About

“Bad AdrC! Bad, Bad AdrC! What have you done again???”

That was my first reaction after coming up with this blog in a sleep deprived state at 1am on a working night only to delete it and redo it all in the next day.

What is this blog about? As the title suggests, it is my humble contribution to the climbing community to start a space where i can share on my instructing experience so far. My journey from a climber to a climbing instructor has been accidental to say the least. No formal training, all alone (me frens all didn’t want to go for the ITC course with me…), no idea what i was doing, grappling with whether i should certify that blur sotong or not, figuring out how to differentiate between static and semi-static ropes (face it you also not sure!), trying to convince climbers that letting your friend who doesn’t know how to belay belay you is really a bad idea… This was my journey ever since i got my SMF Instructor License back in 2006. So here i am now trying to play my part as a member of the climbing community and try to give back a bit through this blog. As i share what some ideas and thoughts on how to instruct.

Now this is not a blog about climbing. I think there are enough of those around. This is a blog about how to teach climbing. I am not an expert as the title can attest to it, but i do have a lifelong interest in looking at how people learn and how we can teach. Pedagogy they call it, instructional design to some. I spend my free time coming up with new ideas how to teach this portion of the course to new climbers or observing (and critiquing) how new instructors teach. 😉 This blog aims to share some of these ideas so that instructors alike can take them and modify them for their own lessons. So feel free to pick up any tips you find useful and leave any comments or feedback in the comments portion.

The accidental instructor climbs on…

“Are you here to deliver a lesson, or are you here to teach?”