oh, what the Hell... I'll just post it here.
Dear Novice School Instructor,
Thanks very much for volunteering to help us with the novice school! In return, you’ll get: one free autox, a whole bunch of runs at the novice school, and the satisfaction that goes with helping the students and the club.
This school is intended to be 1) SAFE, 2) FUN, 3) A great learning experience for EVERYONE involved. Please keep this in mind at all times.
The site will open at 7:30AM on Saturday morning. The course will have been set up on Friday, and will be open for instructor runs from when the gate opens until around 8:45AM. This time is for familiarizing yourself with the courses, not for going 11/10ths. Remember that if you hit a bunch of cones, the next instructor through the course may get an initial run that is totally different from the course he or she sees the next time through. If the event chairs see instructors hitting multiple cones in the morning, those instructors will be asked to either calm down or park their cars until the course is open for fun runs during the lunch break. After you have all driven the course, please discuss it with the other instructors. We will have some new instructors out there, so I want to make sure that anyone who has questions gets them answered before they get into a car with a student.
We will be trying to minimize the time spent standing around and maximize the time students spend on course, so the event chairs will be cracking the whip to keep things on schedule. There will be a brief drivers’ meeting at 9AM, where students will be paired up with instructors by experience level. You will then take your students on as many course walks as you can fit into 30 minutes (should be plenty, as the course will be short). Try to get them to memorize where the course goes before they drive it – I know some people just won’t be able to, but if we try this we’ll know who’s going to need extra attention before they start driving. Don’t get into too much detail yet, but try to explain how to enter & exit each element, where you should be, where you shouldn’t be, etc. Make sure you encourage questions during the course walks!
The students will begin running at 10AM. Make sure to ask them to describe the course while sitting in line before the first run. If they are unsure about anything, please know the course well enough yourself to be able to help them. We will hopefully be switching workers on the fly as we do at regular autoxes, so please help the students get to where they need to be on time.
We will have 5 worker stations on the course. If you are not riding in a car, please go help the students work the course – the last thing we need is more novices who don’t know how to work! : ( You may unfortunately have to babysit a few of them, but the two main goals are to help them understand the role of a course worker and to be able to watch and learn from the mistakes or successes of the students who are driving.
After all of the students have finished their runs, we will break for lunch, hopefully around noon. Christine will be providing lunches (subs, chips, dessert, drinks), which are free for the instructors. You have a choice of ham, turkey or roast beef – please email her at
christinemallen@hotmail.com to place your order. Some members of our novice class of 2005 will be holding a seminar on driver prep, car prep, and how to keep getting faster during lunch, so if you want to stick around and make fun of them – I mean help them out – feel free. If you want to go play on the courses, feel free to do that. Just remember to pick up after yourselves. : )
After lunch, we will reverse the course and time everyone – this will be run just like a regular autox, except the plan is to just hand out post-it notes with the times on them – just trying to keep things simple. This means changing workers on the fly again, so help the students be where they need to be. They will hopefully get 4 timed runs each, so try to keep them calm and help them improve on every run. If you feel after the morning runs that there is nothing else you can teach your student, please ask a more senior instructor to ride with him or her. If you are a senior instructor, and you feel that your student has absorbed his or her limit for the day, feel free to sign him or her off after one or two runs on the afternoon course.
After the students have all completed their 4 runs in the “P” you will be taking them for ride-alongs. This is another good time to not hit every cone on the course, by the way.
Any student will be able to ride with any instructor at this point. Also, any of the less-experienced instructors are encouraged to take this opportunity to ride with a more experienced instructor, if you’ve both already taken a couple of students for rides. If you learn something that may be valuable to your student, please share it. If you don’t have anyone in your passenger seat, please wait until you do before pulling into line to run.
If you have any questions, let one of us know.
Thanks!
Kevin Allen
kmaphotog@hotmail.comChristine Allen
christinemallen@hotmail.comCosby Wood
1corranhorn@gmail.comIf anybody wants to add some helpful tips for the newbie instructors, please feel free.
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