Re-imagining the Methods of Teaching on Snow
Outdoor Emergency Transportation (OET) is the official NSP-branded name for rescue toboggan training education. All alpine patrollers are required to take annual refreshers at their mountain to maintain their status. Local mountain OET Toboggan Instructors run refreshers and train incoming patroller candidates. Since 1996, NSP has created an educational program structure that develops a training curriculum, assigns highly skilled and experienced instructor trainers (ITs) to recertify instructors, mentors incoming instructors, and manages the quality assurance documents for maintaining continuing education and certifications.
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A staff of 37 instructor trainers across the Eastern Division work closely with the 15 Regional OET Advisors, maintaining the OET program’s quality with in-service training, continuing education courses, feedback, and observations. Each advisor maintains their own OET Staff of trainer-evaluators (TEs) to serve and advise the local mountain toboggan instructors helping them with the latest educational techniques and methods.
The OET Program is committed to continuous education, maintaining educational courses on Eastern Division’s Online Moodle School (a Learning Management System maintained for delivering continuing education for instructors) to provide access to the most up-to-date teaching methods.
Over the decades, the division’s OET Staff has maintained a long tradition of providing instructor training to improve the quality of on-snow education and unify it between the regions. The evolution began in 1997 with the introduction of formalized instructor mentoring. In 2003, OET Teaching Methods were introduced to give instructors tools for teaching on the snow. Using the Instructor Development textbook, a training program was developed emphasizing 6-Pack Lesson Planning, “positive immediate student feedback,” and most importantly, ADAPT.
ADAPT is a cyclical teaching tool that instructors use to improve student learning activities and monitor teaching effectiveness. It allows instructors to customize learning to the needs of each student, with the mission of building skills and then progressing learning by adding additional skills. Its goal has always been to offer instructors a path for taking candidates from day-one learning all the way up to passing their senior level at the student’s pace.
In 2017 NSP’s OET Director adopted the Technical Fundamentals of Skiing as the instructional language for on-snow teaching. The Professional Ski Instructors Association and the American Association of Snowboard Instructors (PSIA-AASI) created the fundamentals covering skiing, telemarking, and snowboarding. These technical fundamentals bring teaching concepts to life with practical applications adapted to the student’s ability level or desired outcome. OET Instructors have been using the language of the fundamentals as a tool to provide consistent, accurate, and concise feedback.
Building upon past changes to further improve teaching effectiveness, the OET Program is once again evolving instructor education and its teaching methods. Beginning in 2025, OET Instructors will be learning how to refine cyclical ADAPT-based teaching to include a closer student collaboration using meaningful two-way communication. Instructors will learn how to incorporate listening as students reflect on sensations, feelings of movements, and outcomes – both good and bad. The new on-snow teaching methods are designed to add more effective tools for instructors to create progress in student skill development.
OET teaching evolutions often take several years to roll out across the division. This one is being introduced nationally with a series of Toboggan Technical Fundamentals. Watch the next issue of Ski Patrol Magazine for more about the OET Educational Program. Also, watch for the next issue of Trail Sweep to learn how instructors and students benefit as the program rolls out improved on-snow teaching tools.
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