Discouraged "new" flight instructors

[tractor747]

Just like the title says,

how many new flight instructors during their initial class 4 flight instructor rating got discouraged and asked themselves "I can't do this, I'm not smart enough" or something in that tone of voice because your Class 1 instructor during your last touch up tells you " what are you doing , you have to know this stuff".

And how many have overcome the comments from that class 1?

thanks

[Bede]

lol. The class 4 is the most depressing rating to get. Just when you think you're a hot shot after doing a CPL ride, you have to explain something (not just know it for a test). For flying you have to be able to concentrate on something else (teaching), while flying an airplane to CPL standards.

I have never been lost in an airplane, except twice while I was doing my class 4 training. I had no idea where we were anymore.

Don't sweat it. Work hard and you will be fine.

[Gessle64]

Lacking some context, I'll chime in.
Your Class 1 should not be making you feel unnecessarily discouraged...buuuuuut you DO have to know this stuff!

It could be that your Class 1 is just being a jerk... the way to overcome is to stop using their services long before you get in too deep. No Class 4 student that is working and trying very hard deserves 1 bit of lip from any Class 1. Good Class 1's know this.


-on the other hand-


It could also be that your Class 1 really cares and they have high expectations for you to study nonstop and get that material into your brain. The Class 1 is there to give direction, not spoon-feed everything to you. They won't accept excuses. Personally, I find it extremely frustrating to train someone that will become my peer in the industry, only to have them make the same piss poor effort that they did in the puppy mill that they came from.


Maybe it's another scenario for you. Do your best to do a great job as an instructor. Even if you view it as a stepping stone, you're still doing a job. This job needs to be done well.

[Big Pistons Forever]

How many Class 1 flight instructors training a student for the initial class 4 flight instructor rating got discouraged and asked themselves "they can't do this, they are not smart enough" or used that tone of voice because as a Class 1 instructor during your last touch up you had to tell him " what are you doing , you have to know this stuff".

And how many have overcome the comments from that student ?

Tractor 747 welcome to the "show". The initial flight instructor rating, done right, is the hardest course in aviation. You will be responsable for the success or failure of every student you fly with and the ultimate price for your failures as an instructor is an unnecessary death.

So your Class 1 is demanding and you are not measuring up..........well princess it is time to just suck it up and work harder.

- If you can't fly every manoever in the CPL flight test to a "4" standard, you are not good enough yet.

- If you don't understand the structure of the CARs and are not intimately familiar with Parts 4 and 6, you are not good enough yet

- If you can't explain all the forces acting on an aircraft in flight, you are not good enough yet

- If you can't describe and explain how each system in the aircraft operates, you are not good enough yet

- etc etc.

The solution to success in the flight instructor rating is a hell of a lot of work. Hit the books, chair fly every flight, know your numbers and SOPs cold and be organized.

[iflyforpie]

I wasn't discouraged by the rating; I was discouraged by the pay. That's what I thought this thread was about.

[Colonel Sanders]

"I can't do this, I'm not smart enough"

The harder you work, the smarter you will get. The class 4 instructor rating is not a lot of fun. It is a lot of hard work. It will make you a better pilot, though - it's not a waste of time.

the pay. That's what I thought this thread was about.

The jokes threads are in General, right now on pens, shoe laces and condom brands.

[Beefitarian]

Keep going tractor, I think you're just worried because you care enough to want to be the best you can be. Eventually you'll look back and laugh. Most things worth while tend to require some work.

[shamrock104]

Like anything else you will only start to perfect as you practice and actually teach. Your Class 1 wants to make sure you have reached the standard required for the actual ride as this reflects on them. Dont let the standards drop after you have obtained the rating and look at every single flight as a learning experience both for yourself and the student. Dont let the flying become tedious and try and improve your skills each and every time you get to fly.

[Oxi]

Great Thread!

[Colonel Sanders]

Free advice: Keep It Simple

Too many class 4's - on bad advice from their inexperienced class 1 instructors - try to cram everything into their PGI, which is foolish.

Remember that you're trying to teach a farmer or a truck driver to fly, not a NASA astronaut with 4 PhD's, ok? Please don't try to do a complete brain dump of everything you know about a lesson. The poor farmer or truck driver simply isn't going to remember 873 things you tried to teach him in a 2 hour PGI.

Amazingly, this is a very common flight instruction technique. And is horrible.

Your PGI is what makes you (or breaks you) as a flight instructor, and you need an experienced class 1 to help you develop good, focused, minimalistic PGI.

I groan when I see a class 4 instructor with a 27 page PGI for a lesson. There is no way in hell that any farmer or truck driver is going to retain all that garbage. You have crossed the line over to ground school, and PGI is NOT ground school, regardless of what junior class 1 instructors might pompously tell you.

