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The other day I was sitting in the flight school office catching up on some paperwork while one of my fellow instructors was talking with a new student. As he went through the things the student should expect from training, as well as providing tips and resources, I became increasingly convinced that my instructor abilities weren’t nearly as good as I thought. Listening to him, I realized I needed to become a better CFI. I always thought I did a good job with my students. After all, I’ve had glowing testimonials from them, so I must be doing something right. Until I witnessed this. I know I don’t have ten-thousand hours of instructing under my belt, but come on. I’ve seen plenty of instructors who do and none of them impressed me like this. Maybe in other ways, but not with this new student orientation.
As instructors, we are constantly learning more about teaching, from both our students as well as fellow instructors. In fact, while working toward our CFI, we’re often told that our students will teach us as much as we teach them. That’s not just rhetoric. There’s more truth to that statement than I had ever realized. I suspect teachers have a similar experience with their students.
I remember sitting down with one of my first students to review his planning for our first dual cross country flight. He had numbered each of his checkpoints on his navlog. Then he had written the number next to the corresponding checkpoint on his sectional. How had something so simple and obvious never occurred to me? None of my instructors had ever shown me that trick. I just taught my students the way I had been taught. Then one day a student shows me something different. I told him that his idea was brilliant. I’ve taught it to all my students since.
Another example comes from a fellow instructor. He always has his students write down the communications frequencies, weather frequencies, and runway numbers and lengths for all the local airports we use during training. He has them carry this piece of paper whenever they fly. One day one of his students came in with a laminated card for each of the local airports. The cards included all of this information and more. They were small and easy to carry. He could pull out of his flight bag to review whenever he needed them. Now, this instructor has all of his students do it that way. I do too.
Many times what we learn from our students is a little more fundamental. If a student is struggling with a maneuver, a good instructor will come up with another way to present it rather than just beating the student over the head with the same thing over and over. If we can’t come up with another way, we ask our fellow instructors. Not many students have problems that no instructor has seen before. And even if we can’t find an instructor who has seen a particular struggle, talking about it with others will frequently yield ideas on things to try.
Giving flight reviews is a golden opportunity to learn from another pilot. Unless it’s someone you’ve been teaching since they were a student pilot, chances are they’ve learned at least one thing different from the way you have. I had one pilot show me a different way of doing steep turns. I didn’t care for it at first, but I realized that some people might find it easier. Now I present it to my students as another option. Some of them like it, some don’t, but now I have another tool for those who are having a hard time with steep turns.
Not only have I learned better ways of teaching from my students, I’ve also improved my own flying through instructing. Especially procedures. Sometimes it’s a matter of having to study a subject in more depth to better present it to a student who isn’t quite grasping the concept. Other times teaching a student how to remember a procedure helps me remember it better. A good example of this is teaching emergency procedures. In coming up with better ways to help students through something like an engine failure, I’ve improved my own ability to handle it.
We learn a lot—if not most—of our teaching skills from the instructors we flew with as students. I’ve flown with great instructors and not so great instructors. Much of my teaching style comes from trying to emulate the great ones and avoid the things I didn’t like about the others. For instance, one of the best instructors I ever flew with taught me to never touch the controls (as an instructor) unless I absolutely had to. Let the student screw up the maneuver. Talk them through recovering rather than doing it for them. Help them recognize the error and why it happened rather than just telling them they did it wrong (they already know that). One night during my instrument training this instructor and I were climbing out in IMC and I became severely disoriented. The airplane was in a spiraling dive instead of a climbing turn. He just looked at me and said: “Are you going to fix that?” A lesser instructor would have grabbed the controls and then tried to explain vertigo. I’ll never forget that lesson, as both a pilot and an instructor.
I’ve even learned from examiners on checkrides. During my initial CFI checkride, I did a power-on stall the way I had always been taught—nose down, build up airspeed, level off. The examiner showed me a better way, one that isn’t so dramatic: just lower the nose to the horizon to build up airspeed. What a difference. My least favorite maneuver became practically a non-event. I’m sure my students appreciate it.
Even now—or maybe especially now—I learn a lot about teaching from instructors I fly with. When I go for a flight review, I like to discuss problem areas I’ve seen working with my students. Then my instructor and I can go through different scenarios and ways of teaching it. It helps both of us. During one flight review, my instructor taught me to think of short-field landings like controlling an old elevator. In fact, he called short-field landings the “Otis approach” (after Otis elevators). This same instructor taught me a technique he calls the “poor man’s HSI” as an easy way to orient yourself to a VOR radial. No worries about TO/FROM indicators or reverse sensing. Now I teach it to my instrument students.
So sitting in the flight school office listening to this instructor (who literally has ten times the dual given hours that I do) talk to this new student about what to expect was a humbling experience. Most importantly, it reminded me that there’s always more to learn, especially about teaching.