Hi guys,

I've travelled to many places to teach, but have always preferred one kite, two students, one instructor. However, I want to be able to teach in any circumstances - so can anybody share their experience / method of teaching with two kites, and four students?

Thanks so much.

Best,
John

John,

Teaching more than one student at the time simply cannot be an advantage for the student. It's easy to advertise cheaper group lessons where the students think they are saving money with a cheaper cost per hour, but in reality in a 2 hour group lesson where 1 kite is being shared, there is only 1 hour of flying time per student, so in the end they are actually paying more than if they chose a private lesson. In other words, group lessons are only benefiting the school and the instructor, it allows the school to pump more volume and make more money....

Personally unless it's a ''discovery'' lesson sharing a trainer kite on the beach or teaching students to ride that are already independent, I would avoid group lessons simply for the sake and safety of the students themselves.

If the students are already competent at relaunching, self-rescue, upwind body drag/board recovery and are at the stage of learning to get up and ride, then teaching up to 3 students at the time with radio helmets is actually easily manageable.

If you don't already use radio helmets that is the single most effective way to improve your teaching and student management, especially if you always do groups....but they're not cheap. It all depends if your priority is to make money or teach quality lessons?

Thanks everybody for your response. However, it seems I didn't make myself clear. I'm just an instructor, not the owner, nor manager. I'm going to teach at a school with four students, and was looking for advice on the method of teaching, how to divide time and so on...

Thanks again.

John

I do not agree with 3 or 4 to 1 ratio at all, end result will be lesser skilled newbies entering our kiting areas. I hope you will not be teaching in Australia. The school should not have a licence to teach. I suppose it depends on your moral standing within our kiting community.

I learnt in a group lesson in Melbourne. I won't name the school but looking around at St Kilda 2:1 3:1 were quite common.

Group lessons are never the best for anything really, but I would say they are here to stay.

Tanswer your question my lesson was 3:1 with 1 kite. 10 mins each on the trainer each then into the water for body dragging. Just taking it in turns. Instructor demonstrated first.

Was a 3 hr lesson or maybe 2 I cant remember. The other two had never flown a kite before. I had about 8 hrs of instruction in Brazil.

I don't think having a second kite would have worked because while the instructor would be demonstrating something a doubt a first timer would be able to handle the kite and pay attention to the instructor. And if two first timers have both kites tangles or kites crashing would be common I think.

Hi John,

Other problems with 2:1 or greater is that the lesson proceeds at the rate of the slower student. The better student gets even less time whilst he watches the slower student make mistake after frustrating mistake. This further degrades the value of the lesson.

It is rare that you ever get two equally matched students in terms of skills and progression in the same lesson. I ran and taught in Australian Kiteboarding from 2001 to 2010 and own it to this day. I was also an IKO examiner for many years, teaching over 200 new instructors around the world. We did teach how to teach with up to 4 students with one instructor, but I never advised it personally as the conditions required to do it as per the text book don't exist in any location I've kited at in the last 15 years. In the end I moved away from the IKO due to congruency issues within myself.

In our search for the best ratio of student progression to profit, I tried one-on-one, one-on-two with one kite, two-on-four with two kites, two-on-six with three kites and an assistant, and eventually after trying everything from short lines, long lines, trainer kites and every combination of all of the above, we settled back to a one-on-one method. The difference in student progression and independence is staggering (as you would expect). Students progress faster, retain more, are safer and independent much earlier.

Schools need to make a profit if they are not offset by sales through a shop, so I have no grievance against those schools teaching to make a profit, but to completely ignore safety in the chase for the dollar, is reprehensible. My school barely breaks even at the end of each year and, (as was the case this year) often runs at a loss. This is my choice. We could follow suit and make money from the school.

For me personally, I accept the gravity (excuse the pun) of what I am teaching and responsible for in my school and opt for the far less profitable one on one method.

Each to their own, but perhaps you should consider a school with a slightly more favourable lean towards safety rather than profit.

DM

lessons are expensive. that's good because two hours with right man & equipment & conditions can set you almost up and running.

paying for lesson that you are not attached to kite 100% of time is imho quite useless. but i understand those people. for an example they saw kite few times, not sure what's on about there and just want to spend some time and are willing to pay. let's say those are tourist kiters.

i think anybody registered on some forum like this had learned on they own, or from close friend, or was up and running in no time with some basic lessons. or migrated from windsurf to kitesurf.

i would never ever payed someone to learn me something like windusrf or kitesurf or snowboard or skiing. not even $1. not beacuse i don't want to spend money or something. just because beauty of all those sports for me is to learn, read, ask, prepare for danger, cope with it and everything. sometime you fail, i got 4 stitches while learning on my own. but i do not care, that's fun factor for me :)

while being noob, but good noob. talking about idiot ruining every other's session and scaring people around, you'll make some friends for sure. in no time if they see you stuck with something, i guarantee that someone will give you advice for no reason at all, and no money at all. that's good, that's what colleagues do :)

cbulota said..

1950 said..
i would never ever payed someone to learn me something like windusrf or kitesurf or snowboard or skiing.

English isn't my first language, but I did pay for someone to teach it to me. It was worth it.

Hahaha, neither is mine and i did pay something to someone to learn me long time ago. I don't give a **** about how did he succeed, i will not write english poetry.

Dude, it's very bad to pull things like this out of content. i would be happy to have opportunity to work as kite/snow instructor as you do and to have a people willing to pay me for some lessons. But i live in small country in mediterranean. Average salary here is almost 1/3 price of brand new kite, kite/snow instructors who are making it's living with that are very rare. So i can say i'm privileged to be one of ~15 locals in my area who do actually kite.

full time kite/snow instructor is possible only in some countries. I'm happy that somewhere it exist. Don't be angry on me because i do not like paying to support freestyle type sports instructors but life is not same everywhere as in Your country.