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Reprints From The Professional Skier

Spring 1998 - "Guest-Centered Lessons Require Introspective Evaluation" by Kim M. Peterson

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

You've just greeted six students who want to learn to master the moguls in two hours. After a couple of warm-up runs with the group, you realize that several students would be better served by a lesson geared toward improving their matching abilities. You are now faced with a dilemma: do you

Kudos to those of you who chose B; however, neither A nor C is blatantly wrong. An instructor who chooses A clearly has some experience teaching in situations like this one, but when faced with the challenge of choosing the best approach, he or she depends on the tried and true bag of tricks. An instructor who selects C recognizes the need to improve the students' matching abilities but ignores their expressed desire to ski the bumps. B, on the other hand, considers the students' wishes and strives to find common ground between their desires and the instructor's analysis of what exercises would best serve each individual.

Deciding where to focus (or center) the lesson may often be the most significant choice you will have to make. It's tempting to reduce ski instruction (or any teaching) to two questions--"What should I teach?" and "How should I teach it?"--but these questions are teacher-centered. More appropriately, you might ask "What do my students want to learn?" and "How do they want to learn it?"

There is an ever-increasing amount of content available to ski instructors. Information about equipment design, anatomy, movement, snow conditions, and even clothing considerations finds its way into lessons. Methodologies seem as plentiful and varied as the instructors who teach them. So where do you choose to center your lessons?

Lessons that are centered anywhere but on the needs of the students might communicate information and effect a change in movement, but they will probably fail to entice the students back for another lesson. By learning to identify your guests' needs, you will be in a better position to satisfy those needs.

Copying: One Size Fits All?

Chances are, most of you probably taught your first ski lesson by mimicking a trainer's demonstrations. It follows, then, that you taught your first lessons under the assumption that every skier in the class needed the lesson you were teaching. You probably devoted little, if any, attention to individual student differences. In fact, the reason you taught what you taught and the reason you taught the way you taught were the same: it was the only thing (and the only way) you knew how to teach.

Case in point: I watched a batch of new instructors come to the Winter Park Skier and Rider Improvement Center last year. Part of the training required them to observe several lessons before they actually taught their own class. One instructor candidate seemed especially puzzled after a day of observation. She reported that she had seen three instructors teach first-time skiers and each of them taught something different. Not only that, but none of the lessons were the same as those she had learned in training.

Most instructors recognize that every ski lesson is unique. Even when you try to copy lessons, they never turn out the same. I asked the candidate why she thought these lessons were so different, and her response gave me food for thought. She said she thought the instructors were teaching what they found most interesting. Whether this was actually the case, we may never know. At that moment though, I realized how frequently I've taught what I wanted to teach instead of what students wanted (or needed) to learn.

Choosing A Lesson

As you gain experience, you learn that there are a number of ways to present content. And as soon as you become familiar with more than one way to teach a lesson, you face the challenge of having to choose the one that will elicit the best results. You mix and match activities, comparisons, analogies, anecdotes, and exercises; anything to help the students understand the content.

Sometimes you use a certain methodology by chance. For example, if you find yourself presenting the same information the same way. Day after day, boredom may drive you to choose a different technique. If you hear an instructor comment about a particularly exciting methodology, curiosity may lead you to try it out.

The factors that motivate you to choose one method over another can center either on your needs or the needs of your students. Your needs may include personal preference, ability, experience, and curiosity. With any luck your needs will coincide with your students' needs, but when they don't, you should be aware that it's possible for your needs to interfere with the needs of your students. For example, your need to explore a new way of teaching a basic parallel turn may not address the needs of a student who's exhibiting common movement problems that your traditional teaching method might easily correct.

There are times when an instructor might need to override personal preferences to effectively present a particular method. For example, I recently overheard a ski school trainer invite his trainees to ski a line of moguls while keeping their hands constantly in front of them. I knew from experience that this trainer is particularly opposed to working on pole position and have frequently heard him say that when students work on their hands, they tend to forget about their feet: Amazingly, the trainees showed marked improvement after concentrating on their hand position. On a subsequent lift ride, I asked him why he chose to work on hands. He told me that the trainees had been working on feet for so long that they were losing motivation, so he decided to change the focus for an hour.

