I’d missed the previous lesson because I was away and came back thinking – uh oh, am I gonna forget?! However it was so nice when I stepped on the ice and everything felt great. I practised all of my stage 2 weaknesses (in particular the two foot turns) and they felt pretty good and I realised I wasn’t even thinking about falling over. I spoke to someone else in my class who said the class was now ridiculously full and people were being held back from moving up from Stage 1 at the moment, so I felt hopeful that the teacher would be looking to pass people today. I haven’t had the best experience with teacher in the last few weeks, she just tells us what item to practise and leaves us to practise each for 5-10 minutes during the lesson and rarely gives regular feedback.
She spent a lot of this week’s lesson doing much of the same, but sitting on the side for half of it chatting to someone off rink. She would then get us to go one at a time to show the skill and be assessed, but half the time I would look at her and she was barely watching some people as they went off to demonstrate theirs for assessment.
I've been following along with your coach woes on your blog and I'd say that, from the sounds of things, you've just got a bit of a bad apple. Every profession has good and bad individuals and it just goes to show you can do a lousy job and still get by in the world just fine. What this person might not be appreciating is that this is her opportunity to show you what a great coach she is in case you wanted to get a coach for private lessons further down the line. What she shows you now will affect your judgement at that point so her performance now is potentially losing her a future customer.
She said “remind me of your name again?”!!! In the moment I was still pretty disheartened I hadn’t passed and didn’t really focus on what was important there – she didn’t even know my name one minute after the lesson had ended. She then told me I needed to “work on my weaker side” of the 2-foot turns, even though I always actively practise and do both and on the assessment she said to everyone “do your two foot turns, I don’t care which side you turn on”.
However the more I think about the whole interaction, I realise the main point is she didn’t even know my name (despite being in her class for 6 weeks now) so how could she even have assessed me properly that day? The fact she had to look at the ipod to tell her what was holding me back was the second the class finished has made me think she gave me a really generic answer as an excuse. Regardless of knowing my name or not, she would have roughly known there and then what it was holding me back.
This may sound bizarre, but I've found that skating coaches, particularly in group lessons, have
atrocious memories for peoples' names and even what level of skill the group is at. My group was frequently asked by almost all of our regular Skate UK coaches whether we'd done X exercise before, or whether we'd started Y move yet, though I admit that it's pretty embarrassing she couldn't say off the top of her head, directly after your lesson with her, what it was you needed to improve. If I had to defend the name thing, it's possible that because your rink structures the group lessons by breaking people into each individual level of Skate UK then learning someone's name when they're just gonna move on in a few weeks (particularly if the coach is kinda lazy) might seem like a bit of effort.
I don't know how true this is, but I get the impression that Skate UK group lessons aren't given a huge amount of attention by coaches, who I suspect aren't paid that well for running them, so they tend to focus more on their private lessons. I can understand their position and don't blame them for this, but, again, their performance affects their future business so it's up to them how they want to come across.
Now I’ve written it all out, it does sound like the most trivial thing in the world so I apologise for the rant – writing is good therapy! At the time I just felt super disappointed for not passing when I felt ready, not being given anything constructive to help me and as a student, completely ignored and unimportant. Especially as my friend who did pass said they were surprised they passed and didn’t even feel ready, but was told “don’t worry, we need to make space in the classes and move people through”.
Am I taking this to heart a bit too much? Probably, it’s only a class! But does anyone also think this whole interaction seemed a little off too? Hoping this is just a one off instructor and other teachers take a little more time and interest in adult students as I really haven’t enjoyed this stage for these reasons.
As a counselling student, I can confirm that sharing is indeed very therapeutic and writing it out yourself knowing that others are going to read it does help to organise your thoughts and see the issues more clearly
I suspect that you're unlikely to be in this group class long enough to warrant making any real fuss out of it. If you thought you were going to be in it for a very long time (most of a year) then it might be worth saying something to the administration, but I suspect you'll find that, even if progress seems a little slow at the minute, in relative skating terms then you'll be through it soon enough I imagine.