Common kite instructor mistakes.
I find that candidate instructor and also seasoned instructors make this mistake way too often. Instructors don’t even realize that they do it sometimes, but it has a significant impact on the lesson progression and student understanding. Check if you had lessons with instructors that do this. Let me know if you have experienced this in some way. Or other mistakes that you commonly see.
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- don't confuse them with certifications/IKO/etc. - the purpose is to be able to ride, not to pay someone for lessons/card
- don't let them overpractice with dual-line kite so they don't learn "hanging on the bar"
- teach them fly a small, 5-6m depower kite, then progress to larger wing
- teach them on a door. Get them riding first, then let them progress to smaller, more fun board
- give them "homework" - for every hour of a lesson they should practice 2-3 hours
- give them good instructional video references. You won't be able to earn all the money they'll spend learning, but you want them to come back to you when they're ready for next day of in-person learning
- invest into two-way headset - they help
- inspire them. Ride great yourself and have great riders ride with you so your students bite lips watching you and think "I want to ride like those guys"
These users thanked the author grigorib for the post:
It took me a while to learn most of this when teaching ADHD students. Your first ADHD person is always an eye opener. And you definitely have to tailor your teaching to each students attention span.
- don't let them overpractice with dual-line kite so they don't learn "hanging on the bar"
As to this, I have actually seen some low attention span adults do well with more time on a trainer or traction (non-depower) kite, as opposed to quickly moving on to a more complicated depower kite. If using a traction kite to learn (water relaunchable trainer, or traction kite on snow), make sure they just pass the point where their skill on a non-depower kite allows them to almost get upwind with it. Then if you hand them a depower kite after this skill is almost reached, they usually can ride immediately. In every case I have seen this on the snow and water, a low attention span adult has very little trouble with adding the depower control into the mix if they have already got close to making it upwind on a non-depower kite.
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taabsr (Tue Mar 12, 2019 12:44 pm) • grigorib (Tue Mar 12, 2019 2:56 pm)
Few more
- don’t teach newbies in the very middle of bunch of bathing beachgoers (observed on Lake Michigan)
- if you can’t keep the kite in the air yourself on the beach because of slight side-offshore gusty/shadowed direction, don’t hook in a student and don’t let him go learning boardstarts where he can’t touch bottom (observed in La Ventana)
As of IKO. I mean the goal is to ride and not to have a card that says you can ride. It’s a nice piece of card and obviously there are qualification requirements behind getting one, but not everyone with diploma has knowledge. Same for IKO
Thanks for the input I will do a few more videos covering some of these topics presented. Regarding IKO, no paper can show your true capability. You might even have done great in the course and still be a bad instructor after.
Making sure you learn how to teach is critical for kite or any other kind of teaching and in that sense iko has been around for long and in my view has the best practices. It's not perfect and still can improve a lot but I can see improvement these last years.
Don't mean to change the topic but as an ex instructor (1999 to 2012) I consider that IKO has destroyed the value of the profession by flooding the market with low level instructors working for peanuts. Can't think of any other high risk profession where you can qualify in barely 5 days.
Kitesurfing does not need IKO to improve that would give credit to all the wannabes already out there. It needs IKO to disappear and be replaced by a truly professional organization with higher standards.
It needs IKO to disappear and be replaced by a truly professional organization with higher standards.
The level of professionalism of any group or organization is determined by the level of professionalism of the individual. If the IKO disbanded, and those in control of that organization started a new one with a different name, the same issues would exist from the start in that new organization.
Some instructors are deplorable teachers, but keep their students very safe while their students get the feel of kiteboarding.
Some instructors are excellent teachers, but fail to keep their students safe and things go wrong.
My belief is that any kiteboarding instructional origination should focus on insuring instructors, which in turn provides protection to the innocent beginners that likely do not know the real dangers of learning kiteboarding. That way, students have a degree of financial compensation, should they sign up for lessons with a "less safe" certified instructor and wind up paying hospital bills.
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Kitesurfing does not need IKO to improve that would give credit to all the wannabes already out there. It needs IKO to disappear and be replaced by a truly professional organization with higher standards.
I personally don't get the burning feeling to incorporate, join a union, be part of association or have kitesurfing a part of Olympics.
I don't need a herd or governing body. Even though I might like some assistance and lobbying I'm concerned it would pretty soon be taken over, biased and misled.
I vote with my dollars spent one or another way and we're pretty far from dangers of monopoly or other abusive relationship.
Don't mean to change the topic but as an ex instructor (1999 to 2012) I consider that IKO has destroyed the value of the profession by flooding the market with low level instructors working for peanuts. Can't think of any other high risk profession where you can qualify in barely 5 days.
Kitesurfing does not need IKO to improve that would give credit to all the wannabes already out there. It needs IKO to disappear and be replaced by a truly professional organization with higher standards.
It used to be like that in the start. I guess in the beginning the need for some qualification made it easy as it was better to get some tips that none at all. Now things have been changing, you need to do a 5-day training as an assistant and then take another five days for the instructor. Meaning you only get certified once you have done two pieces of instruction. Things take time, but I think it's going in the right direction. They have feedback visible now from school and instructor, so they are a lot of steps ahead of any other. The accumulated experience also outweighs anything else out there.
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