Creating Lessons

In recent seasons, I have had the opportunity to speak with many gifted instructors. I found one commonality among them: their skill comes not so much from having more "tricks" in their repertoire, but from an ability to create lessons by combining an analysis of the students' needs with an intuitive sense of how to address those needs. A brainstorm can strike at any time, but these inspired educators can practically pull meaningful lessons out of thin air and deliver them with authority.

A certified Level II instructor was teaching a class that was just beginning to ski parallel but had expressed a desire to learn to ski moguls. After noticing that his students were prone to bending at the waist every time they encountered a bump, the instructor tried to explain that doing so would cause them to lose balance in the turn. Despite his explanation, the class made little progress.

During the lesson, one student hit a small bump rather forcefully and gasped as though she'd been hit in the stomach. The teacher then called the class together and had each student repeat the noise. In the next set of moguls, the instructor asked the students to make the sound just as the bump compressed their skis. This seemed to make them bend at the waist even more than before. The instructor then told the students not to make the sound, and amazingly, each student exhibited a taller, more functional stance. When I asked the instructor where he had learned this exercise, he said he'd improvised it when he heard the student make the sound.

I observed another example of a created lesson when I participated in a training session with a particularly skilled instructor known for her challenging clinics. At the end of one clinic, she had another trainer ski in front of our group and asked each of us to analyze the turns. The group was ruthless, addressing hip rotation, angles, shoulder orientation, timing, rhythm, pole swing, vertical unweighting, and tail carving. When we finished our assessment, our instructor shrugged her shoulders, said she thought his turns were pretty good, and skied off.

Our group skied down to her, and she asked us what we thought of our own skiing. Interestingly, the feedback we had given on the trainer's skiing appeared in our analysis of our own turns. After listening to our commentary, our instructor said she thought our turns were pretty good. I was both intrigued and encouraged by her response. When I later asked her why she chose to teach this way, she replied, "As a group, you were so caught up in what you were doing wrong that you failed to recognize the great foundation you had."

One of the more obvious benefits of a created lesson is that it allows the instructor to adjust his or her method of teaching to ensure that all of the guests' needs are being met. For example, in the previous scenario the instructor noticed that the students were devoting too much attention to their weaknesses, and she was able to think of a way to divert the students' attention so that they could acknowledge their strengths and continue to learn. Linear lessons, those that follow a progressional pattern, often do not afford such flexibility.

If you always begin with an introduction, move to an observation, structure some exercises, provide feedback, and then repeat the process for the duration of the lesson, you risk leaving some of your students' needs unfulfilled. Although a linear progression may seem like a logical method to use when introducing several students to new movements, it may fail to address the students' motivational needs. For example, even if all the students master the movement, some of them may want to stay in a safe practice area to build their confidence, while others may be eager to pursue more challenging terrain.

Finding Your Center

When deciding where to center your lessons, you have significant but limited choices. There are only two viable possibilities: focusing on your needs or on the guests' needs. In the previous examples, skilled teachers observed their students' needs and created lessons accordingly. Wanting to center your lessons on your guests' needs or admitting that you should center on their needs is not the same as literally identifying and addressing their needs. In an effort to more adequately center your lessons on the needs of your guests, consider two issues: "What do you call the lesson participants?" and "What do you say to them?"

The label you choose for the individuals who ski with you can dictate the way you speak to them and possibly the way you treat them. I use the word "guest" because it has the agreeable characteristics of letting me lead and allowing my students to choose. This cooperative relationship may foster your creativity and their acceptance of your efforts. If your students are your guests, you should be polite, kind, patient, and serving. You should also attempt to meet their needs.

Any effort to center lessons on guests must include some careful attention to how you say what you say. For example, many instructors elicit movements by saying "I want you to but would avoid using the same words to address a house guest. After all, "I really want you to leave after two days instead of four" would be rather abrupt. On the hill, your guest's viable response to "I want you to feel the muscles in your thighs flex" might be "I don't care what you want, and I didn't pay for this experience to satisfy your needs."

