Hello and best wishes to you all for a great summer! Here’s a quick update on relevant education developments in our division and nationally.

Education Leadership Council
I am part of a new national group called the Education Leadership Council and we recently met at the national office in Lakewood, CO for our first face-to-face meeting. The group consists of educational leaders from each of the nine divisions, the coaches of the four National teams (Dave Lawrence, Scott Anfang, Geoff Krill, and Michael Rogan), Dave Schuiling (PSIA Director of Education) and Jeb Boyd (National Teams Manager).

This group is charged with minimizing divisional isolation, eliminating duplication, ensuring accountability to the National Standards, ensuring accountability to our partners, and ensuring consistency and consistent outcomes with all certification and specialist products.

The topic of discussion that dominated our time in Denver is very provocative and has possible benefit for all snow sports instructors. PSIA has partnered with Penn State University to develop an academic equivalency system that would eventually give instructors the ability to earn university credit. This is in its infancy, but the possibilities are very exciting and real. Imagine earning college credit while you work! I will keep you informed as details become firm.

Teaching Tools
Many of you are familiar with the recent evolution to the skiing national standards and the five skiing fundamentals. Much of the work that went into that project came out of the annual Fall Conference event held in Summit County, CO. Last fall, divisional leaders gathered in Colorado to begin considering the teaching fundamentals. That effort will continue this fall.

There is a new Core Concepts manual in the pipeline. Our own Rob Sogard along with recent Ski Hall of Fame inductee Ellen Post Foster are the leaders of this huge project. I am writing the chapter on managing risk in the mountain snow sports environment. All chapters will be completed by summer’s end and the editing process will begin. Look for a release date soon.

This summer and early fall, I will be developing a new educational tool for Intermountain members. The goal is to help members improve the quality of their movement analysis during an assessment and use that information to form an effective lesson plan. The delivery system for this information will be new for us. The intent is to offer it on an e-learning platform. Look for something this fall!

There are so many exciting things going on in our organization right now and winter cannot come soon enough. Stay tuned for developments on the projects mentioned above and for others in the works. We will be relying more heavily on social media platforms to communicate new developments with you. So, familiarize yourself with those options. Cheers!

Return to Menu