Today is one of those days that I have to remind myself that I get to have all this fun AND get paid - it was Black Mountain Day. In case you are not familiar with this local tradition, Black Mountain is the local ski mountain, and for one whole day we take the kids there (mostly for free to them) and we get to play. Most of the schools in the area take a day and hit the slopes. My job today: ski the trails and make sure the students were all being safe. The first day of spring brought us a beautiful day of spring skiing. A raced a few of my students down the bunny slope (and won!), I sprayed a few kids with some snow (and got sprayed back by a few), I went off "the kicker" jump, a table jump that kicks you in the air - and landed! Basically I played like a kid and got paid to do it.Now, today is not the first day that I have played like a kid on the slopes and gotten paid. I somehow landed the most amazing job this winter of taking students to the same mountain two afternoons a week to basically teach them how to ski and snowboard. A group of 30 students got free transportation to the mountain, lift tickets, and rentals for 10 weeks. These were afternoons where I again had to remind myself that I was getting paid to have all of the fun and laughs that I was having. I had one student who had to be brought down the trail the first day on a snowmobile because they could not ski, to being able to ski all by themselves. I had another student stand at the bottom of the lift for two days with her skis on because she didn't think she could ride the chairlift, today she was on the big trails making it down with her friends. This afterschool activity was paid for by the Pep and Access grants, and I certainly hope that they are able to do it again. The students learned how much fun skiing and snowboarding is, and have learned a new lifelong sport. I ended up looking forward to my afternoons on the slopes with them and it made the winter more enjoyable.
Enjoy ~SJ
