PMA Vail Summit Blog
This past May, I eagerly attended the PMA Teacher Training Summit in Vail, Colorado. Why was I so excited? For one thing, I had never been to Colorado, and I especially wanted to experience Vail. It is a city that I had only heard about for its spectacular mountains and expert skiing. Second, and most important: I was happy to be involved with the PMA and with its crucially important endeavor to bring together teacher trainers (like me), and help put us on the same page.
The goal of the Summit was to investigate what the delegates felt were the essential components of comprehensive Pilates teacher training. It was an effort to develop some agreement about the important of the work. During the weekend, we needed to work on developing more lucid questions to ask existing schools about how their programs are organized.
About 50 people involved in Pilates teacher training were there, and we listened to the findings of the PMA’s recent survey regarding what’s going on in teacher training now, and then we discussed what comprised those hours and components in more detail. They divided delegates into three groups to discuss the main segments: lecture, student teaching, observation and self-study. There was a lot of discussion, questions and input from all the professional teachers.
Speaking for myself, I believe that we as a community should be concerned with the growing saturation of uneducated people who are only concerned with being in the trend, and thus perform a quick fix at the expense of the public. Pilates is being performed haphazardly in gyms, on DVDs and among many uneducated individuals who get a quick “certification” from a weekend online sponsor. They can then get a job at ordinary sports clubs.
And all that gives Pilates a bad name. I don’t want certified, excellent Pilates teachers pushed out of the game. A recent survey showed that more that half of the population was not even aware that Pilates was a real man who invented the discipline. We must properly educate the population. And that is what the PMA wants to do: Inform, not control! This has been the misunderstanding of the PMA since its inception. The PMA is an association of teachers, run democratically. Everyone who attended the summit had a personal experience of that. Working together in groups to discuss the components of teacher training was a communal, group collaboration, and the final results came from the delegates—in other words, from Pilates teachers.
I want to emblazon the work of Joe Pilates, his mind and genius, and to ensure it will forever live and thrive.
Elizabeth Anderson, Executive Director of the PMA, was very clear in her presentation of what the PMA stands for. Many wrongly think of the PMA as an entity that wants to “oversee” and control all of the Pilates teachers and enthusiasts across the nation. Some think it is as if they want to “own” Pilates and tell us all what to do, which is a misunderstanding and incorrect. We are the PMA! Pilates teachers govern the PMA! We are creating a new profession through the Pilates Method Alliance—an alliance of Pilates teachers who work democratically to improve and develop the field. Our only goal is in keeping the flame alive. The PMA wish to be a support system for all of us who believe in what Joe Pilates believed some 100 years ago. He strived to be taken seriously by the medical community and the world. Now, he has, and it is up to us who are part of the Pilates Method Alliance, to make sure he continues to be taken seriously—and help this world be a healthier and happier planet.