I met a class 4 with PGI like that - he had a very bad class 1 instructor, that incredibly enough, blamed HIM for the his class 4 flight test failure, when in fact he was simply doing what the class 1 told him to.

I told him to pare his PGI down to ONE SHEET of 8.5x11 paper - ok, both sides - and I was going to charge him $10 for every word he spoke during his PGI, so he better make them good ones that counted.

The PGI should tell the student what he needs to do in the airplane, to perform the lesson.

When I was done with him - and his minimalistic PGI - he passed his class 4 flight test easily.

Now, this doesn't mean that you only need to know what's on that single sheet of paper. But like a good poker player, you don't lay all your cards down at the start of the hand. And don't think that just because someone has a class 1 instructor rating, that they have a clue about how to teach instructors.

You think learning to be an instructor is hard? Try to teach new flight instructors some day. And do it well. Much more difficult than your initial class 4. But oddly enough, almost totally worthless. You would think a highly skilled and experienced class 1 instructor would be able to earn as much as say a McDonald's manager, but that's not the case. Do remember that you get what you pay for.

[tractor747]

great remarks guys,

I just want to be the best flight instructor I can be to teach others the proper way. But holy s*&t it is hard learning to teach this stuff and I know my class 1 cares and is tough on me and wants me to succeed. I also realize that the class 4 rating is the hardest aviation rating to get in this country and it takes alot of work. I bring my notes everywhere, practice on the sim at home, look at videos of others, etc.

tough, tough, tough but in the end I hope when I fly on a regular basis (teach) I will get better and teach this stuff with my eyes closed LOL.

I'd like to hear from other instructors right after they got hired, how long it took them to get 'comfortable' with teaching.

[loopa]

great remarks guys,

I just want to be the best flight instructor I can be to teach others the proper way. But holy s*&t it is hard learning to teach this stuff and I know my class 1 cares and is tough on me and wants me to succeed. I also realize that the class 4 rating is the hardest aviation rating to get in this country and it takes alot of work. I bring my notes everywhere, practice on the sim at home, look at videos of others, etc.

tough, tough, tough but in the end I hope when I fly on a regular basis (teach) I will get better and teach this stuff with my eyes closed LOL.

I'd like to hear from other instructors right after they got hired, how long it took them to get 'comfortable' with teaching.

1100 hours and was still learning lol. But in all honestly, the comfort level happens in stages. When you can safely send your students solo, when they pass flight tests, and when in your discussions with your supervisor you get reinforcement that you two are on the same page. That's typically when you start feeling comfortable. For me that started happening around the 500 hour mark (200 hours of instructing). But I was no where close to how comfortable I was at 1100 hours, I can't imagine how comfortable some of these veteran class 1's must be.

CS said it - your PGI can't be a 2 hour dump of everything on a subject. The learning factor of relationship should be exercised - from simple to complex. Start with the basic understanding, make sure the base of the pyramid is solid, then start build around it and you'll develop yourself a fine product. You will also learn that a lot of the flight instructor rating is congruent with TC's lesson plans and designed to have you teach TC's lesson plan and pass TC's flight test on their lesson plans. But as you gain more experience instructing, you will start learning what part's of the PGI's you need to edit and perhaps shorten, or expand.

I went through at least 10 revisions of all lesson plans during my instructing time, and they didn't get any longer. I was starting to see that shorter, more effective, student participated PGI's go a long way in the development of a student pilot. Can you imagine if your Attitudes and Movements PGI was 2 hours? Man! The dude wouldn't return to flying.

Try to focus on the "reason" behind why you need to teach something in an exercise. If a student sees the reason, they will retain it much longer and be able to use it towards synthesis a lot more easier. This is stuff is straight from the FIG.

Good Luck!

[shamrock104]

Talking of "Attitudes and Movements" I believe its one of the most important and often most neglected exercise out there.

[loopa]

Talking of "Attitudes and Movements" I believe its one of the most important and often most neglected exercise out there.

Agreed, either due to the fact that it's spent on for 2 hours and the student can't define attitude at the end, or it's spent with very little emphasis and the student can't define attitude at the end.

You bring about a point for me to want to talk about. If you understand the progression of how all the exercises come together, it should make sense why you teach what for each exercise. Like descents are great, but they are carrying descents over as "simple to complex" when they do forced approaches. And if you look at the national averages on PPL flight tests, forced approaches are one of the most commonly failed items. Where do you think the root cause is? If you answer Descents ... that's a good start.

