Instructor prep and observations

[Colonel]

a subject matter expert

Important detail there. Teaching is a lot like writing. Writing is indeed a skill
but you need to have something to write about. You need to know what you
are writing about. Or it's going to be really bad writing.

Similarly, teaching is a skill, too. But you need to really know what you are
teaching about. Or it's not going to go well.

As I have hinted above, one of the most important teaching skills is prioritization.
This is what is sorely lacking from the "death by briefing" sessions where people
have 917 things that they are going to teach you from 191 pages. A huge, confusing
blur that the student is guaranteed not to retain.

If you know what you are teaching, you know what's important, and what can
be delayed until later. Most people when they start teaching something, really
need to work on this.

You can test a flight instructor's knowledge and teaching skill by asking him
some deceptively simple questions, like:

"How does an aircraft turn?"

You wouldn't believe the confusion and complexity there. Centripetal vs
centrifugal forces. Yada yada. Like a student is going to grasp all those
vector diagrams and differential equations. Good luck.

Flight instruction is not theory. Ground school is theory. When a flight instructor
is asked, "How does an aircraft turn?" I am not looking for a PhD dissertation
in Newtonian physics. I am looking for something like:

"An aircraft turns like a bicycle or a motorcycle. It tilts into the turn, so there
are no side forces pushing you outward like in a car."



Most people have ridden a bicycle before. Now that the student understands how
an aircraft turns, we can talk about what he needs to do, to make it turn. If asked,
a student might even realize that the faster and tighter the turn, the more the
bicycle/motorcycle/airplane needs to "tilt" into the turn:






Here's another reasonable question from a student:

"How does a wing produce lift?"

Again, giant theory trap there. Endless pages of useless drivel that he never will need to know,
so don't go there. The answer I am looking for is:

"A wing produces lift by pushing a mass of air downwards, just like thrust is
produced by pushing a mass of air back."



The above is perfectly technically correct. If the student's brow furrows when you mention
the word "mass", don't sweat it. Most pilots don't understand the difference between mass
and weight - even the ones with 10,000TT - so why should students?

Don't dare mention

Force = mass X acceleration

unless the student makes the mistake of showing up with a pinky ring, and then you can
go to town on him with tensors.

How you explain "pushing a mass" ...



Tell the student he's in a canoe, and using his paddle he pushes on the tree.
What happens?

Well, the canoe glides on the water, away from the tree, just like an aircraft moves forward,
because the paddle pushes on the tree, just like a wing (or engine) pushes on air.

It's important for the student to realize that air has mass (or weight), even though you can't
see it. That's how a balloon works, after all. Most people have seen a hot air balloon.


When I was doing instructor ratings, the following 46 seconds was my most useful teaching tool:



I would ask the instructor candidate: If you could suggest ONE CHANGE to this guy's PGI,
what would it be?


--- EDIT ---

Now that you have read all this drivel, list THREE things that make the above effective teaching.

[Colonel]

Effective Teaching:

1) Pictures.
The best PGI is one good picture and 25 words. The most effective teaching is via
i) visual
ii) spoken words
iii) written words
iv) equations
Personally, I prefer equations because they are unambiguous, but 99% of the world
cannot read equations, so generally that's not good.

2) Always link new stuff to things the student already understands
Teaching completely new material unconnected to anything else, is really hard. I was
on the receiving end of a lot of that in school, and I was with a lot of really bright people,
and it was tough for all of us. Don't do that unless it's really necessary, which it rarely is.

3) Simplify ruthlessly
Take technical liberties. Leave unimportant stuff out. If people aren't screaming in
a rage at you about these two, you lack courage to do the right thing, and you're going
to end up with 192 pages of PGI per lesson, which is completely useless. You must learn
to prioritize - not only in what you teach, but how you fly. Always be thinking about what's
important and what's not, in that situation at that time. Leave the unimportant stuff for later.

[Slick Goodlin]

I was cleaning my home office the other day and came across my old PGI binders. Plural. Two three-inchers as full as they could get. Silly how much was written in each of my lesson notes and kind of a shame to throw the whole works out, though that’s exactly what I did.

I kind of wondered though if our PGI lesson plans are a reflection of ourselves. Starting out I don’t think I really needed all those pages but to be fair when you teach you have to sort of think in two directions at once; both about the material at hand and how it’s being absorbed. All the fluff made sure I didn’t accidentally miss anything as it’s the student who would end up paying for my mistakes. Gotta start somewhere, right? As we gain experience we learn the material better and learn to present it better so less of a crutch is needed. I imagine now if I were to remake my PGI outlines each lesson would be about a half a page of bullet points.

Personally, my guiding principle and goal that I’ve irked toward comes from a quote I once read, “If you can’t explain it wth chalk you don’t understand it well enough.” Granted the man who said it was talking about selling missile development projects to the US government, but whatever it stuck with me.

[Colonel]

if I were to remake my PGI outlines each lesson would be about a half a page of bullet points.

Comes from experience and knowledge of what's important.

Took me 10 years to go from class 4 to class 1, and by that point I had an ATP and thousands
of hours of flight time on a wide variety of types, in many places. I knew a little about flying,
and I could probably teach flying ok.

After I got my class 1, I became quite an incompetent teacher of instructors ... took me another
10 years or so before I really nailed that skill. No one teaches this stuff. If you don't teach yourself,
you'll never learn it.

So, for the last 5 years of my quarter century of flight instruction, I knew what I was doing!

