A Case Study on New Hire Training w/ Rick Rauch from Telluride

First Chair: PSIA-AASI Podcast · Oct 7, 2026 · 22m

What if new-hire training focused less on telling instructors what to do and more on helping them discover how to teach? First Chair catches up with Rick Rauch, training manager at Telluride Ski Area, to explore a different approach to preparing new instructors for their first lessons. Drawing from ecological dynamics and constraints-based learning, Rick explains how Telluride shifted away from lecture-heavy training and instead challenged new hires to help create their own teaching progressions. Rick breaks down the idea of moving instructors from “copy” to “choose” to “create,” how trainers…