interesting replies. thank you very much
i wanted to wait before replying to see what you all had to say.
i probably had the worst fi course ever. the fic instructor refused to fly with me because he said there wasnt any money in it for him and i had done a private deal with the flying school!
its true i had negotiated a rate with the school as part of a 120 hour deal but he expected a back hander which he wasnt going to get because i just did not have any more money, i was actually penniless, i just had enough money to eat.
he was quite happy to sign my piece of paper. i just flew by myself, i did one hour with the glider tug pilot who had been an instructor and another hour with a part time instructor. the cfi eventually agreed to do one hour with me but as he was still drunk from the night before it didnt go very well. all he told me was that i would never make an instructor because i couldnt understand compass errors!!
so you see i am a self taught instructor in every sense of the word. the great advantage of that from day one was that i knew i was total crap, i knew i had to spend every waking hour learning to be an instructor, i spoke to every instructor i met about technique, content etc. i listened in on every briefing, i read every book i could find on instruction or flying. i spent the first year of instruction learning more than i taught every student. the first shock came when i realised that you didnt have to be very good to be better than the average instructor!
many years later while cfi at a large school i was given two above average assements by central flying school instructors for the cadet contracts. the first time i asked the examiner, above average, are you sure? Ah, he said, you havnt seen the others!
getting back to giving a fic course which i eventually just specialised in. i wasnt given any training in teaching someone how to be an instructor. two panel examiners came along and interviewed me. i gave a briefing which they liked. the one then said. ok we need to fly an exercise. i said but the cloud base is two hundred feet. he just replied, we need to fly an exercise. i took off in cloud (in a cessna 150) took him upto safety alt plus and taught him some i.f.. he then said recover and teach me a sra let down. i said, i cant recover to base, its outside my limits.
8/8 200 ft. he said you will be alright, just recover!
needless to say i passed, i was told later it was just a formality as they knew me but they couldnt afford another trip back to do another flight on another day!!!!!!
so i was great at sra let downs but knew absolutely nothing about how to teach someone how to be an instructor. so it was back to the good old days for me. i talked to people, tried to find books etc etc. i never found out anything about how to teach someone to teach. it just seemed not to be covered on instructor training. it was the same as my check ride/ brief with the panel examiners. if you can teach a student to fly you must be able to teach a pilot to teach. (believe me its not so)
it took another industry to teach me how to teach teachers. when my wife became a teacher herself i could see that she used the same EDP principle.
(to be fair central flying school used EDP to but i didnt pick up on it as i should have)
EDP is explain, demonstrate, practice. i am sure i do not have to go into that. its the basis of all modern teaching. there are however two other important considerations to add to that and it took me a long time to grasp how important they are.
the first is AIM and the last is VALIDATE, so the pneumonic becomes
A EDP V
going back to peeling an orange, by the way this was my invention to start getting students to think about how to teach.
most human beings know what an orange is, so should we assume that they do?
notice how on this forum many people use abbreviations or words they expect others to know. that seems strange to me because some of these people are pro teachers and possibly should be showing off their ability to use simple explanations rather than overcomplicating.
i mean, do i need to know the theory of evolution to peel an orange, do i need to understand the horticulture process involved in producing the orange. do i need to understand climatology to understand where i can grow an orange. where do we stop and where do we start.
(decide what you must know, whats nice to know and what you dont really need to know)
what are you trying to achieve in your instruction what is your AIM?
for instance for years i struggled with the aim of the practice forced landing. one day i picked up a raf flying training manual and it sprang out off the page, TO SAVE LIFE. its a simple as that really isnt it, you dont get marks for style, only result!!!
using an aim puts everything into perspective not only for you but for the student too.(all pre flight briefings start with an aim dont they!?)
so you see to someone who has never seen an orange before why on earth would you want to rip the lovely skin off it and throw it in the bin. so the first thing we need to explain is why we are doing it and what we are hoping to achieve. i want to eat the orange but i cant eat it until i remove the skin.
some people would immeadiately go straight into peeling the orange, these are the instructors who go flying without a pre-flight briefing!
a good instructor will use every tool they have in the box, and every sense. i am going to tell you how to peel the orange but first of all i am going to let you feel the orange, its another tool, another sense to re-inforce the information i am going to give you. (people can learn by feel, sense, sight, smell ,the more senses you can employ the better the learning)
obviously i am now going to explain how to peel the orange. the problem is just that, it appears to be obvious but it isnt. some instructors can only present information in one set way.
