Skate Instructor Diary - Andy

My Busman’s Holiday! This time of year, having a full time job severely limits the amount of time available for teaching inline skate lessons. Realistically this is limited to weekends. With this in mind in was great to learn that my application to work at the Ice Rink at the Natural History Museum had been successful. So last Wednesday, I joined several other wannabe Ice Marshals and Customer Service assistants at the ice rink for an afternoon of training before the grand VIP opening later that evening. It wasn’t long before all of the information gathering and familiarisation to the new surroundings was over and the evening session began. The first thing that stood out was just how different the ice was to that that I am used to at Guildford Spectrum Ice Rink. After a relatively modest spell for this time of year, it was proving difficult to actually get the ice frozen, resulting in a fairly wet surface during the afternoon. Partly to do with that, as there simply wasn’t a great thickness of ice, it was not possible to use the Zamboni (that’s the ice tractor that scrapes the surface of the ice to rid it of debris) this meant that the surface was really quite rough. Add to this the fact that the rink sits beneath several large trees all intent on shedding their leaves tied with a breeze and it was a certainty that most of the first night would be spent leaf gathering!

As it turned out I had a really fun evening, getting used to my role and responsibilities, meeting my new colleagues and getting my ice skating legs back! Although I have been devoting most of my time recently to inline skating, in truth I have always been an ice skater at heart. But unlike inline skating, I have no formal qualification to teach skating on ice. My new employers assured me this would not be a problem as by far the majority of potential new customers would be absolute beginners to ice and would be looking to a confident skater to give them a helping hand rather than a formal teaching lesson. We would soon find out – I was booked for my first private lesson on Saturday morning! As it turned out my apprehension was unfounded. My student was a very nervous French mother of two, whose children were quite good ice skaters and had persuaded her to bring them along. In fact she was more nervous than me! In no time at all mum was free skating around the rink with the children shouting mildly amusing words of encourage…in French so it might have been at my expense!

Basic teaching methods for inline skating seemed to work just fine on the ice; balance is a little harder to grasp as not only does the ice offer less friction, and therefore the skates move more freely, but the blades are quite heavily rockered which (unlike inline skates which are flat) means there is a tendency at first to fall forward or back ‘off’ the skate With my confidence growing by the hour, I was beginning to really look forward to Sunday, and more successful lessons. And so it proved when my first of the day saw two really fun young ladies Amanda and Merci relatively dancing around the rink by the end Alas, we all have to come down to earth with a bang, and so it proved when an over confident me was approached by my boss to say there had been a hiccup with the bookings and as a result I was to take a class of 8 nine year olds followed by a further group of 12 celebrating an eleventh birthday, horror!!! Its not so easy finding a quiet place in a 20 x 50m ice rink with 250+ skaters just to assess your new charges!

In the end with a (massive) hand from my colleague Tara we managed to pull it off and send all 20 of the children home very happy and feeling they had all achieved new goals on the ice! I really did enjoy last week and am hoping the rest of my winter season goes as well. But you know, underneath it all, I can’t wait for Spring, the sunshine, and me getting back to teaching on my roller blades……its better for my weak old heart! Now when is my next shift…And one other thing, many many thanks to Nina who has volunteered to take all of my Skatefresh private lessons whilst I am away on my busmans holiday!