Personal
A little background and personal assessment of your skills and goals.
What do you think you do well as a paddler? What do you do well as an instructor?
What do you need to work on as a paddler? What do you need to work on as an instructor? What are you doing to work on these areas?
What do you think are the key things, in general, advanced boaters need work on?
What two things would you most like to take away from this course?
Why do you want this L5 certification/training?
How long have you been teaching in Class II-III (Level 4 Instructor)? How many classes per year are you teaching in Class II-III? If you are updating, please add the information for years teaching and frequency for L5 level.
Judgement
Answers to these questions will largely be based on experience. Please share in detail past experiences that were pinnacle moments in your development as a river leader and educator.
Please write a short essay on a river-rescue experience you were directly involved with on class III or above. You should include reference to things that you felt went well, actions you and your group could reflect on to improve, what could have prevented the incident from occurring, and what skills amongst you and your group do you feel were in deficit?
How do you describe to a group a decision process and choices that have acceptable consequences?
What are your guiding principles in class organization. How would they be different on Class II vs Class IV?How would you recognize that in a class III-IV venue the group has the potential to get spread out very quickly (especially in the event of rescue). What other variables need be considered?
What rescue methods do you rely on? How much risk are you putting yourself in with those methods? How do you communicate to your students the enhanced risk for not only them, but also for yourself?
Physics
Probably the only concrete answers we can truly give to a student pertain to physics, however, those physics play differently in regards to equipment and biomechanical disposition. Keeping that in mind, please answer the questions below.
When entering an eddy, what determines whether the boat will spin upstream, downstream or not at all?
Why does your whitewater kayak not want to go “straight?” What forces are affecting a kayak moving forward? Why does a craft like a sea kayak paddle better in a straight line?
What are all the different ways a kayak can move? Think of different applications for each of these.
As simply as possible, explain the differences in paddle/body physics between the C to C and Sweep Roll? Common degradations of each? Pros and cons to each?
L5 instructor criteria/skills assessment employs a vague description, “blending strokes during maneuvers.” In what ways do we combine strokes, why do we do so, and what strokes have you combined in your own personal paddling and where?
In addition, "advanced edging techniques" is a descriptor in instructor criteria and curriculum. What are advanced edging techniques vs. ones you teach at an L4 level?
