Please enjoy this video and the bonus video at the end of this post 🙂
I’m always impressed with the folks that come to my instructor classes and most of them come from camps. Our archery instructor classes are intense, fun, interactive and hands on. My instructor students have been working hard at there camps getting the camp ready for the campers to arrive before they show up for my classes and my instructor students are usually a little tired but also enthusiastic. Some of my instructor students may have just flown in from another country and are battling jet lag as well and sometimes a second language. Most of our instructor classes are outside, so it can be hot and humid, cold and damp as well as lots of bugs, but I don’t do rain.
We give the instructor students a lot of information to absorb in a relatively short period of time and then they have to prove to us that they have learned and understood the basic concepts of teaching archery, safety and much more.
Thank you to all of the hosts camps!! Your food is great and you do such awesome work for all of us, thank you 🙂 .
Below are a few pictures form our 2015 instructor classes.
This group had mostly returning, instructors so it was wonderful to see how much they had improved over the last couple of years.
Sometimes the pictures just say it all. Great fun with everyone 🙂 .
The archery class in the above 2 pictures: We were battling day light and then the bugs came out in force. The instructor students did a great job of staying focused, learning and teaching each other despite the attack of the bugs and having worked a full day before they started my class.
Ohh my goodness that was an awesome sunset, my camera did not do justice. That evening I found everyone on that porch. And do you see the 2 group pictures that look almost the same? LOL I had a little fun with the camera, so we have too many people in one of those pictures. And early in the morning (on the same porch as where we watched the sunset) I was going over my lesson plan and writing up certification cards when I looked up and I saw this turkey that was strutting his stuff as he was trying to get the attention of the female turkeys.
Students observing other instructor students teach.
Students taking the written test
My home away from home for a few days.
In the picture above you can see my van on the archery range, I took the picture at my cabin. I was up early one morning and I saw a family of geese 🙂 . I sleep awesome when I’m teaching a lot, but I wake up when the sun gets up, during the month of June… Just a little too early lol.
If you look closely at the picture with just the one target, you will see a fox in the background. We switched archery fields so the fox could hang out, we all thought he was sleeping.
And I like the sign of “I CAN AND I WILL” That is powerful!!
Above picture was taken during a May archery instructor class and it got very cold out. But none of us would have minded, but the temperature drop took us all by surprise as the temperature just dipped during this archery instructor class.
Beautiful archery days for the camp in the above picture, though it did get a little hot on day 2.
It was raining cats and dogs at this camp… And we were all very grateful for the use of the inside space for the archery class 🙂
And then somewhere in the middle of all my instructor teaching in New England I helped teach a level 3 instructor class with Level 5 Coach Dee Falks in Metropolis IL. I had the craziest travel day trying to get to IL and I did fly into Tennessee and I didn’t get more than 2 hours of sleep. But so much fun and so worth the trip. Though, it felt strange teaching an instructor class in an air conditioned building!! We were outside a little while on day two shooting arrows.
A little Bonus: Level 5 Coach Dee Falks
Rather than just shooting and shooting with no pressure, Coach Dee makes it fun, and creates an artificial intensity that increases the heart rate of his archers, to simulate the feeling of a competition. The game that Coach Dee plays with his high performance private students is that they have to meet a certain criteria, and if they don’t meet that criteria, then the athlete may be doing some push ups or splitting wood between end,s which creates some of that intensity of a competition.
PS. Please enjoy the below video with Coach Dee talking about his thoughts on Coaching Philosophy. When you click on the video, it will be like you were transplanted briefly into the level 3 archery instructor class.