Why We Teach

While Alex, Katrina, and Drew are shredding their souls out in deep Canadian powder at the FWT stop in Revelstoke, some of us are stuck on the bunny hill picking up small children. It's days like today, when the rest of the team is skiing big lines on real snow, that I ask myself how I manage to show up to work every day without going insane.

I'm going to be honest: I don't actually like teaching skiing. You have to be perky and energetic all day, every day, no matter how you feel. It's completely soul crushing to spend a powder day on the magic carpet. You go hoarse from shouting for kids to pull the bar down, or to push down the shark fin on their binding so you don't have to hike to help them get their skis back on. Some kids are obnoxious and mean. Sometimes kids cry or vomit or have a code-yellow (don't ask about code brown). Sometimes parents tip you $1. Sometimes teaching is miserable. But I do it anyway, and here's why:

3) I love skiing. I get paid to ski EVERY day. Seasons like this one, I'm not missing out on much shredding. There's no snow, and so I can't REALLY complain about being confined to green-blue terrain. Even the worst day on the hill beats the best day at school or in the office.

2) I get to ski with other instructors who pick my skiing to pieces, then put it back together. My ski buddies are trained to analyze how the two inch drop of my left hand affects the performance of my skis. It is acceptable to geek out and do this to everyone else.

But the #1 reason why I teach: Not much is better than when a kid begs their parents to let them come back to ski school tomorrow, or when they start screaming, "THIS IS THE FUNNEST THING EVER!" That's the start, and it happens every now and then. But maybe once every hundred students, there's one who falls head-over-heels in love with skiing, and it's mostly my fault. It was the instructors in my life who made me fall in love with this sport the way I have. If I can pass that love on to one kid a month - even just one kid a year - then it makes it all worth it. All the blisters from skating up the magic carpet in unbuckled boots, all the sore throats, all the miniscule paychecks … and even some of the missed powder days.

Any day when 'hot cocoa' doesn't top the daily highlights is a great success. But there are some days when cooler things happen, and today was one of them. Today I had one student go from "I hate skiing and don't want to be here" to being completely obsessed with it. So while I desperately wish I could have gone to Revelstoke, I'd have missed out on little miss Sydney and the gratification that goes along with knowing I turned her into a life-long skier.

Every day I have to remind myself that teaching skiing is NOT about turning kids into more technically proficient skiers (that's a secondary goal). The best skier on the hill is the one with the biggest smile on their face. The point of skiing is to have fun. If you're not having fun, you're not doing it right!