It seems so many instructor's get stuck in the "go go go" mentality pre-solo then they remain with a wtf flag when the student quits flying shortly after solo; failing to realize that the inability to properly master those exercises leads to a learning curve that plateau's to the point where a student and instructor reach frustration levels of giving up. I certainly hope the instructor can take a stand back and evaluate why they are in the position they are. Admitting self-analysis is the first step, because it is so simple to assume the student is just stupid.

Good Luck!

[Colonel Sanders]

shorter, more effective, student participated PGI's go a long way in the development of a student pilot

+1

Can you imagine if your Attitudes and Movements PGI was 2 hours?

My father, who taught me (and a bunch of guys in T-33's and F-104's) to fly, refers to that as "death by briefing". I presume that this is a highly prized civilian flight instructional technique in Canada, because it is so common.

If during a PGI you are not:

1) holding a model aircraft in your hand, or
2) drawing a picture on the whiteboard, or
3) telling the student what to do in the airplane to perform the exercise

Then shut up, because you are not telling him anything relevant to the PGI.

Again, don't confuse ground school with PGI, and don't confuse PGI with pre-flight briefing. They are three separate and very distinct ground activities.

how long it took them to get 'comfortable' with teaching.

I have been a flight instructor for 20 years now, and I am still not really very "comfortable" with teaching. I frankly suspect that I suck at it. My saving grace is that I can fly the snot out of an airplane, and I can explain what is going on while I do it, but that technical knowledge really just comes from my engineering background. Just because someone is a good stick and a decent engineer does NOT make them a good instructor.

[Big Pistons Forever]

I have been an instructor for 24 years now and I am still refining my PGI's and working to be a better instructor.

I strongly second the comment about short simple PGI's. Everytime I tweek them they get shorter, but you have to have the depth of knowledge to expand any part as necessary for student comprehension, that is where the hard work comes in to learn your subjects.

Ever since I started instructing I have always asked my students what in their opinion I could have done better. The feedback I have gotten has IMO been the single biggest help in improving my skills and ability as an instructor

[Doc]

Okay, I've out of instructing for longer than most of you have been alive. Seriously.
But a question crosses my mind.
Why do we have FOUR classes of instructors?
Do the Europeans have FOUR classes of instructors?
The Americans?
I get the "apprenticeship" principal. I really do.
But FOUR classes?
I understand the duties and responsibilities of a Class 1, and a Class 2. I should think ONE entry level to the rating would be enough?
I also find the rate of pay for an instructor is pretty much criminal.
The requirements to become an instructor are (lets be honest, these neophytes are STILL learning to fly themselves) a joke.
C'MON MAN!

[Oxi]

Talking of "Attitudes and Movements" I believe its one of the most important and often most neglected exercise out there.

Currently going through this lesson and it's a PITA.

oxi

[Shiny Side Up]

Free advice: Keep It Simple

Too many class 4's - on bad advice from their inexperienced class 1 instructors - try to cram everything into their PGI, which is foolish....

.....Amazingly, this is a very common flight instruction technique. And is horrible.

Indeed. I'm going to place a bit of blame in TC's lap because a lot of new class fours are getting through with this. I'm starting to work up a list of class ones whom I don't like their product. TC is letting some of the neophytes through on the principle that "well they didn't miss anything" and take the carpet bombing approach to doing their PGIs. Keep it simple could be followed by keep it brief. It should be no longer than 15 minutes, with a few exceptions (and then not break the 20 minute mark on those).

Your PGI is what makes you (or breaks you) as a flight instructor, and you need an experienced class 1 to help you develop good, focused, minimalistic PGI.

Again fully agree. You got a small window with your student where you got their attention. PGIs could be considered a performance art. People can pay attention to a three minute song remember, yours can't be the "Alice's Restaurant Massacree" of briefings.

I groan when I see a class 4 instructor with a 27 page PGI for a lesson. There is no way in hell that any farmer or truck driver is going to retain all that garbage.

Forget about farmers and truck drivers, not even Engineers and Dentists can sit through this stuff for that long, and certainly not teen agers who will make up a significant portion of your new students as an instructor.

The PGI should tell the student what he needs to do in the airplane, to perform the lesson.

Again very good advice. The PGI should be the Who, What, When, Why, Where, and How.

What are we going to learn today, why are we going to learn it. I tell mine That should be said in two sentences. The rest is how, with the occasional who, when or where. It should end with a few questions to make sure they understood the previous few minutes.

I did a lot of interviewing of new instructors the last while. Not many were up to snuff. Generally as part of the interview I sat through some of their PGIs, and after a few that lasted an hour plus (to which the poor soul wasn't even done, I think one fellow was on point 12 of 19 when I cut it short, there's only so much smiling and nodding I can do as "smart student") that I very patiently sat through. I was probably nicer to some of these poor fellows than I should have been, though the worst example I reccomended he go get his money back from his class 1.

