Post-Flight Ground Briefing

[Colonel]

Most people think students need hours and hours of preparatory
ground instruction and pre-flight briefing before a flight, but I
have my doubts.

It is a rare student that will [i]actually read[/i] the chapter in the FTM
at home before the flight.  It's hard, because it's abstract and he
has nothing to relate the new information to.

And then instructors drone on endlessly.  Students have about a
30 second attention span, so if you can't tell the student [u]what[/u] the
airplane is doing today, and [u]how[/u] to make the airplane do it, inside
of 30 seconds, you are completely wasting everyone's time and money,
which is a pretty good description of civilian flight training.

Where civilian flight training especially fails is the post-flight debriefing
which is non-existent at best.

Here's how you do it:  stuff the developmental crap.  The student is
exhausted, mentally and physically.

Tell the student the [u]single biggest error[/u] he committed during the
exercise, and [u]how to remedy it[/u].

That's it.

Then, if you want to provide efficient flight instruction, tell the student
when he gets home to send you an email, describing how to perform
the exercise, what mistakes he made, and how to correct them for
next time.  Within 24, preferable 12 hours after the flight.

Then you read the email, correct it, send it back to the student and
once more he reviews the lesson.  That's two extra mental reviews of
the lesson that he gets "for free" away from the aircraft.

In my experience, this will vastly accelerate his learning, which is
why no one in civilian flight instruction does this.  Next time he steps
in an airplane, he will perform the exercise MUCH better than if this
post-flight review was skipped, as per usual.  Learn from your mistakes,
I know it's a revolutionary concept.  Burn the witch.

Note that my instructor ratings have expired - I was congratulating
TC Inspectors yesterday on their accomplishment in that regard - so
this note is worth precisely what you paid me for it.

[David MacRay]

"Congratulating TC inspectors"?

Did you go to tower c for lunch with Arlo?

[ramjet555]

Sorry to hear that "Transport" have someone forced you to give up instructing in Canada.
TC unfortunately, has some areas, and some inspectors who, are "toxic", toxic to work with, and
toxic in that they leave a trail of destruction.




One of the symptoms I've seen is the "don't play in my sandpit" attitude.
There are other symptoms that I'll let others describe.


I was just chatting about that subject with a well known instructor with a life time of instructing.
TC just tried to tell him that teaching anything but the FTM was illegal.
Turns out the inspector did not read the preamble or comprehend anything other
than what he wanted to believe.


Another inspector started telling me about numerous examples of unqualified aerobatics in non aerobatic
aircraft when what "that inspector" referred to was in another province 20 years ago.


The FAA Aviation Instructor Handbook FAA H-8083-9A has an entire chapter dealing with psychology and its
useful for understanding why human beings react by forming beliefs opposite the true facts
because the true facts cause them, "discomfort".


As for debriefings, the FAA AIH refers to "debriefings" as "Collaborative assessments".
From student's first flight, I used the Four R's. Reconstruct, Replay, Reflect and Redirect.
It starts with simple open ended questions to help the lesson remain an enjoyable memory.


What was the most enjoyable thing about the flight today?


Other open ended questions, go thru the four R's.


My view is that it should be done immediately after each flight and I'll explain why.


Its human nature not to see what we did incorrectly. Negatives get blocked out.
It's important to concentrate on the positives, that the flight was enjoyable.
If it wasn't, odds are the instructor did something that was not conducive to learning.


Memories can fade rapidly. "Contemporaneous" is the key to making the most out of
Collaborative Assessment. Once a student is exposed to the four R's after each flight,
they expect it as part of the lesson in future and hopefully will pass on the practice
if and when they become instructors.

[Colonel]

The most important thing about learning, is to park the ego.

As long as the student thinks that a lesson is about stroking
his ego, he is wasting everyone's time and money.  This is
probably at the core of why military flight training is so successful
and civilian flight training is so predictably a train wreck.

First, you need to admit that you made a mistake.  You need
to examine it, figure out what you did right and what you did
wrong, and vow never to do the wrong thing again.

Make [b]new mistakes[/b].  Small ones, preferably.  Do not repeat
your old mistakes.  That's called stupidity.  If you are one in a
million, you might even learn from other people's mistakes, before
you make them.  Too much to ask, I know, but that's why I'm alive -
I learn from the mistakes of others, and I [b]DO NOT REPEAT[/b] THEM.

Learning is not about stroking the ego.  It is about the transference
of knowledge and skills that the student lacks.  Of course the
student is going to make mistakes - often big ones - attempting
something he has never done before, that he knows nothing
about.

Duh.

Despite how obvious the above is, students want their egos stroked.

Sigh.

I wish I could tell you how happy I was, when an instructor that I
helped train, was fired as CFI recently because the flight school owner
said he was being "mean to the students"

[size=18pt][b]YES!![/b][/size]

Sometimes, the delicate flowering ego of a 21st Century student
pilot might get bruised during the process of learning life or death
skills.

Duh.

Nobody gave a flying fuck at a donut about my ego, when I was
learning to fly - trust me.  Let me know if it's time to tell the "I was
10 years old, learning to fly a Maule in 1973 at Toronto Island" story
again.  And if you want your ego stroked, go to one of the massage
parlors that Smiling Jack Layton patronized so frequently, and ask
for a "Smiling Jack" happy ending, ok?

[url=http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... itute.html]http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... itute.html[/url]

[ramjet555]

Re-enforcing the positive is not stoking egos and
I'd argue is equally relevant in civilian or military flying.


Every now and then I do some sim work and its amazing
how often I find myself making the same mistake.


There is not a flight I go on without making an error of some kind.
Its pulling out the note book and doing the four R's that provides
some reflection and recognition of how why where and when an error occurred
and, what can be done to avoid it in future.


After sim sessions, I take a look at the map, save the screen shots and there it is,
the same wobbles on the localizer or glide path at the same time and place,
repeatedly. 


It not only takes a conscious effort but an accurate debrief immediately after
the flight to realize, what went right and wrong.


Before the next training flight, it seems to work best to go over what happened on
the last flight to make sure those habitual chronic mistakes do not get repeated.


I can't always remember what I did last with each student.
That's when the scribble in the PTR provides a memory jogger.
It's also handy when you have to sit down with TC and have to show em
all the books.


It's not about stoking egos, its about keeping students minds positive about the learning experience
in order to maximize, not minimize or deter learning.


Odds are that "new skill" has been done in at least part previously, and that they
have been given a good example to know prior to their first attempt, "something" ,
not "nothing" about it.


Getting positive feedback, positive reinforcement  is vital to training effectiveness.


With a collaborative assessment, the student tells you what he or she did right and did not do right
and how they can do it better next time.


I'd call that a reality check.


"Stoking" of egos, is telling a student that a below expected performance was just dandy.
or "peeing in a student's pocket.
I don't think most experienced instructors engage in that behaviour.




 

[Colonel]

Civilian and military flight training are so incredibly different,
apart from the fact that military flight training is effective and
civilian flight training is a train wreck.

See, as a military student pilot, if you don't perform, you are
CT and out the door and replaced by someone better.

As a civilian student pilot, if you don't perform, your instructor
tells you what a great job you did in order for you to come back
and waste your money.

When a civilian flight instructor tells a student the truth, and
it hurts his feelings, he loses a customer.  Inherent in that
relationship is a conflict of interest.  Good flight instructors
end up billing less than shitty flight instructors.  And some
civilian flight instructors outright milk - arguably, the worst
flight instructors get the most money.

Blech.  What a shit show.  I'm glad I'm gone.