First of all, I'm glad you are having fun teaching kids. That's a good start to bonding with ski school work. But there's a lot of other stuff in your posts. I want to understand..... I’ve been skiing 30+ days/yr for the last 6 years and have taken 6 days of top level lessons (Aspen Highlands and Taos) in the last two years. .....I’m confidently lapping doublesas long as the snow is soft. ....Yeah the wedge seemed to be the comment I got at the end. ....I went because they said I'd probably pass and they encouraged us to go for it. .....If I went through the whole pod training and another exam, that's 9 days of my time which is 100% not worth it to me. Teaching the kids to ski is fun, the PSIA stuff is the opposite of fun.
Here's what I think happened. Let me know if I'm reading you right.
You went for a 3-day training/exam event. Day 1 was training, day 2 was skiing, and day 3 was teaching, or something like that. So you got a one day bit of "training" before taking the 2 day exam.
You went for the exam because you were encouraged to go by ski school management. They said you would probably pass.
You thought your skiing would be the major determining factor for the exam, and that it would definitely be a pass because you've been skiing 30 days each of the last 6 seasons, and you've taken some advanced skier lessons. Plus, you ski double blacks.
I think there was "pod training" available, but it would have stretched out over 6 days and so you skipped it given your confidence that you would pass given your level of skiing.
Now you think your performance was unfairly scored since you failed.
You did not realize that the exam is well thought-out by excellent skiers with more skill than you who also happen to be very experienced in teaching. PSIA as an organization has worked for decades to organize advice on how to teach and ski in a way that would help a lower level skier improve. PSIA expects its instructors to take advantage of the resources PSIA has provided. Those resources, including exam training, convey communicate this worthwhile information to certification candidates. PSIA's website makes available videos of all the kinds of turns you would have been scored on, which I think you did not look at.
@OnTheEdgeNotTheWedge, because of your self-confidence, you went unprepared. It is somewhat difficult to fail the Level I exam. Think about this: 85% of Level II and Level III candidates tend to fail, but the numbers are flipped for Level I. All you would have needed to do was take the Pod, and take a look at the written resources and videos provided by PSIA-- and work on remembering them. If you go for Level I again, do those things and definitely work with a trainer at your mountain on your wedge turns. You'll be using them in every lesson, so they need to be close to the ideal described by PSIA because they will be watched closely by your students. Wedge turns in an exam are quite revealing of many things going on with an instructor. Screwing them up reveals that the candidate hasn't studied properly before showing up. Everyone needs to get wedge turns close to the ideal, or at least not exhibiting the big no-nos, before taking any cert exam.
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