesson stretches into four or more hours, with half the group doing nearly perfect wedge turns, a quarter doing something resembling turns, and the remaining quarter still trying to figure out how to balance in a straight run?

Dealing With Diversity

We often find a huge diversity in proficiency levels among beginners, perhaps more so than in upper-level lessons. A typical group may consist of people who last skied many years ago, athletic "never-evers," nonathletic beginners, the fearless, the fearful, those who want to be there, and those who would rather be at the beach. You may also have people from northern regions who have slipped on snow or ice but haven't skied and people from warm climates who have never even slid or slipped.

Generally, unless you notice dramatic differences in your students' ability early in the lesson, command-style teaching is a safe choice to ensure students gain an understanding of new concepts and skills. But you must also be willing to use multiple teaching styles during the application phase of the lesson to accommodate the diversity of the group.

When exploring different styles, you won't deviate much from the tactics used in a conventional beginner lesson. You will still constantly analyze each student's performance, individually and in relation to where that person fits within the group. You'll also continue to provide constant feedback and give students one simple task to perform during their practice runs.

In some cases, however, varying teaching styles may not always be the most effective choice. If you're taking the entire group onto steeper terrain, you may need to resume a command-style method to help your clients with the new challenge of making turns on steeper terrain. It's also preferable to use command style if the entire group is advancing slowly and needs extra help with the most basic skills.

Your decision to mix teaching styles should also depend on the expectations of your students. For example, if they lack confidence or the athleticism to have developed the body awareness necessary for independent practice, you may want to continue to use command-style teaching.

Sample The Styles

Among the variables that can influence your selection of teaching styles suitable for a beginning group are each student's experience with skiing or sliding on slippery surfaces, your previous experience with the group (i.e., Did you ski with them in the morning? What worked or didn't?), ages of the individuals, fears some adults may have about holding back the rest of the group if they're not catching on as quickly as others, and group dynamics. What it comes down to is taking the time to read your group, and using your experience to adjust your methods.

Before moving on, let's review some of the teaching styles you may find useful when teaching beginners. This is a partial list; use whatever styles and methods will produce the best experience for students.

- Command
- Practice
- Inclusion
- Self-Check
- Problem-solving
- Guided discovery

Command Style positions the students in a line facing the instructor, who explains and demonstrates new skills. This style works well for introducing basic concepts and affords students the anonymity of being within a group. Although instructors typically keep everyone in one line in command-style teaching, with a large group I have students form two lines and ski through the middle. Two fines incorporate the instructor into the line and make the lesson less formal by having students face each other instead of only the instructor. I also like to point out the best demonstrations done by a class member. Not only does it present different images of good skiing, it also gives extra recognition to various students.

Practice Style provides students time to ski independently during the lesson to repeat certain movements until they're comfortable with them. With this method the instructor gives different tasks to students depending on how fast or slow they're learning. For example, with a group of eight, I may assign each student a different task, or I may divide students into two or three subgroups and give each subgroup a task. It depends on what each person needs to work on at that particular time. This mix changes during the lesson as students become more proficient at various tasks. When rotating through the group, I ski one run with them, or watch them from the middle or bottom of the hill and give them feedback on what I saw and what, if any, adjustments they can try. This style works extremely well because the students get several practice runs before I come back to watch their technique. Practice lets me give mini-private lessons to each student, while still providing them with plenty of ski time.

Inclusion Style lets the students choose how much to challenge themselves. To use the inclusion method, take students to a hill with varying pitches, lead them down the easiest route first, show them the more challenging options, and then let them decide what route to attempt. You may want to remain close to the more timid skiers to provide a quick assessment of their chances of making it down a steeper section.

Self-Check Style helps students learn to rely less on outside feedback and more on their own assessment of how to apply various skills and movements. It is often useful when the students in your group have experience from other sports or possess keen observation skills. This technique works well when introducing the concept of self-awareness to students. Have your students ski a cone course to explore what they must do to complete it. If they make it around all the cones, ask them how they were able to ski it successfully. If not, ask them what they would change to be successful. Cones work well for this since the instructor can arrange them for varied turn shape, which can challenge students to assess the type of adjustments they had to make to ski the course.

Problem-Solving Style involves giving the student a situation or problem to handle. For example, if one of your students makes great turns on a gentle slope but takes off like a rocket on a steeper pitch, you could ask the student what he or she thinks caused the acceleration to mach speed, help the student through the evaluation, and offer tips to slow down. This won't work with all students, but you will have beginners who possess exceptional awareness of what their limbs are doing and with subtle guidance can figure out how to improve.

Guided-Discovery Style involves showing students several options and letting them experiment with each one to discover which works the best in which situation. As with self-check, guided discovery may work for the first-time skier who quickly develops an awareness of movement patterns; or for the student who skied many years ago and catches on quickly. For example, have your students experiment with turn shape by making rounder turns on the steeper part of a gentle slope and less finished "S" turns as the slope flattens. This is a great way to show your students how to use their skis offensively instead of defensively early in their development. You can use guided discovery by introducing more skills, such as crossover, that the students will need as upper-level skiers. Some students will feel the difference between initiating a turn by popping up versus moving across the skis. Introducing this lateral movement to beginners may seem like a stretch, but it works. And, it sets your students up for success. Guided discovery won't work for all your students, but be sure to try it with beginners, especially once you're past the basics and moving into tactics and movements that can help them explore more of the mountain.

Positively Different

The biggest difference between a typical command-style beginner lesson and one where you use various styles is the practice time you'll assign each student. Instead of staying in a lineup and skiing a short distance in front of each other, your students will ski independently for part of the lesson. Since most people are conditioned to line up, you may have to sell the class on practicing without you watching their every turn or run. I've received a few "Are you crazy?" looks when announcing to the class that we were going to split into subgroups. A typical multi-hour session is the perfect time to use various demonstration styles. Have the students follow you, especially if you want them to mimic various turn shapes or see something up close in your demos. For another option, follow your students or ski side-by-side to give one-on-one coaching. Skiing in front of students or at their side also encourages them to make a certain turn radius. When splitting a Level 1 group this way, you must be careful to rotate consistently and not devote an inordinate amount of time to a couple of students. Whenever possible, try to pair people up so none of your students will feel like "loners." Varying your teaching styles takes more work than standing in front of a line on the hill, but the benefit of seeing students improve with independent practice time makes the extra effort well worth it.

Closing Thoughts

Part of the challenge and fun of ski teaching is that you never know what situation you're going to face. When your lesson mix consists of students with dramatically different skill levels, each with a wide variety of needs and experiences, you need to get creative. Keep in mind that using a variety of teaching styles and methods with a beginner lesson may be frightening at first. Suddenly instead of everyone facing you in a line, students are practicing independently all over the hill. Although you may feel intimidated at losing the control that command-style teaching provides and you may surprise those students who are expecting a more formal style, they'll enjoy the benefits of a more positive learning environment. So will you. When you become more confident of varying your teaching styles in a lower-level lesson, you also become a better instructor. And your students will advance faster and have more fun.

For a detailed description of various teaching styles see "Explore the Elements of Style" (winter 1996).

Mark Weinberger is a Certified Level III instructor at Afton Alps in Minnesota and a Central Division examiner.