Six Adults in Two Hours on 150 Metres of Terrain

Decision: keep one group on one pitch, split by task rather than by person, and use the assistant inside your sight lines.

• 0-5 min: diagnostic lap. One run down the 150 m pitch in a line, 5-6 m spacing, no instruction. You are watching initiation mechanism (Marcus's full stop, Priya's shoulder pivot, the hip-dumper's left turn) and speed control.
• 5-12 min: stop and set one shared outcome. 'Finish every turn in balance on the new outside ski' - not 'carve', which only two of them can attempt and which excludes four people on a 12 degree slope.
• 12-15 min: task split in the same space. The assistant takes Priya and the two 'carvers' onto a corridor task (count the turn shape, no shoulder rotation, start from a slightly higher point). You keep Marcus and the hip-dumper on the flatter entry.

Why not physically split the group. The race closure means one narrow pitch is all you have; two separate locations on one 150 m slope means one group is out of sight, and the roller creates a blind spot. Duty of care beats the temptation to give the strong skiers better terrain. Tell the group why the plan is what it is - adults accept a constraint they can see, and resent one they cannot.

'Knees together' is not a missing fact; it is an old model tied to her identity as someone who was taught properly. Telling her to widen does two things: it attacks the belief directly, and it gives her a rule she cannot apply under load. She will widen for two turns and relapse the moment she gets tired or nervous.

Use conceptual change instead:

1. Make the old model fail on its own terms. Four turns with knees glued, four with a boot-width gap, on the same pitch. Ask which one let her hold the left turn. She needs a felt contradiction, not an argument.
2. Offer a simpler new model. 'The inside leg gets shorter, the outside leg gets longer.' That explains why glued knees make the hip drop into the turn.
3. Change the cue, not the concept. An external cue such as 'push the outside foot away from you' produces width without a lecture - she is solving a balance problem rather than policing her knees.
4. Expect relapse. Re-set the cue rather than re-teach the concept.

Two hours will not overwrite a thirty-year belief. A successful lesson is one where she now has a reason to doubt it and a cue that works when she remembers it.

Communication. Position yourself so she is on your left when you speak, with the wind behind you and your face out of the sun. Always stop facing the group rather than talking over your shoulder. Pair speech with a demonstration and a hand signal for the key instruction ('follow me', 'stop', 'spread out'), and check understanding by asking her to show you rather than asking 'got it?'. When the group is spread out, the hand signal is the primary channel for everyone - that also helps Marcus, who is anxious and may not absorb spoken instructions at speed.

Spacing on 150 m with a roller. The roller is a blind spot for anyone above it. Rule: nobody enters the pitch until the skier ahead has cleared the roller and is stopped. Use a count - three seconds after the person in front starts, and a raised pole as the 'clear' signal. Marcus, who stops dead, goes last so the group does not pile into him at the transition.

Why this matters pedagogically. Both the hearing aid and the roller produce the same failure mode: a student who does not receive or cannot act on the instruction in time. The fix for each is redundancy - visual signals and a physical spacing rule - rather than speaking louder.