INSTRUCTOR DEVELOPMENT PATHWAYS
First Year Development
Level I
Welcome! You are embarking on an adventure and fulfilling a development process towards achieving professional certification.
Successful instructors understand the importance of interacting with the students and tailoring the lesson to fit their needs or desires. Enjoyment of a lesson is a fine balance between safety, fun, and learning.
The outcome of achieving Level I Certification is the ability to hit the ground running with beginner to intermediate students and have a solid foundation of the PSIA-AASI Fundamentals for Teaching, People, and Technical Elements of your Snowsports discipline. Instructors who achieve certification in the first season are more likely to enjoy their daily workload, improve their own skiing or riding faster, and feel connected to the snowsports community in the larger space.
Children’s Specialist
The pathway to being the best instructor you can be, starts with being a good people person. The Children’s Specialist Certification helps establish a deeper people and teaching foundation for ANY instructor. This certification will help decipher human development and learning and how to create GREAT Lessons! We recommend CS I as a stepping stone either after Level I or Level II Success.
CS II is recommended following Level II.
Maximise Your Knowledge and Value
Level II
Congratulations on achieving your Level I certification! Now it’s time to increase your service and understanding to a new benchmark.
Achieving LII certification will require a much deeper dive into teaching, people and technical fundamentals, and their application in more difficult conditions and terrain and providing in depth teaching to your students.
Level II instructors contribute to the professional environment and adapt their behavior to a group as a whole. They have a refined understanding of people skills and utilize the teaching cycle to set goals and reassess the skills required through strong communication skills & managing emotions & motivations. A Level II instructor adjusts and adapts the Technical Fundamentals to demonstrate specific outcomes in beginner, intermediate, and some advanced terrain. They use current PSIA-AASI resources to describe ideal performances, using two or more Fundamentals and consider tactics and equipment choices. They articulate accurate cause-and-effect relationships through all phases of the turn, resulting in an effective prescription for change for skiers & riders through the intermediate zone.
This level of certification may take longer to acquire and may not happen in a single season.
The Level II certification gives you the ability to teach up through a consistent blue class in a proficient manner.
Your demonstrations and intricate understanding of how to do what you are doing is important. And even more so, your ability to assess and communicate efficiently to your student is a higher expectation.
Take your time to develop understanding in preparation for assessment.
Challenge yourself in Excellence
LEVEL III
Congratulations on achieving your Level II certification! The pathway to Level III will continue to challenge you and further deeper your intrigue, skills, and understanding. Level III will require continued focus and engagement in your own development and confidence in the peer to peer space. Sharing knowledge and training together with likeminded individuals can often spur new creativity and thought provoking ideas.
Level III instructors actively promote a professional environment and develop deeper awareness about how their decisions affect the group. Instructors at this level anticipate challenges and adapt their own style of interaction to individuals. They demonstrate strong self-awareness and mastery of the teaching fundamentals. They customize an engaging learning experience in the advanced zone.
Level III instructors make proactive adjustments to learning experiences & foster learning by helping students interpret their changes in performance, develop new understanding, and apply what they’ve learned. A Level III instructor adjusts and adapts the Technical Fundamentals to demonstrate any specific skiing/riding or ski/board performance outcome through the advanced zone.
This level of certification typically requires multiple years of continued education and development.
Level III instructors are able to teach all lessons and all abilities at the resort with individual guests or large groups, and provide a superior product.
Demonstrations should be consistently performed at the highest level & guest service and expertise must shine through in all guest interactions.