Another Reason the PSIA Certification Process Raises My Hackles

I passed my certification; PSIA's level-one certs are generally easy to pass.

I hate the cert process. It's critical to professional advancement in the industry, but success in the PSIA (and, for snowboarders, its sister organization, AASI) means buying in whole-heartedly to an entire worldview of the "proper" way to teach skiing, the underlying assumptions of which I substantially disagree with.

At the same time, each time I've gone through the certification process, I've found myself deeply humbled by what I witness from the other instructors participating in the exam. They devote great energy to becoming both better athletes and better teachers. They'll spend years working on improving their skills and their craft.

The end result? If they work very, very hard and reach the highest certification levels, they can, by working full-time, earn, at best, barely enough to scrape by.

Students pay handsomely for instruction--full-day private lessons at resorts around Colorado routinely cost more than $700. Instructors earn a small fraction of that. Skilled, dedicated labor in a field awash with money deserve better than to struggle to earn a living.