Educating and supporting the Trainers delivery team, to educate the Trainers, to educate and train Instructors. The BASI Trainers Conference 2016.
The BASI training body has responsibility for educating and assessing British Snowsport instructors against the internationally recognised BASI qualifications. The annual trainers conference is a major event in the calendar.
As a senior trainer and the elected trainers director, I take the lead in much of the planning and delivering the conference content,
this year that involved preparing the delivery team as well.
This year Roy Henderson (BASI Training Manager) tasked a colleague and myself to develop the content and prepare the delivery team. The content was to be based on the structure used by the University of Edinburgh to align BASI qualifications against the Scottish Qualification Framework and therefore the European Qualification Framework.
Developing this content involved many calls and conversations with the academics at the University before we were at a stage where it would benefit the rest of the Training body and contribute to their work training and assessing British Snowsport Instructors.
Once we had the content clear we could start to prepare the delivery team.
The 9 strong delivery team had been chosen from the Great Britain Interski team. The Interski Team are the very best skiing coach educators who have been selected to represent GB Snowsports at international congresses and events. We had 4 days on snow to work with and develop the Trainers of all disciplines before the season started and they went off delivering courses.
We spent time setting the team up with the content and provided remote support to ensure they were up to speed. The Training body is a very knowledgeable, experienced, well trained, committed and professional group of individuals. They are a tough audience and although they are very receptive they take no prisoners so it was important that the delivery team were well prepared and able to stand up to scrutiny. Because of this we had scheduled an extra day on snow to work through the final issues and challenges to be fully prepared.
Working with such an inspiring, talented and knowledgeable group as the Trainers is an inspiration, having a responsibility to educate them is a massive challenge and I am always honoured to work at this level. The added dimension this year was preparing the delivery team as well, truly working at the very highest levels of coach education.
