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Who teaches people how to curl at your club? In many clubs, it’s an ongoing challenge to find people who are interested, qualified and available to teach new curlers. That also applies to those who coach and instruct young people. In this episode, I interview Delores McCallum, Tim McChesney & Helen Garside of the Oakville Curling Club in Oakville, Ontario. They were all involved with in establishing Oakville’s “Instructor Co-Op,” an instruction team that was founded to solve some of the challenges they experienced when it came to recruiting and training new coaches.

NOTE: This conversation was recorded in March 2022.

Some of the topics we discuss:
* Why was the Instructor Co-Op founded? (3:05 )
* What kind of person makes a good instructor? (5:46 )
* What image is the Co-Op trying to convey? (12:34 )
* How did they pick the colour of their jackets - and what lesson did that teach Delores about the Co-Op? (19:41 )
* Why are the coaches paid? (22:37 )
* A summary of youth programs at Oakville this season (28:48 )
* When did they realize that the Co-Op was a good idea? (31:44 )
* What advice would they have for clubs who want to start their own instruction teams? (36:03 )

Links to the resources mentioned in this episode:

Oakville (Ont.) Curling Club Web site
https://oakvillecurlingclub.com/

Adult Learn To Curl ("ALTC") Program via Ontario Curling Council Web site
https://ontariocurlingcouncil.com/blog/club-development-2/adult-learn-to-curl-altc-program/

Helen's E-mail Address: helen.garside@mac.com

Follow our podcast on Twitter: @kidscurling

Glenn Gabriel is an NCCP-certified curling coach who lives in Pickering, Ontario, Canada. He has been the coordinator of the Little Rocks (U12) program at East York Curling Club in Toronto since 2011. If you have a question or feedback on the podcast, send us an e-mail at coachingkidscurling@gmail.com

The intro and outro music is "Golden Sunrise (Instrumental Version)"
https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Josh_Woodward/The_Wake_1790/JoshWoodward-TheWake-NoVox-10-GoldenSunrise

By Josh Woodward
https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Josh_Woodward

Licensed under CC BY 3.0
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

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