Teaching adults vs kids

There is a big difference between teaching adults compared to teaching kids how to ski. But I guess it’s not unexpected as adults and kids also have a distinct ways of learning. Kids learn how to ski with fun, games and ease, and usually, they have no fear. The latter makes it easy if you start skiing steeper slopes; for example, kids don’t think this might be more difficult now and maybe even not feasible. 

The ski instructor knows what to do and thus knows when it’s time to improve and move on to more challenging terrain, which further leads to a trust-confidence relationship. Guests should trust themselves as well as their ski instructor because once they have the skills to ski down a hill, they often times can perform better than they might imagine. This resembles a big difference depending on whether you teach kids or adults. 

Kids usually trust you or themselves, and adults might need more proof that they’re able to ski down a steep slope as a thing called fear might arise as well.

The teaching style 

Apart from the mentioned, the teaching style is different, which ski instructors learn during their education and while working. For example, kids like to be entertained and just do, whereas adults can soak up more information, can concentrate longer and might want to understand the theory more.

Kids learn a lot subconsciously while skiing and doing fun exercises. Technical theory can be packed into fun stories, and the learning process is speedy. Adults often think more about what and why they’re doing an exercise, which sometimes might even lead to overthinking. Another point is that it’s hard to unlearn lessons memorised, meaning that mistakes that might have crept in at one point are hard to let go of. Changing movement patterns often takes a lot of practice and a certain amount of time. Usually, kids don’t have trained movement patterns over the years, so it’s easy to learn something new or change something in their technique.

It is super fun to teach kids and adults, even though some ski instructors might prefer having children, whereas other instructors are more eager to teach adults how to ski. This is a matter of personal preference and skill, I would say. For me, it is nice to have a mix of both as one can always learn from the opposite and improve personally.