Slow learner. You feel bad for your first students, at least I do. They taught themselves to fly
despite me.

Big difference between Canada and the USA. In Canada, a lot of effort is put in by TC to make
sure that experienced pilots don't keep their instructor ratings. They told me to fuck off.

In the USA, the exact opposite - I'll bet Nark, for example, still has his CFI despite being an Airbus
driver! Try to find even one Air Canada four bar with current class one instructor and class one
aerobatic instructor ratings - I would wager there is not even one, in the entire country. Sad.

[Liquid_Charlie]

It'S far too easy to get an instructors rating. Literately going from a "watabe to now I are one" overnight. These schools are now geared up for turning out "airline" pilots the hobby pilot ends up with a PPL and very few skills It's a dangerous situation. The schools want the clients that are going to drop the big bucks.

Meanwhile we have babies trying to teach babies with no skills in instruction. They hide behind their sunglasses, white shirts and bars and dish out very substandard training.

TC needs to up the anti up and make it like teachers' college. You don't learn the proper teaching skills during what is done now. Stick and rudder skills are now secondary to knowledge of the rules. Get these guys and girls into advanced training, give them tail dragger time, basic aerobatics, etc and get them the knowledge control proper control inputs and actual flying skills. Ironically lack of knowledge of the obscure section of rules isn't what kills people.

Simply put: make them better pilots so they can properly turn on their skills.

[Colonel]

Flight instructors need to know how to fly, and they need to know how to teach.

Neither of those seems important any more. The only important thing today is paper.



I understand that guy had all his paper, as did his instructor and FTU.

Do you think that more paper would have helped? I think that's probably
the solution - more paper. Maybe they can cover all the buildings at a
certified airport with thick layers of paper, so they don't get damaged
when pilots hit them?

Here's another attempt to tame the "fire-breathing dragon 172":



Obviously, the problem is the signs at the airport. All certified airports
should have all signs removed, so pilots can't hit them, because clearly
the flight instructors of these students knew about flying, and knew how
to teach.

[Colonel]

Please keep this information secret, like the transponder code for hijacking.

Do not let any pilots know about this Top Secret information which flight instructors
must conceal AT ALL COSTS from student pilots:

It is NOT a steering wheel.

Below approach speed, rudder pedals are
primary for directional control

[Colonel]

Starting out I don’t think I really needed all those pages ... made sure I didn’t accidentally miss anything as it’s the student who would end up paying for my mistakes

Couple of observations.

1) Just because you tell the student something, what makes you think he will retain it? What
percentage of new material do students retain? And, for how long?

2) I suspect many new instructors are fearful that if they leave something - anything - out,
the fanged, fire-breathing examiner will tear them a new one for their heinous omission.
This results in 192 pages of PGI for each lesson aka "death by briefing" which is approved
in the current climate of flight training, where efficiency is unimportant and 200 hours to
PPL is just fine with everyone, because an FTU is an extension of the government.

It's important to understand that an FTU is an extension of the government. This is why it
must conform to government standards and conventions. The FTU has a CFI whom is
approved by the government. If the government likes the CFI, he will be awarded DPE
privileges which is clearly an extension of the government and brings into question all
sorts of conflict of interest questions that no one ever asks. Eventually, if the CFI/DPE
is well-liked enough by the government (and rigidly conforms) he becomes a TC Inspector
and the transition from FTU to government is complete. Pretty blurred line, there.

Same thing on the maintenance side. AME's try to become TC Inspectors. Probably the
most brutal test - TC called it an "interview" (ha ha ha - interrogation) - I have ever had in
my life was to become Person Responsible for Maintenance. TC made it pretty clear to
me that they didn't think I knew enough about aviation, to ever be able to function in that role.

This is somewhat at odds with the facts, because my family has been flying and fixing for
104 years now. 6 copies of my Y chromosome over 4 generations. Pretty lightweight, I know.



I love this picture. Me issuing Dear Old Dad his L39 type rating:



TC thought Dear Old Dad was a pretty shitty stick. As a nuclear weapons test pilot on the
CF-104, that's pretty lightweight background compared to the chairborne warriors of TC.

[Slick Goodlin]

I suspect many new instructors are fearful that if they leave something - anything - out, the fanged, fire-breathing examiner will tear them a new one for their heinous omission.

Unfortunately many will.

While I’m confident I could teach someone to fly quite well and in short order, I’m less certain my techniques would pass an instructor ride if I chose to do one today. As it is I do a bit of type conversion on interesting types and I’ll answer any flying question that comes my way. Not instructing in the legal sense, more like mentoring. I’m happy with that as it means I’m only teaching people who truly want to be there.

[Colonel]

My favourite instructor flight test was always the class one aerobatic instructor rating.

What is the examiner going to ask me, that I haven't done hundreds of time before?

I rather like pushing negative G. A lot of negative G. For a loooong time. Let's blow
some blood vessels, shall we? You get into an airplane and give me shit, we're going
to make it Hurt So Good today! Let's do outside loops and outside snaps for an hour.

My favourite instructor flight test was always the class one aerobatic instructor rating.

Here's a really great maneuver: from circuit height above and in line with the runway,
push the stick forward and fly half of a downward outside loop, exiting inverted level
at the surface overhead the runway.

Dear Old Dad and I - really shitty sticks, according to TC - did it hundreds, perhaps
thousands of times. In formation.



If really shitty sticks like us can do it, why can't everyone?