President’s Message | Alex Chang

Team PSA – Your Team, Your Dream, and Your Pathway…

Dear friends and fellow coaches,

On behalf of your PSA family, I extend a hug, a smile, and a reminder to all of our members about the value you bring and the resilience you have shown in these unprecedented times. Another two months have passed since our last issue of PS Magazine and all of us have had to regroup, refocus, and reprioritize our season’s goals.

My last article spoke about framing probabilities and recognizing the good as well as the bad – a ‘mindfulness’ reminder to forgive ourselves and those around us for being less than perfect.

Today, I write you about the power of Teamwork and the power of Team PSA—yes, your team to support you in all your coaching aspirations and skating dreams. Remember, one season will not define us and with planning, follow through, and a large dose of patience, anything is still achievable. We sometimes have to refocus the lens and ask ourselves, ‘what can I do this season that will benefit me the next season and lay down the foundation for my success moving forward?’ This season is the perfect season to pause, reflect, refine, and re-frame.

When we re-frame and re-define ‘success’ beyond the immediate, we can begin to see and appreciate all the lessons we learn from struggle, from challenge, from adaptation, and from change. As an association, the PSA must always hold our core values while adapting to a changing world to best serve you, our members. I think that we, as coaches, also hold our core values while adapting our coaching practices to best serve our skaters. You see, it is the same for the association as it is for our members because we are of the membership, all working together as a Team to help elevate each other and share our knowledge and experience.

I write you today to remind you that your team, Team PSA, is working diligently and deliberately to recast our educational offerings, our mentorships and programs, our certifications, our exams, and our events to provide a pathway for your professional development. This plan is our Grand Education Plan (GEP for short), and the pandemic has in a way forced us to adopt many GEP strategies faster than we thought possible. "An integral part An integral part of the GEP meant re-imagining of the GEP meant and re-structuring many re-imagining and of our signature programs re-structuring many and events and to meet you where you are, in your of our signature homes… virtually. Following programs and events the success of our very first Virtual Summit in May 2020, and to meet you we launched our first Virtual where you are, in your Rating Exam Site in July homes… virtually.” and September 2020, and we will continue hosting these nearly every month until the next PSA Summit in 2021. Additionally, we will be hosting a Virtual Foundations of Coaching College (FCC) beginning in November 2020, as well as our first Virtual Ratings Prep in March 2021. Not only are we offering a virtual format for many programs, but we have also re-imagined these programs to create a more impactful user experience. For instance, the Virtual FCC is expanded from the previous one-day live format to a 14-week virtual format for a more immersive experience. We know that change doesn’t happen overnight, and education takes time to absorb and apply, so the multi-week format of the reimagined FCC will facilitate better learning, discussion, and practical application.

We look forward to continuing to serve you and hope you are able to enjoy the new PSA offerings and programs for 2020 and 2021.

Yours in skating,