Friday the 13th

Happy Friday the 13th! It was a lucky day for me. We’re getting over 100 students on Carvers for the next week or two, heavily weighted towards skiers. It was like 5 snowboard instructors on duty compared to about 30 ski instructors. I missed the first bus but fortunately, I was assigned to Shuttle Stop duty this morning so nobody expected me to be on time. My work jacket was up the hill so I couldn’t really shuttle any kids up. I’d have had mothers chasing me. I just talked briefly to Jeronimo who was on there, and went up myself.

I had only my four returns from yesterday as a yellow class today. I swapped places with a part-time guy named Derrick to let him go first with the others, while I waited for them to show up. It went pretty well! Better than I thought it would. With the overload on the learning area they finally ran Ripper Rue today. The Magic Carpet actually broke down because so many people tried to ride it at one time! I taught my kids well how to ride the rope-tow, and nobody fell off the first time. That’s very impressive. That characterized the whole day: I had so little confidence in my kids’ ability that I made them practice relentlessly until they had everything perfect, and only then challenged them. In the long run that’s great for them because they learned they could handle anything I asked of them.

On Ripper Rue I tried a lot of things to get them to keep their balance in front and turn on the right part of the foot, but it didn’t seem to go too well. I tried being racecars, and submarines, and it was only partially effective: the smallest girls Hannah and Holly still wouldn’t even put their hands on their thighs when I asked. I don’t enjoy teaching three eight-year-olds (and a seven-year-old) as much as I do older kids who pay better attention, but I was very patient and reminded myself, “no matter how frustrated you get, you cannot take it out on them.” I tried to be really positive and said, “Okay, since you’ve been paying attention so well and trying so hard, we will now take a break and sing a song! We’re going to sing, ‘head, shoulders, knees, and toes!’” Those two were delighted at the idea and familiar with the song, and they happily touched their heads, shoulders, knees and toes while following me down the slope in nice wedge turns. I let Hannah lead the line and the song on the next run, mainly so I wouldn’t have to but also because she likes feeling important.

Finally, I learned how to teach small children: just trick them into thinking they’re playing games. I knew that’s how it’s done but I never had the games well enough. Once they were excited, I did, “Okay, now we’re airplanes! Let’s put on our flying goggles, and spread our wings out... Now let’s dip our wing outside the turn” while we press this outside foot. I changed the games on almost every run to keep it interesting, and then repeated some. Taylor, the third little girl, asked, “Let’s play Cops & Robbers again!” That’s something we played yesterday. So I stayed at the bottom in my boots and ran around to have them turn towards me, and they were all very excited whenever they caught me. I also invented a game called “pinball machine” or “ping-pong” where they try to hit both sides of the slope back and forth as many times as they can, and she asked to play that again too.

I never say no when they ask to do something that can teach them something, and I give them credit for the idea to let them feel an important part of the experience. So when Hannah said, “We can practice our J-turns on this hill!” I said, “Great idea! Let’s see who can start turning from that pole and get all the way to the other side of the hill. If you can turn your skis all the way up the hill until you ski backwards, you win!” I made little competitions like that to get them conscious about turning: “Who can make the most turns down this hill without stopping?” and “How many times can you go back and forth across this hill before you reach the bottom? I did four; can you do more than me?” I let different kids lead in those games because they knew those runs well and I was pleased to see they didn’t all just shoot straight down when allowed to lead the group.

The children learned to handle lifts very well today, because I’m getting good at explaining in advance how to ride them. I took them on the rope-tow, the button lift Sweet Pea, and finally the chairlift at the end of the day. Our first time up the chairlift, nobody fell at the top! Every time I sent them all up the rope-tow and was last up, I told the liftie there Lucia that “Smiling so much hurts my face. It’s exhausting to be this positive and happy all the time. I’m not happy all the time. I’m a miserable person!”

Brandon’s mother and aunt (I think that’s what she is?) met us leaving Sweet Pea just as we were going to High Meadow. They were looking for us there, with the cameras, and I explained that I wanted to give them a good strong grounding and a gradual progression rather than pushing them too hard, so that when we went to the chair, they were all ready for it. They said that I was doing very well with the children, though Brandon suddenly got extremely moody when he saw his mom, and wanted to go with her. I sent Brandon up in the first chair with his mother after I explained how to use it. They followed us around taking video for the rest of the day, but it was only two runs down High Meadow.

The children all made it down very well by following my tracks, and I gave them all candy. Taylor kept losing my track and slipping away, but she usually recovered by turning until she slowed down, then rejoining the line, so I was pleased with that. At the very end of the run, I found myself on the skier’s-left side of the slope and absentmindedly did a little turn across where the slope falls away towards the middle. As I did it, I thought, “Oh no, they won’t be able to turn back up on this incline.” Sure enough, one by one the kids followed over that dip and went barreling madly straight down the hill, until they slid or fell to a stop on the flat, laughing and screaming “That was awesome!”

Holly, the youngest who was by far my weakest yesterday, was solidly the strongest at the end of today. She still wouldn’t talk until after the snowball fight, which I made sure to have very early before lunch. She was happy after that and really started to get the hang of turning to keep control even at a fair speed. On the last run, on the mini-slope behind the magic carpet, I told them all to go crazy and do whatever they feel like. Most of them did at least a few nice turns, especially Holly, though she was the worst about crashing into that powder in the morning: what she did now was a series of nice turns and then straight at the very end so she could fall in it. When we went down High Meadow, she was the only one who made it the whole way down following my tracks, even at the end when they all slid off.

Lunch today went much more smoothly. They split up the snowboarders and skiers: higher levels went to the Sun Lodge instead, and snowboarders ate early with the Cats, to reduce the congestion. The kitchen staff was ready with about six pizzas when we got there, and I was able to serve my four kids by the time they got back from the bathroom! I regaled them with jokes: they didn’t get the one about the little Arab boy who asks a lot of questions, but they laughed hard at the silly kids’ jokes about how to put a giraffe into a refrigerator, or why the koalas fell out of the tree.

You want to hear the joke? Okay. Why did the koala fall out of the tree?
He lost his grip!
Why did the second koala fall out of the tree?
He was holding on to the first koala.
Why did the third koala fall out of the tree?
Thought it was a game.
Why did the fourth koala fall out of the tree?
Peer pressure.
Why did the little boy fall off his bicycle?
He was hit by four koalas!

At the end of the day, Hannah and Holly’s parents told me that the girls enjoyed ski school so much that they’ve signed them up for an extra day on Sunday. Brandon had originally planned to try snowboarding tomorrow, but they changed his lesson to skiing because he likes it so much in my class. Taylor’s mother and grandmother took her picture with me and her siblings, and with Tiana who was their instructor. I still didn’t get any tips this week.

There was a Funk & Jazz concert tonight that a few people were going to, and the Star Bar is usually fun on Fridays too, but I made the deliberate decision to be a loser again tonight and stay home to sleep. With luck I can get to work on time tomorrow.