Two Blades

After serving for two years on ACA’s River Kayak Committee, I’m proud to announce that I’ve been elected the 2012-2014 Chair of the Committee, the body responsible for developing curriculum for skills courses, assessments and instructor certification criteria for River Kayak (moving rivers through Class IV whitewater) for ACA. The Committee’s chartered goals are (to quote):

ACA SEIC Meeting

“A. To serve as an advisory committee on the best practices to the SEIC [ACA's Safety Education and Instruction Council] regarding river kayaking.
B. To promote paddlesport as an enjoyable, lifestyle activity, and encourage its
growth through the development of recreational and educational programs.
C. To foster the development of river kayaking paddling skills through the
establishment and maintenance of an instructional curriculum consistent with
ACA SEIC [National Instruction Committee] guidelines and as accepted by SEIC
and the Board of Directors or SEI staff as appropriate.
D. To develop an instructional format, train and certify instructors in river kayaking as accepted by SEIC and the Board of Directors or staff, as appropriate. To provide interested students with information.
E. To oversee and monitor the standards of being an I/IT/ITE in River Kayaking as accepted by SEIC or staff as appropriate.”

My first goals will be to get the group organized and fully involved, including contacting ACA Division chairs to insure each Division has representation on the Committee. As we’ve done for the past two years, we’ll be reviewing existing curriculum to help insure it represents the current best practices of River Kayak Instructors, Instructor Trainers and Instructor Trainer Educators and that the material is consistent with approaches by other ACA disciplines.

Along the way, I hope to significantly improve grassroots involvement with the Committee by all ACA River Kayak instructors. To facilitate that communication, I’ve created a website specifically for the River Kayak Committee for use by “RK” instructors as an information and communication tool. That site is www.acariverkayak.org.

We’ll try to keep all instructors informed of activities and direction of the committee but also hope that instructors will use the two-way street of the website to contact us about their needs, problems, solutions as they relate to ACA and application of its educational programs. In short: Get Involved!