two things you need to know when teaching 1. your subject 2. your student. knowing your student is the most important. take this forum for instance, there is no doubt that there are quite a few people on here that know more about flying than i may ever know but if you look at some of the posts they make you can see they know very little about people.
good salesmen find out what people want from a product before they sell it. you often here people say a good salesman can sell sand to an arab, in other words a good salesman can sell you something you dont want. these type of salesmen do not understand the customer in the same way that a poor instructor does not understand his student, the only difference is that you are selling information(same approach, dress, manner, etc)
so when you pitch the info at the student you need to check for understanding, has he really understood what you said. the only thing u can be sure of is, YOU have just understood what you said but has the student. ask questions, look for understanding, the face is a great give away, some people are loath to tell you they do not understand for fear of looking silly but the face and eyes are sometimes a give away.
after the explanation, the demonstration again this appears to be easy. but can the student hear you, do you really need the radio in the background, would it be better if you climbed into smooth air, are you into sun, is the student comfortable, warm enough, relaxed. is your demonstration showing how to do it as a beginner or is your demonstration too complicated. dont make your demo too smooth, if the student cant emulate you he may become despondent, make your demo achievablle.
do you need to slow down your presentation etc etc. have you talked your patter into a tape recorder listened to it yourself, got others to listen to it etc etc
student practice, i love the central flying school advice here. never give the student control and tell him what to do. tell him and then give him control.
after practice, validate. its easy at this stage to think the job is done, the student has done what you asked. validation is about ensuring the student has suff knowledge to carry onto the next exercise. an example would be a student that can do a great go around but dosnt understand the need for a go around or what he is really doing in the ga. eg. after the lesson
ok that was a well executed go around but when would you need to do that?
(how many students are sent first solo because they could do a good landing, all my students were sent solo because they could do a good go around!!!)
why do you need to lift the flaps on the g. a. (i used to always make the student take off with full flap down (c150 !) and fly a complete circuit and land before first solo)
also with validation its better to get the students agreement.
gaining agreement is an important part of learning. for instance i have just said i always got the student to fly a take off and landing on a c150 and a circuit with full flap down. now i know a lot of you will say, what a pratt, whats the purpose of that and i bet its somthing that none of you do as instructors, so i have no agreement and with respect i havnt taught you anything.
if i said to you whats the most dangerous thing that could happen to your student on take off, how would you answer.
perhaps yaw off the runway. obstruction on the runway. wind shear, engine failure, flap fully down.
you have just agreed with me thats its dangerous, so why not cover it with me on board then i know you can handle it and more importantly recognise it without me on board. as a matter of interest i also used to do a take off and open a cabin door fully on my side as well, before first solo.
someone on here(assymetric forum) said, " i (he)do not talk about accidents", a very strange remark for an instructor to make, i brought the full flap t.o. in after seeing a c172 take off at high wycombe and stall in because the pilot didnt realise he still had full flaps down from his pre-flight checks. all 4 were killed.
i changed my instructional technique to concentrate more on go around from the round out than ability to land smoothly after researching around 5 years of student landing accidents. not one student flew an a/c straight into the ground. it was always the second or third bounce that broke the nose wheel off. look at your acc reports, i bet its the same now. show me a landing accident and i will show u a student that wasnt instinctively shown how to go around off a bad landing. ( i used to take control at around 20 feet, with full flap, bounce the a/c onto the runway, pull up and exagerate the bounce and then say to the student, " you have control!!!" they soon learnt about go arounds!!)
better example of validation through agreement would be;
your student just crossed a runway without looking out.how do you deal with it?
only a pratt crosses a runway without looking in either direction.
jesus christ that was dangerous
dont cross a runway without looking first
ive told you before, lookout in each direction before you cross.
my version.
can you just park up here for a moment.
any idea why i have just asked you to park up.
well you just crossed a runway there without looking and checking the runway and flight path. can you see how that can get you into a dangerous habit and could lead to you taxying onto an active runway.
plus
how do you know you are approaching a runway rather than a taxyway
this method of validation ensures the student has understood an opens up discussion, if nesecarry.
you will find this type of instruction essential if you are with a new student or at a new school.
i ve said more than enough and sorry i have go on so much, if i keep this up i may go and get my instructor rating back!!!!