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Andrea Mead Lawrence, Burke Mountain Academy, Holderness School, Vail Ski and Snowboard Academy, Winter Sports School
The over 30-something crowd can remember the emergence of shaped skis. When I first took a run on a shaped ski, I shouted to myself, “this is a different sport!” When my former college teammate said, “I am all set with my 203cm slalom skis,” I immediately responded: “No you’re not. You have to try these.” We all ski and race differently now.
The world of high school study and high level ski racing could be on the edge of a similar radical change in the online learning landscape. But first, let me give you a bit of school and skiing history as background.
Early Olympic medalists such as Andrea Mead Lawrence and Jimmy Heuga lived in ski towns and thus had the advantage of lots of on-snow miles. In 1951, Don Henderson built a slalom hill, jump and nordic loop on the Holderness School property giving kids who didn’t live in ski towns an opportunity to ski every day. Not coincidentally, from the 1956 Olympics through the 1980 Olympics there was a Henderson-coached athlete on every Winter Olympic team. In 1970, Martha Coughlin, from Massachusetts, asked Warren Witherell to start a school where she could focus on ski racing. Burke Mountain Academy has since educated 33 Olympians and two gold medalists. Martha’s initiative spawned the era of U.S. ski academies; almost all of the Sochi alpine Olympians attended a ski academy. Then in 1994, the Winter Sports School in Park City decided to flip the academic schedule so that elite snowsport athletes could focus on competition and training in the winter. Three of the Sochi medalists were Winter Sports School graduates. Recently in 2007, the Vail Ski and Snowboard Academy was created as the first public winter sports academy in the United States, providing high level academic and sport training without a tuition. VSSA presents a bold attempt to reduce the cost of high-level snowsports without sacrificing a vigorous academic program.
The common question in all of these initiatives was: “How do I ski every day and also get a vigorous high school education?” This query is the relentless challenge of all high-level snowsport athletes. Which brings us to 2014.
The US Ski and Snowboard Teams include approximately 30 high school age athletes in five different disciplines. These athletes spend close to 200 days on snow in the United States, in Chile and New Zealand, in Japan and Quebec, and in Alberta and Austria (to name a few). Their most intense competition season is right in the middle of the traditional school season. The student-athletes need a high school program that is mobile (can go anywhere), flexible (the work done on their schedule), and vigorous (to keep learning!) In today’s educational world, that is what online platforms want to provide. The USSA TEAM Academy’s online academic programs allow students to begin classes at any time of the year, work from anywhere, and complete a course in as little as six weeks or as long as 52 weeks. The curriculum is based on lessons learned and skills acquired, not on time served in a classroom. Coupled with face-to-face support, it’s a dynamic program that many schools are implementing around the world. On the results page, three TEAM Academy athletes competed in the Sochi Olympics and all of its graduates are enrolled in college.
Concurrently, hundreds of millions of dollars of research is being put into online learning at prestigious academic institutions such as Stanford Online High School, MITx, Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth, and Kahn Academy. Ironically, these high-end athletes are so busy in competition that they have to work in the cutting edge of educational research. I believe the big impact of the TEAM Academy program will be when we can develop and share mobile, flexible, vigorous and affordable academic paths for all students at all schools competing in high-level snowsports. The opportunity exists. Kahn Academy wants to “provide a free world-class education for anyone everywhere.” Let’s ride that high-speed quad.
It should be noted that I was born and bred in the traditional face-to-face teaching world. I was trained as a teacher under Ted Sizer and the Coalition of Essential Schools, and I spent over fifteen years teaching AP Modern European history to classrooms of fifteen students. I get the value of this teaching, but I also see its limits. Classroom teaching is great … when a student is with a great teacher and everyone learns at the same pace. Moving forward as an educator I am fascinated by the potential of these new programs as new models of more effective and less expensive education for all schools. I will share more in future posts.
I feel as if we are at edge of the shaped ski era of high school education. The value of online learning is coming, and it won’t be long until I say to a former teaching colleague: “You have to try this…”
–Please share your thoughts or questions. gmacomber@ussa.org