Commands are also inappropriate for guests. For example, you probably would not order a guest to clean your house. Instead you might invite him or her to help by explaining: "We're having a party tonight. Would you mind vacuuming the living room to help us get ready?" You still might get "no" for an answer, but more important, you gave your guest a choice. Similarly in ski instruction, commands are not as effective as directions framed in a positive manner. You could command a student to "bend your knees," but the same idea might get a better reception when presented as an invitation tied to an outcome: "You said you wanted to feel more stable on your skis [outcome]. Bending your knees slightly will help you improve your stability. Let's try it in the next five turns [invitation]."

Comparison is another area where you'll want to exercise caution. In your home, you would probably avoid comparing the virtues of one of your guests to another: "Have you noticed how often Helen helps with the dishes? Maybe you should do the same." However, many instructors regularly critique and compare the skiing techniques of their students during lessons. Application is a useful alternative to comparison. After an observation run, ask your students if they noticed anything in their classmates' skiing that they would like to apply to their own.

As you attempt to identify your guests' needs, avoid the tendency to stereotype them or generalize their needs. Can you imagine how erroneous it would be to assume that every guest in your home enjoys Chinese food? It's also wrong to make assumptions about your skiing guests. You will be more sensitive to individual needs if your ideas aren't governed by cumbersome preconceived notions that naturally evolve from generalizations. What follows is a list of practices that will help you accurately identify the needs of your guests.

1. Clarify their intent behind taking a lesson.

2. Listen attentively to what they say they'd like to learn.

3. Ask questions to clarify what you think their needs might be.

4. Ask them to describe how they think you can help.

5. Note changes in their skiing and ask them if they felt a difference.

6. Observe whether their verbal assessments of their skiing parallel their movements.

Teaching Your Guests

Once you've considered how semantics can shape the way you teach, you're ready to think about centering your lessons on guests. As I mentioned earlier, for instruction to be truly guest-centered, you must identify the needs of your guests.

Historically, ski instructors have focused their efforts on identifying inefficient movements among their "students," but we are now learning that students need more than movement instruction. Most training exercises currently emphasize psychomotor needs (the combination of mental and physical needs that promote the mastery of a skill), which include the need to
aflex and extend,
ain allow rotary forces to work throughout the turn, and
acreate angles with the skier's body.

In addition, ski instruction publications, training events, and certification standards emphasize guests' needs for correct information. Known as cognitive needs, these requirements include the need for
aclear and concise explanation,
athe opportunity to ask questions,
alimits on the amount of new information presented,
aadequate time to process information, and
aaccurate and timely feedback.

A third type of guest needs could be filed under the expansive category of affective needs, which includes the guest's emotions, expectations, motivations, and preferences. In short, any need that is not psychomotor or cognitive is probably affective. Affective needs include the need for
aacknowledgement of the instructor and other skiers,
aencouragement and support,
ainclusion in the group,
aaccomplishment, and
amotivation.

The Sum Of Categorization

The power of categorization lies in its simplicity. Breaking guest needs into three categories-psychomotor, cognitive, and affective-without making generalizations about the guests will help you determine whether your lessons address and satisfy their needs. Categorizing guest needs will also help you identify ways in which you can change your lessons if they're not meeting the guests' needs.

Be careful not to assume that movement needs are the most important. Most instructors would agree that lessons that have good information and great movement progressions can still fail if the students are treated with disrespect. Conversely, a student who has an enjoyable time can do so without making any improvement in either movement or understanding. In short, when affective needs aren't met, the lesson can't succeed; when they are met, the lesson can't fail.

Once you identify guest needs, you can more easily design your lessons around the specific needs of your "students." You can address the guests' psychomotor needs by choosing appropriate movement sequences; cognitive needs by communicating concise and precise information; and affective needs by caring for your students and giving each of them individualized attention. Having the ability to identify and address specific guest needs will surely promote the likelihood that you'll create lessons rather than simply copy a lesson or choose from several lessons. By identifying and addressing guest needs, you can create guest-centered lessons and, hopefully, happy guests who'll return year after year.

Kim Peterson is a certified Level II alpine instructor who teaches at Winter Park Ski Resort in Colorado. He is currently pursuing a doctorate in education from the University of Colorado at Denver.