Why to Start Early: An Example from My Youth

When I got my first job at the age of fifteen, I’d already had seven years of volunteer experience. I didn’t know that this was unusual at the time – after all, my siblings and many of my friends had this too. I’ve since realized not only was it unusual, it was awesome.

For some time, my family has been running a learn-to-ice-skate program in Schenley Park, PA. (I’ll be colloquially calling it Schenley from here on out. It’s what we call it in my house.) In many respects, it’s a pretty standard learn-to-skate thing: we’ve got 10 lessons over 10 weeks from December to February, our instructors are volunteers from my skating club, we teach anybody over the age of 3, and we follow the standard United States Figure Skating (USFS) approved curriculum, with minor variation.

The only notable difference is that we have no age prerequisite to be a teacher. Our only prerequisite is skating skill: we require instructors to have passed the pre-preliminary field moves test, which basically just makes sure our instructors are much better skaters than the students they’re teaching.

This means that we regularly have instructors who are as young as 6 or 7. You may think this is a recipe for disaster and chaos, but actually, both our program and the kids get a ton of benefit from this arrangement.

When we take on any new instructor, of any age, we start them teaching “tots” – toddlers <5. We frequently have a large number of tots, who are completely incapable of doing anything as a cohesive group, so having as many instructors as possible teaching tots is important. However, it takes almost zero skill to play with toddlers, and that’s essentially what we’re doing (just on the ice, the goal is to get the kids used to being on skates).

As it turns out, 6 and 7-year-olds are actually brilliant for this. If you pair them up one-to-one, a bunch of young children teaching a bunch of even younger children actually works incredibly well, for a number of reasons.

First of all, children are so much more capable than modern society gives them credit for. If you expect a young kid to be responsible enough to help teach tots to skate, they’ll rise to the challenge. I’ve seen this over and over again, with so many kids. They come to us at the age of 6, 7, 8, hesitant and not knowing what to do, having no experience with being taken seriously, and we say “there’s your group, go and help teach them how to fall properly”. And they do it! Not only do they do it, they do it really well!

In a way, children are better at teaching tots than adults, because they themselves were tots not too long ago, so it’s much easier for them to intuitively understand how best to teach them. Adults have more capacity for complex thought, and we can frequently let that cloud our perception of young childrens’ behavior, attributing much more intent to childrens’ decisions than the children actually had. The children themselves don’t have that problem.

In addition to giving kids responsibility from very early on, volunteering at Schenley lets them improve their own basic skating skills by virtue of teaching them. The best way to learn is, as they say, to teach, and these kids (who are all ice skaters) are teaching ice skating fundamentals.

Still, I think the coolest part of the way we run Schenley comes after someone’s been at it for a while. As a young kid gets more experience with teaching tots (and simultaneously gets older and acquires more skating skill), they can take on larger classes, higher levels, and more responsibility. They go from teaching one toddler to 5, 10, 20 kids; from teaching how to fall down and stand back up to more advanced skills like gliding on one foot, jumping, and skating backward; and from merely showing up and helping teach the lesson to helping organize materials and coordinating with other instructors.

And after having worked with us for years, a 16-year-old can look back and say, with complete and total honesty, that they have ten years of experience working somewhere. At a time when many young adults are just starting their first jobs, a teen having an entire decade of work experience, even as a volunteer, is huge. Since entry-level jobs are an area where soft skills are arguably more important than literally anything else, the kids who’ve worked with us are more prepared than most others.

I don’t just see kids doing this. I was a kid doing this. And honestly, working as a volunteer skating coach for so long was one of the best things I’d done with my childhood. I had the opportunity to do something valuable from a very young age, and I’m immensely grateful.

But it wasn’t anything special about Schenley. Coaching ice skating doesn’t magically create capable children and accomplished young adults. The important part was starting kids at doing something useful (that they could handle, of course) very young, and then progressively giving them more responsibility as they could handle it.

If you have kids, try to find a place like Schenley. Or, even better, make one. Very young kids can do household chores, address envelopes, and organize files. The key is to not give them make-work. The work needs to actually be useful, even in a small way; they will know their work really matters to somebody or not. And as they’re able to do more useful things, let them. Maybe a three-year-old can’t do the dishes, but a ten-year-old certainly can. Lastly, don’t worry if they’re in over their head a little bit. If they can’t really do the thing, as their parent, you’re there to help them out. But on the other hand, you don’t know for sure. Maybe they’ll surprise you. I think fifteen-year-old me surprised my mom by building Speset.

If you run a volunteer organization, seriously consider removing age requirements if a skill requirement is all you need. Young kids are an immensely under-utilized resource in modern society, and you can benefit greatly from utilizing them. And perhaps more importantly, the kids themselves will benefit from it. After all, the next generation is our future, and all that jazz.

See you tomorrow!

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