So many people ask me, what’s it actually like teaching all day? Why did you want to teach snowboarding? Do you enjoy it?
Many different answers could be given depending on who you are and what you value. I can only speak for myself in saying that there are many things we do in life as we grow older that we may not want to do, such as horrifying desk jobs that we end up having to do because of financial commitments. For me snowboarding is and will always be fun and that’s the reason I have chosen it to be what I focus my time on. I am all about having fun, really living in the moment and enjoying something for what it is. When teaching snowboarding I get to have fun all the time.
Sure there are days when it is testing to be an instructor, Imagine a day when all your friends have the day off, there is a tonne of fresh snow and you get given a beginner snowboard lesson. You have two options, one is to be grumpy and moody because you can’t do what you what you would like to… Or, you can be positive, shrug it off and say oh well I will get my day (in fact I get them on a regular basis) and it will that much sweeter. Today I will teach a great lesson to someone who really wants to enjoy a little snippet of what I get to do everyday.
Let us be honest here, most if not all of us who have jobs have days where we don’t want to be there. There are bad days and good days, that’s life! The thing with teaching snowboarding is it is what you make of it. I personally love my job because I have a way to snowboard 100 days a year and get paid to do so. The whole 'do a week a season' wasn’t for me, I needed more than that… and unfortunately I’m not quite good enough to do triple corks like the movie stars… so I teach!
Everyday I wake up I check the weather forecast, see if we had snow and leave the seaside to go snowboarding… Yes, on Vancouver Island we have the ocean right next to the mountains so sometimes its check the surf forecast!
Thirty minutes later I’m up the mountain getting my gear on. Luckily, instructors at Mount Washington get the privilege of first run, which means that before any of the public load we get the whole mountain to ourselves to warm up and get ready for the day. Then we get given our lessons for the day, it could either be a full day or a half-day lesson, so off we go to spread the passion that we all have for snowboarding.
One thing I really concentrate on when I teach is the fact that a beginner will literally listen to every word you say. It is a great responsibility to give someone something that you take for granted but as long as you can pass on the passion and have fun with it then being a great instructor is easy. Passion and having fun is what will get people learning and stoked to do the sport we love.
"I personally love my job because I have a way to snowboard 100 days a year and get paid to do so!"
Written By Tom Arnold, Snowboard Coach at Section 8 Snowsport Institute, who run ski and snowboard instructor training and mountain leadership courses on Vancouver Island, Canada.