Message for Dinghy Instructors: Saturday Morning Lessons Improvements

[Stephanie Evans]

Hello wonderful instructors! Thank you for all your work making all our lessons--especially our Saturday morning lessons--go so well as an all-volunteer org! 

Context: on Saturdays, we're routinely seeing 80+ students, often with 50-60 signed up by 10. We struggle to teach more than about 60, even if every eligible boat is out.

I've observed several Saturdays and would like to propose some process changes to help you as instructors focus on on-the-water teaching and, as a bonus, get as many students on the water as possible. 

Idea: get a sense of who is planning to teach each week. Please take 2 mins to fill out this form if you plan to teach saturday 8/1 (or are a maybe) - there's open space for feedback, too. 

We’ll see if we can consistently predict who is coming (or not!)

What to expect this Saturday:

• We’ll now have 2 coordinators for peak summer Saturdays (main one, plus float--Owen is lessons coordinator, John Bon is float this week--thanks both!)

• Timing: Instructors showing up by 9:30/10 is super helpful! 

• Alt: 11:30ish arrival to relieve first wave instructors who want to wrap early. 

• On the club status page during any lesson time, scroll down to tides info and you can see how many instructors v. students there are and the ‘waitlist’. We max out at about 15-18 instructors at any one time. Consider it your personal bat signal 🦇 if you’re on the fence about teaching! 

The order you do things as an instructor matters to cut down wait time for you, students, and idle boats (and this is CSC so as always, we want to accommodate a variety of teachers/styles!): 

1. Please check in with lesson coordinators when you arrive-- whenever possible, they will help you get paired with a boat that is rigged/close to rigged so you can just get dressed and teach! They'll help get your students ready.

2. Check back in when you're dressed/ready and get your boat assignment and meet your students. Hopefully both will be 'all ready' for you to go sail or very close. 

3. We'll have separate land lessons, so just do 'enough' on land to make sure you're ready to sail safely with students, but save in-depth rigging or land lessons for those teaching on shore. 

4. Please aim to give each student 20-30 minutes direct instruction time and return to dock for next wave of students (or to let next teacher step in). We ideally need 2 (sometimes 3) loads within the lesson timeframe to meet our eager student demand! If this doesn't work for you, let the coordinator know your preferred alternate sail plan. 

5. When you're done, let the coordinator know (or go into tablet) and click 'done for day'. 

From 9 - 10:30ish, coordinators, students and early teachers will be helping get boats dropped so lessons can start as close to 10 as possible normal weeks, and 10:30 this week. 

Thank you for all you give to the club! Hopefully this helps Saturdays be even more fun, stay low-stress, and valuable for all. Please share any feedback on what's working v. not!

Steph

Rear Commodore, Sailing Instruction