By Mike Mooney
Dec 8, 2016
Patrollers who want to become instructors in Outdoor Emergency Care, Ski &Toboggan Transportation, Mountain Travel & Rescue, or Avalanche need to enroll in the Instructor Development course to begin the process of becoming an instructor. This class is offered every spring after the end of the ski season to avoid the time conflicts that patrollers encounter during the ski season and counts as a senior elective. Participants in the course learn the principles of effective classroom and field teaching techniques and observe a variety of demonstration teaching models.
In response to student feedback we made some changes to the timing for the course, the schedule is to present the course in an evening session with the students required to complete online work prior to the evening session. The evening session reinforced the materials brought forward on the online presentation and allowed for practice by the students before presenting their mini lesson using the foundations developed in the course. Nine patrollers completed this Instructor Development class in April 2016 and are now going through the mentoring process to become instructors. In our survey of the patrollers who completed the course we received lots of enthusiastic feedback about the class format. Check the region website for further information. A course will be offered in April, 2017. You can also contact me at [email protected] to register for the course.
In addition to completing the Instructor Development course, patrollers who want to become instructors need to complete the mentoring program with an experienced instructor in each discipline and be evaluated by an Instructor Trainer. Genesee Valley Region has been very successful in mentoring and evaluating new instructors and there are lots of experienced instructors who are available to give you assistance or advice on the instructor mentoring program. The region now also has a mentoring webpage that provides information about the mentoring process – you will find the link to it in the lower right column of the GV Region homepage (https://nspgvr.org) right underneath the Instructor Development link. Another new feature on the region website this year is the posting of lists of the requirements and responsibilities of instructors in OEC, S&T, MTR, and Avalanche in this region on both the Mentoring and Instructor Development webpages in Adobe Acrobat pdf format for downloading. The intent of these documents is to help potential instructors develop realistic expectations regarding what an instructor does and what the time commitments are to instruct in each discipline before signing up.
We have instructors from various patrols in the region with teaching experience in each of the NSP disciplines who will teach the Instructor Development course this year: Marcia Mundrick (Bristol: OEC, EMM, MTR, Avalanche), Mike Mooney (Swain: S&T,OEC), John Lawson (Hunt Hollow: OEC, EMM), Bob Andre (Hunt Hollow: OEC, EMM, MTR, Avalanche), Glen Gebhard (Swain: OEC) and Pam Welch (Bristol: S&T, OEC).
The Instructor Development class is the gateway to becoming an instructor who trains new patrol candidates and refreshes current patrollers. These training activities enable the region to replenish our ranks and update our patroller skills. We invite you to take part in an enjoyable learning experience and join the corps of instructors in this region who contribute so much both to the patrols and to the skiing public.