Personally I'm getting worn out from the process, though I can say that I've been instructing people on various activities for longer than I've been doing it in aviation. People seem to be getting dumber, or I'm running out of patientce. I probably hit my peak as a good instructor a few years back when I still had more enthusiasm to go with it.

[Colonel Sanders]

The flight instructor rating is a maddening one. It is the first pilot qualification that you will encounter, that is NOT about you becoming more proficient at wiggling the yoke.

It's an awful lot of hard work, and the pay sucks. Most instructors are of fair quality at best, for various reasons; inexperience, or just putting in time until they finally fly a twin and never look back. Their heart isn't in it.

There are roughly 3 categories of instructors:

1) time-builders. Here and gone ASAP.

2) career. Rare at FTU's - often just the CFI at very large FTU's, or at puppy mills. Middling pay.

3) lifer part-time. Has a day job and does it as a form of social volunteer work, like working at a soup kitchen for homeless people, because they just love aviation.

Flight instructors are often denigrated by people who were born with an ATPL in one hand and a fat logbook in the other, but that's just part of the crappy job. If you're doing it for the hours in your logbook (or the money - ha ha ha ha), do something else.

[tonyhunt]

3) lifer part-time. Has a day job and does it as a form of social volunteer work, like working at a soup kitchen for homeless people, because they just love aviation.

Volunteer. Part-time. Lifer. That's where the school/club atmosphere is very important, and why some instructors stick around forever at certain clubs. I would kill someone if I had to work at a puppy mill. I spend several evenings and half of my weekend at the Club, often simply answering questions, suggesting interesting destinations, or explaining why I like certain aeroplanes.

[Big Pistons Forever]

3) lifer part-time. Has a day job and does it as a form of social volunteer work, like working at a soup kitchen for homeless people, because they just love aviation.

.

That would be me , although I think your soup kitchen analogy is flawed, those folks IMO get a lot respect, organizing the bottle drive for the local drunks, is probably closer to the mark

[C-GGGQ]

It should be no longer than 15 minutes, with a few exceptions (and then not break the 20 minute mark on those).

So glad to hear that my class one was not the only one who thought this (my fellow instructors sometimes made me think otherwise). It's a briefing, not a lesson. It is about THAT flight, they already had the groundschool don't reteach, refresh.

Okay, I've out of instructing for longer than most of you have been alive. Seriously.
But a question crosses my mind.
Why do we have FOUR classes of instructors?

Yeah my grandfather was once an instructor and remembers there being only three. Not sure when we went to 4. It seems like overkill to me also.

[Shiny Side Up]

It should be no longer than 15 minutes, with a few exceptions (and then not break the 20 minute mark on those).

So glad to hear that my class one was not the only one who thought this (my fellow instructors sometimes made me think otherwise). It's a briefing, not a lesson. It is about THAT flight, they already had the groundschool don't reteach, refresh.

A new instructor student almost always has long briefings off the start. There's two parts to it. First is the general nerves and lack of thought as to how to present. All of the dropping their notes, long pauses, losing their place, forgetting their markers, etc. which improves with practice - or should if a instructor student is progressing. The second part of it is having too much material to go through. Being a class 1 is sometimes like being a merciless editor, there might be a lot of lines and material that you were proud of that's going to end up on the cutting room floor. Its part of the process. I've yet to see a new instructor that didn't have enough on the first few briefings they made for me.

[Colonel Sanders]

Why do we have FOUR classes of instructors?

For questions like these, I often like to look south. They fly airplanes in the USA, too.

Note that the FAA has exactly ONE class of flight instructor: the Certified Flight Instructor (CFI). And the way it works is that if you've held a CFI for 24 months, you can teach new instructors. That's it. Quite a contrast with our system. I had an ATPL for years before I finally got my class 1 instructor rating, here in Canada. The Chief Flight Instructor of the local FTU, who used to do flight tests back in the 1970's, is still only a class 2, after all these decades. Complete madness.

The FAA, instead of focusing on levels of teaching ability, instead qualifies the kind of instruction you wish to perform. You want to teach IFR? Gotta get your CFII. Want to teach on twins? Gotta get your MEI.

This is wildly different than in Canada, where Transport figures if you're an instructor, and you're qualified to fly something, well, you're automatically qualified to teach it. No extra qualification required. Heck, in Canada, you don't even need any kind of instructor rating to teach multi, IFR or seaplane!

I have suspicions that both the Canadian class 1/2/3/4 systems, and the FAA micro-managed CFII/MEI systems are overkill, because other countries without it work just fine.