Our first day is a day on the lake, doing flatwater teaching and working on our own paddling skills. It is amazing how many differences one can put in one stroke. Even amongst a group of skilled paddlers, there still remains a huge difference in stroke quality (especially between Kent and us, Instructor Candidates).
A nice way to stop the day of flatwater paddling was a rolling session. Some of us had already a very solid roll, another one had a roll but not really reliable and some were close to the point nailing their first roll. It's always nice to get good feedback from skilled paddlers with a good roll. Some more training remains though, even on this field.

The second day was river paddling: Versam - Illanz.  We worked on some basic skills, and got to know the river. Each of us got 2 or 3 topics that we need for river paddling to explain in a short and comprehensive way. It was our own choice where and how to tackle these topics.
It must be said that this section is a really nice section of river. Not too hard, well suited for beginning whitewater paddlers. And some great spots to practice or to point out hazards (like an easily avoidable massive strainer).
But of course there is room as well for some personal skill development and some playboating. Maybe something like boofing rocks?

And as the charmes of paddling in the Vorderrhein valley describe, you take the train back from Illanz to Versam. Not really something where I'm used to, but definetly a fun experience:

The last day of our level 3 instruction started with checking our learning profiles. It was really interesting to see we had a do-er, a thinker and a thinking watcher under the Instructor Candidates. During the day we saw some nice results of people being of a given learning type.
We decided to paddle the same stretch of the Vorderrhein again: Versam - Illanz.  Now we knew the section better, it was time to improve our drills, select the right spot for explaining our topics and improve our own technique.

But James and Kent did their homework as well. They found us a spot to challenge our paddling skills, to see if we could tackle this level of paddling good enough to instruct on it.

The paddling day ended with a swim by James, all of us lined up to thrown him a throwbag to test our skills on rescue. He deliberatly ignored all but the last lines, so we all had a throw in one swim.

Great, I got certified up to Level 3 and I was not physically dead yet. Neither would from paddling part the level 4 impose a problem according to the estimation of James and Kent. Hollidays and Gasthaus were still reserved, so up I went for another 2 fun days of playboating.
The group changed, since I was the only one of the L3 group still having time to continue, and some new people joined for the L4 update or upgrade. Mostly instructors from Kanu Schule Versam itself.

Since it was a update/upgrade, not too much attention was put anymore on the teaching itself, since we all were certified instructors. The more attention was left over for some specific whitewater drills and our own paddling technique. Some parts of the L3 were coming back. But it is useful information and  repetition is unavoidable.

We found ourselves a nice little nature slalom section with interesting currents. That's a nice spot for us to paddle. We all get a couple runs of playboating and good fun. Further down James shows us some really cool lines on his hometown river. But as it's said, it's his hometown river, so these moves are not easily ore not at all repeated by us.

I still have one subject open for my L4 certification: surfing. But the Vorderrhein has it all, and James shows us a great surfing wave. Another spot to keep on playing for a while. And why should one stay seated in a boat if you can stand up?