 Not long ago, I was in Thredbo for what was often the busiest week on the ski fields. It was a combination of the last week of the school holidays, coupled with the Redlands Cup and a number of other inter-schools snow sports’ competitions. Many teachers use the draw card of snow sports to organise a school trip and at the same time get themselves a nice expenses ‘paid’ vacation! Whilst I’ve gone on one of these trips before, there’s often a lack of understanding of the risks inherent with snow sports that comes with this and having been part of a major snow sports’ program for six years that ran for the whole season, we would often see other schools’ groups on the mountain that were less than prepared for the conditions and the overall environment. Whilst I’m not saying that teachers just throw caution to the wind, however, the risk profile of snow sports is one of the highest of any outdoor activity. Combine, speed, trees, ice, freezing conditions, lots of equipment, kids and other people who are out of control on the slopes and you get a challenging recipe for injuries. However, this shouldn’t be the case and through careful planning and management, every trip can be an enjoyable and rewarding experience. So what are some ways to help plan for a safe and effective ski trip?
 Have fun! Skiing and snowboarding are awesome sports and they challenge everyone in a different way. Ultimately you’re there with your group so everyone has a safe and enjoyable experience. If you setup the trip with clear guidelines and structures in place, you’re going to have an enjoyable and awesome experience.
0 Comments
 On a visit to the US I took some time out to go skiing in Park City. It's a fantastic resort and an awesome historic township. It now even has an Australian run café, which meant I could have a decent coffee (all the important things being from Australia). I’d prepared myself to go a month without decent coffee, reliant on bitter or burnt espressos as a backup plan. I was however, pleasantly surprised to find myself standing in front of a recognisable Australian business and safely drinking a good cup of coffee.
Despite this extremely important tangent, what follows has nothing to do with coffee. It was early in the morning on a crisp crystal clear day over on the Canyons side of the resort. I was skiing past the ski school when a sign caught my attention, “Please, No Parents In The Learning Area!” I laughed, as I knew exactly why there was a need for something like this the moment I saw it. Whilst it's very important for parents to be involved in their child’s education, there's a right way to go about it and a wrong way to go about it. More often than not, parents, generally through a lack of understanding go about things the wrong way and many of them constantly insert themselves into situations where they should just stand back and allow others to teach. From what I’ve seen over my years of involvement with education, Helicopter & Tiger parents, need to relax, find themselves a hobby that doesn’t involve them living vicariously through their children. Whilst the underlying belief these parents have is that they’re ‘helping’ and making sure they get the ‘best’ for the child, the reality is that they’re doing more harm than good and wasting their own life and opportunities at the same time. It’s probably easier to remove the salt from the ocean than it is to remove the helicopter from the parent, but seriously, they need to back off and let their kids breathe and experience a few things in life for themselves. This doesn’t mean that everything should be done at arms’ length, but I can understand the need for the sign as over-involvement of parents can be just as bad, or even worse than under-parenting. I realise it is a challenging balance, but if you look at it from a work point of view, how would everyone feel if someone went from department to department telling everyone how their job should be done. From marketing, to finance and the janitorial services how would everyone feel if your clients hung around giving instructions on how their work should be done? It wouldn’t be long before security was called and the person was ejected from the building. I would have thought the whole point of taking your kids to ski school is so that you could ski somewhere awesome yourself. Hanging around offering suggestions or taking photos would be the last thing on my mind. I would have ditched the kids and headed up the closest double black only lift. Ski school and school in general is a great sort of child minding service, which hopefully employs talented instructors and teachers who will be able to care for your children and teach them something far more effectively than you can. This, of course, eventually pays off later on, as you’ll be able to ski with your kids, until they get way better than you and then leave you for dead, suggesting perhaps you should go and have some lessons. However, from this the most important thing is that sometimes parents need to be able to step away from a situation and allow their children to be taught by others. If they’re not prepared to do that, then why not teach them everything they need to know themselves? This would seem to be preferable for many parents, until they realise the reality of how much time, energy, experience and effort goes into teaching others. At some point, parents must let go and if they haven’t by high-school years, then the damage they’re going to do over the proceeding years is significant. Again this doesn’t mean parents should have no involvement, but appropriate experiences should be looked for where that increasing independence can be gained. Some effective programs I’ve worked on have been medium and long-stay residential programs, in which there was little choice for those helicopter parents but to stay away. If medium and long stay programs aren’t an option for your school, then perhaps erecting a barrier near the entrance is the next best option. At the end of the day, it will enable students to have a far better educational experience than the endless hovering could ever provide. For me, as I said, I’d just leave them at the ski school and allow them to try new things, slip, fall and get back up again all by themselves. It’s the learning through these experiences that make the best skiers and the snowboarders, not the manic parenting and suggestions from the side. Perhaps, as in Park City, a giant sign is just what’s needed for all of our programs to remind parents of the fact that it’s time to let go a bit and let their kids do something a bit ‘risky’ for themselves.  Winter is coming, and although that might now strike fear into the hearts of those guarding the wall to the north, it’s an awesome and exciting time for those who like snow sports. Apart from teachers being able to get a trip away to the snow, with huge responsibility thrown in, what’s the point of running a ski trip?
There are two aspects of ski trips. They’re either developing skills and social and emotional connections, or they’re about training and competing. I’ve been involved in both types of programs. However, for me, the social and emotional growth is far more interesting than standing around at the side of race tracks helping kids wax their skis. Snow sports are a great fun way for students to learn and improve skills, take responsibly and socialise. Skiing and snowboarding can be engaging for anyone of any skill level. Across the range of outdoor activities, for me, it’s more fun than anything else and I’m not going to try and hide that fact, but if education can’t be fun, then what’s the point? I always think that no matter what you’re teaching, if you can’t make it engaging, then why bother?! Snow sports, which includes skiing and snowboarding are technical and physically demanding sports. It’s challenging for so many people, because balance and fitness are key to ensuring you can ski all day, not have accidents and not wake up feeling as though you’ve been hit by a train. Therefore, if you’re going to be running a snow sports program, a fitness regime in the weeks/months leading into it is a must. Preparation: For school administrators scratching their heads wondering how this is educational at all, here’s where your education comes into it! Kids need to understand effective preparation for so many aspects of their lives. Most of the time they don’t need to prepare anything for themselves. However, failure to prepare in an alpine environment can lead to injury, exhaustion or serious illness putting others at risk in the process. Leading up to any ski trip, you should provide students with a program that builds their fitness to increase strength and stamina, making sure you do it as well. This sort of pre-trip fitness is often neglected because too often people see trips to the snow as a fun holiday and not a physically demanding sport. You’re not going to run onto the sports field and play an intensive match having not trained at all. If you do, you’re going to risk injury and of course, you’re most likely going to lose. To avoid this, everyone going on a snow sports trip should have to meet minimum fitness requirements so they don’t end up in the medical centre on the first day. Whilst there are many other considerations when preparing for a trip to the snow, having fit, well-prepared students will significantly decrease your risk of injury on the mountains. It’s in everyone’s interest to get out, get fit and have a great time at the snow. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
April 2021
Categories
All
|
RSS Feed
|
|
|
Copyright Xcursion Pty Ltd 2015-2023