My preference is to teach beginners.  Navigating that set of self-doubt that new students bring to a class and coming away with them feeling good and knowing what they now know is a great challenge.  Sending them away feeling excited about their next day on the water is wonderful.  Thing is as you become more experienced as a coach, you find yourself spending more and more time teaching more advanced students.  That’s when things get a bit tricky.  Something I’m just learning to navigate now.

Frankly it’s a whole lot tougher. Students with a bit of experience behind them come into a class from a totally different angle.  Often they not only know what they know, but they often think they know what they don’t know. It seems you always get the one guy who has read every book and watched every video and will question every step of every lesson.  (and yes, it’s always a GUY!) My feeling is that this is a defining moment in their paddling career.  They have demonstrated their dedication. You have to credit that.  However they have also formulated a  set of unbendable “rules”.  How a coach handles this I think will decide if that paddler will become a better paddler or if they will become a know-it-all with a bruised ego and an attitude.

The first thing I learned was that although you want to teach this student, you can’t let them dominate the class.  You have a bunch of other folks there too.  I’ve watched a lot of nice coaches let their class get taken over while trying to teach by negotiation.  It may work for that student, but at the expense of the others.  I don’t’ think you can teach through negotiation. Not in a class atmosphere anyway. Another way the class gets hijacked is that these discussions open up opportunities for coaches to show off their expertise.  Com’on we all like to show what we know.  The thing is we have to fight that urge.

So when I have opportunities these days to watch great coaches I tend to try to look behind the scenes a bit.  I want to watch how they manage their classes when it comes to students who know what they think they know.

Some of course can control the situation by sheer presence.  Two coaches I admire a lot, Kelly Blades here in the States & Rowland Woollven in the UK, both have an amazing art of being able to shut down these situations when they have to and at the same time keep the class fun and keeping the students engaged.  Just their presence and characters allow them to say something like “We can talk about that later.” And not come across as being “Cocky”.  If some coaches did that they would just look like jerks.  Thing is IF you say “we can talk later”, then you have to be open to spending that extra time after class.  Great coaches always seem to have extra time after class to work with you.  (of course I can hear them saying, “Yeah, but Derrick don’t SAY that!!!!”.  – there goes lunch!)  The point is; knowing when to be “tuff” and how to quickly spin that into a smile is an art.

Another method we can use has to do with using those “learning moments”.  I like this approach too.  I’ve seen Shawna Franklin (body, boat, blade) & Sam Crowley both use this amazing ease.  They will just sit back and say, “show us”.  They then let the student demonstrate their skill. Often with interesting results.  Then they will find something, anything to compliment about the students approach. . . followed by a quick analysis and a demonstration of the alternative.  The beauty of this is that the student can “feel” the comparisons, then freely decide without feeling they were shown up or put down. The coaches never criticize, just compare. If this can be done effectively and in a timely manner, everyone in the class learns.  If not, then see above. . .

As coaches we spend a lot of time talking about the “skill work”.  How to demo and the like.  We tend to focus on raw information. However, often the hardest part of teaching  is creating a learning enviroment for a diverse group.   It’s sociology. Being a skilled paddler does not make a good coach.  What does make a great coach?  Well, I have some ideas and I’ve seen some wonderful examples, but I think it may take a lifetime to learn.