Trainer as Trainee

by Brian Bateson

I have a passion for learning and working in the outdoors and I am lucky enough to be self-employed and running a company facilitating both passions. I enjoy passing on my knowledge to others, both as a paid professional and sometimes mentor. I am motivated by lifelong education and love upskilling existing skills or learning new ones.

When delivering a training course, I sometimes talk to candidates about a concept of learning stages called Enjoy, Explore, Embed, Excel, which I heard on a podcast once. People should learn better if they are having fun and are enjoying being on the course, can explore or play around with some of the skills they are being taught, and by making small errors or having the freedom to “explore” they will start to embed the skills. Only when these skills are embedded properly, can a learner expect to excel at them.

In January I did my Winter Mountain Leader training with Sandy Paterson at Scotch On The Rocks Guiding in Scotland and I thought it might be an interesting task to look at the training course through the lens of the four E’s model, to see if it held weight on this occasion.

Did I enjoy the course?

Absolutely. The trainers during the week were Jonty, Dave and Kev. Each one brought their own style and personality to the course, which was great. Their passion for the outdoors was evident and they made learning easy. They kept things simple, made questioning approachable, and kept the atmosphere fun. Or as fun as it could be given the environment. This might not sound like a hard job to do as I sit here and type this in my warm living room, but then I remind myself of how harsh the conditions were on some days of the course. Bitter cold winds and very low temperatures could have made facilitating a course like this quite hard.

The other trainees on the course were great fun too, a nice mix of people with a range of experience. I shared accommodation with Bill, an old friend from another course, and with his positive outlook he is always fun to be around.

Explore?

So how much “exploring” can you let a student do, when the classroom itself is a dynamic environment and objective dangers exist in abundance? Quite a lot it seemed. Many of y skills in the winter environment are self-taught and not used that frequently - a recipe for poor skill levels. What I really liked about the style of instruction on the course, though, was that it was kept simple. I guess this has a lot to do with communication in winter being tougher (lots of hoods and layers on) and the need to keep moving throughout the day. I took a lot from that itself.

I was a classic over-teacher when I first became an instructor and have worked hard to rectify this. With each new skill to learn, we were provided with very clear explanations of what was expected, reinforced with very clear demonstrations, and then we were free to practise these skills ourselves. This is obviously where “exploration” occurred but also, interestingly, where I found self-coaching occurred. With such clear and concise instructions and then given the time to play around with skills, it was obvious when I wasn’t performing that skill properly, but it was also more obvious how to fix or improve that skill myself.

Feedback from the instructors was then positive or further coaching was given, either on an individual or group basis, but most of all we were free to experiment with skill development. The new layers of Myelin wrapping all the time! This worked well on the snowcraft days when time spent doing deep practice was important. I’m extremely glad they kept us on a tighter leash during elements of the course like night navigation. My ability to adapt my existing skills to the snowy dark environment wasn’t going as smoothly as I’d hoped! I tried to not beat myself up too much about this, but the frustration of getting legs wrong was starting to exhaust my own patience levels. Much more exploration needed here, before any embedding.

Embed?

Repetition and deep practice are where embedding takes place. So how much embedding can take place over six days when there is a multitude of new skills to learn? I was a little unclear about this as I left for home. I certainly felt like I had performed better than I thought I would on the training course, but then as I write that, I think about why is there such a need to “perform” on a training course? That’s just ego and wishful thinking. Or at least in my particular stage of development in the winter environment it is. I understand some people came on the training course who were much more experienced in winter than I was, perhaps using the training as validation for progressing to assessment or as a mock assessment. I shouldn’t have felt the need to perform, I should have used all that time to soak up as much learning as possible.

So how could I know how much I soaked up? Well shortly afterwards I got the chance to test some of the skills on a trip. I was in Northern Finland consolidating for my Winter International Mountain Leader and doing some personal ice climbing afterwards in Norway. Now Nordic cross-country skiing and ice climbing are not very closely related to Scottish winter hillwalking, but there are a lots of areas of cross-over too. Evidence of a long running crown wall off in the distance as we skied. A possible terrain trap that needed consideration on a return home one day. The use of a hybrid style of crampon as being the most effective on a steep section of snow. These were no longer things that went unnoticed or got dealt with in a “bash it out” style of ignorance and effort. Instead, there was a thought process to apply, a consideration to be made. An embedding of skills taking place.

Excel?

In no way do I feel I am starting to excel at any of these skills. That would be unrealistic and even not that pleasing. I don’t want to feel like these are skills that come easy. Hard fought wins tend to be the most pleasing. There is a lot more work to be done and a lot more time to be spent in the winter environment. But for an environment that I don’t get to spend a lot of time in, the evident progression is pleasing. To those that have completed their Summer Mountain Leader, would I recommend doing the Winter Mountain Leader Training? Absolutely. Would I recommend Sandy and the folk at Scotch On The Rocks Guiding? Absolutely. New skills, new environments, fun and professional course providers and more reasons to spend time in the beautiful Scottish hills in Winter. What’s not to like!

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