Have you ever had a skateboarding teacher? Most people would say no. Kendall Bertaux, however, is a teacher who also shreds. Being present on YouTube and Instagram, he brings his creative ideas to life and helps new skaters with trick tips. He also uploads videos in which he discusses a specific topic and shares his views and feelings with us. 

Reviews

I found him through his review on the DKL grip tape. What stood out was the excellent editing, and the balance between explaining his personal experience with the product, while not getting too opinionated. As someone who is very prone to do the latter, I really appreciate his review style. 

Discussions

Another honorable mention of his videos would be where he explains why he only skates in parks. It’s interesting for me to see this because I grew up without one, and we would just go to a street with minimal traffic and smooth asphalt. It’s great to hear about the habits, views, and stories of others, and when they’re as well put together as in Kendall’s videos, it’s a must-watch for me. 

Trick Tips

Who could explain skateboarding tricks better than an actual teacher? Kendall Bertaux’s trick tips are straight to the point, detailed, but not bloated. His implementations of talking about his personal experience with the tricks fit just right and help the viewers understand the maneuvers better. 

Instagram

Kendall’s Instagram presence is quite good as well, providing his followers with short and entertaining edits regularly.

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A post shared by Kendall Bertaux (@kendall_bertaux)

Interview

Being a skater and a teacher, have you ever had a weird or funny encounter with students or their parents when skating. 

Yeah, I have definitely had a few interesting interactions with students, especially at the local skate park. I have 3 or 4 students who I see at the skate park regularly. There is this one student who skates with his dad, and sometimes I see them both at the skatepark, and it’s a pretty cool dynamic. It can be challenging to balance the student-teacher relationship. Since I am their teacher, I don’t hang out with them at the skate park, but I speak to them and might have a small chat. Then, I just go skate and do my own thing. 

What do other teachers say when you show up to work beaten up from a skate session the day before? 

Thankfully, I do not injure myself too much while skating. I dress business casual in a shirt and tie almost every day to teach, so my injuries are not really visible. So overall other teachers don’t really say much. 

Ever had skateboarding conversations with students that skate? 

I actually talk about skating a lot with students that skate. I even talk about it with students that don’t skate as well. They like to ask me questions about it, and they crack skater boy jokes at me all the time. All in good fun, though. I mean, how many other teachers are they gonna have that skateboard? 

Take us through your video production process of one of your videos.

I typically do not plan my videos too far in advance. I make my videos week by week. It starts with an idea, and I may write down some notes. For a few videos, when I talk a lot, I may type out a rough script, but usually, all the talking in my videos is not scripted. Once I have the idea, I go out and film everything on my iPhone 11. I actually edited my first 4 or 5 videos on my iPhone. Now I edit everything on my 2018 iPad Pro with Lumafusion, and I absolutely love it. For the music in my videos, I subscribe to Epidemic Sound, which gives me copyright-free music that is great for posting on youtube. They have thousands of music tracks to select, and I think it’s a great investment for any content creator that needs music in their videos. Once I edit the video, I then use the iPad app Procreate to make the thumbnails for my video. I upload all my videos directly from my iPad. That’s pretty much it for my video production process. I think it’s pretty simple. 

Has your teaching position helped you with presenting content? 

100%. I definitely believe that being a teacher has helped me with presenting content on youtube. In university, we were required to film ourselves teaching almost every week, so I am fairly comfortable not only filming myself but going back and watching myself. I also have a series on the channel titled Trick Tip Tuesday. With that series, I combine my skateboarding knowledge with my teaching skills to hopefully deliver a solid skateboarding trick tutorial. 

As someone under the magnifying glass, do you hold back on content? Are you worried about student input?

There are some things I do hold back on. For example, I do not street skate a lot, especially in the town that I teach in. I don’t want to be out skating street and run into a student, or worse, their parents. Skateboarding definitely has negative connotations, and they may start to think less of me as a teacher. I am also a young teacher. I am only 24, so my age at times is already a barrier, and skateboarding on top of that can be challenging to balance. However, for the most part, most people have taken kindly to the fact that I do skateboard. 

As a music teacher, what is the best skate video soundtrack?

That is a very tough question. Honestly, the first thing that came to mind was one of the first skate videos I had ever watched. That video is Paul Rodriguez’s “Me, Myself and I.” I like a lot of the older Kanye West music, and this video with the music is basically what got me into skateboarding in the first place. I would watch this video at least once a day back in middle school. 

Songs you think should be skated to. 

I do not think I have an answer to this question. I think each skater has their own style of skating and their own taste in music. As for me, I like chill beats. When I make a skate edit for Youtube or Instagram, I typically put some chill hip hop/R&B music behind it. I think the music should reflect the skaters personality and style.