Spent two hours with Lisa today doing ground school. We both had a great time. Lesson consisted of covering topics from the POH such as systems, weight and balance, emergencies, and aircraft performance. Using her own life experiences I was able to give her unforgettable examples of how Va works, how wings lift, how fuel gets out of the carburetor and some others I forget. We found that the POH was really deficient in giving a practical engine fire checklist. We found that it is useless to plan precise times and routes when winds are never as forecast. I showed her how best to learn to diagram the systems of the aircraft. She left enthused and even considering a flying career. As good as it gets.

You are going to learn the teaching of flying by making many mistakes. You are going to give students both good and bad habits, techniques, lessons and memories. An educational critic of my lesson with Lisa could, rightfully, say it was unorganized and disjointed. It was. Still before the material in the POH could be properly covered, I had to make sure that she had the required background. 60-14 would agree but you would choke on the vocabulary needed to make the point. It's called readiness.

I was told early on in teaching that it would take seven years to acquire teaching competence. If teaching had two years in a row as bad as the first year, there would be no teachers. Shortly after my 'college revolt' about wasting my time they began to put student teachers into the classrooms from the very beginning. That and the elimination of school administrators from the California Teachers Association are my two life-time achievements. Unintended consequences make these a dubious claim to fame.

If you read of my IFR logging experience where I sat in back while a CFI candidate gave instruction to a pilot, you are likely to find that such a procedure is very unusual. CFI preparation has no 'plan' for doing as I did. The candidate had no idea, by admission, of where to begin teaching the lesson. Candidate chose to watch as I demonstrated how I take a student through the entire flight on the ground along with headings, altitudes, radio frequencies, what to say/when to say it, and a run-through using the actual radios. Once on the flight, candidate did well. There is very little in the CFI program that will actually provide the very much needed practical teaching experience by the candidate. The problem lies in the process and entrenched administration of the FAA not the potential instructors.

An honest to goodness FAA CFI program to produce would require an admission that the programs of the past have been wrong and misdirected. If the precepts of 60-14 are to be a part of the program, then book learning alone will not suffice. I question that there is any innate teaching ability, teaching sensitivity can be taught, acquired, and passed on. A 60-14 program could provide a 3-person curriculum such as I practiced on the above flight. As many of you know I have always taught with tape recorders on during preflight ground school and flight. Maybe, all instruction should be video taped. An instructor should not be required to learn 'the hard way' as to how far into a problem situation to go before taking over.
The above was in response to "Bob Furtaw" <bob@furtaw.com

Planned Instruction
The military is a leading exponent of programmed instruction. Under such a program every thing in the future is based upon the building blocks of the past. There are no surprises or unexpected events. Every lesson is preceded by a flight briefing that covers in detail such things as required checklists, radio frequencies, departure, route, and retune procedures and maneuvers to be performed.

For airwork or landings there should be selected variations that require differences in technique and airspeed. Your plan should include parameters for heading and altitude. Any en-route requirements should include ETA and airport comparisons for checkpoints as well as total time en-route.

How well you fly is very much dependent on your knowledge of the aircraft systems. Any system failure will have a system crosscheck that you can use to evaluate separate the degree of difficulty that exists. By knowing how the system works, you can make the safe decision. Knowing the systems, of necessity, includes knowing the speed and performance limitations for every configuration. Every pilot must know what malfunction will ground an aircraft.

There is risk in every flight. It is up to the pilot to assess the risk that exists when any aspect of weather, aircraft or pilot affects the margin of allowable error. Your decision not to fly exists up to the point of takeoff. Even the prepared pilot can be blind sided by the unexpected event. Of all the things that are covered in the POH and the FARs there are still far more waiting on the sidelines to surprise you.

Effective Instruction
First of four elements is identification of the objectives…not the creation of them as would the FAA have you believe.
The second of the four elements is teaching to these objectives. The process is to use task analysis of the required performance. Each major task is dissected into initial knowledge, basic skills and the combination and organization of these is formulated as a progression to the objective.

It is important that all knowledge and basics be presented as relevant to the final objective. We have task, one of several, that must be introduced, practiced and mastered. Tasks in combination can take a student from ground reference, into patterns, to go-arounds and to landings. Each task must be recognized as relevant by the student. Every instructor must be honest in feeding back his judgment of the performance status of the student. The student's knowledge of the objective will enable him to know the truth of your feedback. When synergy occurs between the instructor and student, the student is ready to prove mastery by flying solo.
--Brief your students for the coming lesson
--For their next lesson at the end of each lesson
--Over the phone the night before any lesson
--Before getting into the airplane
--Avoid discussing problems while the engine is running
--Do not distract student during preflight (Unless directed to having student tell you to shut up.)
--Do not 'chatter' during taxi
--The Flight Lesson
--Advise student that at least one unexpected event will occur every lesson.
--Always flies up wind if remaining in airport vicinity. Minimizes time getting home.
--Use a number of different departures and planned arrivals with changes for every lesson.
--Use departure climb-out as an opportunity to teach trim and Dutch rolls.
--Present as many 'airspace' situations as you can on every flight.
--Introduce stalls gently. After introduction do stalls as a series. Use distractions.
--Double up in three-place aircraft with two students where possible.
--Use simulators
--You set the standards of performance, not the student. Raise standards as appropriate.
--Teach taxiing from lesson one.
--Teach radio from lesson one.
--Airport and area from lesson one.
--Teach use of the throttle and mixture from lesson one.
--Keep fuel record from lesson one.
--Solo cross-countries might be flown at 55% power.

Instructional Safety
When teaching the safest possible flight operations you can show a student how poor decisions doing the same maneuvers could be proportionately more dangerous. I do this almost without thinking about it in my home flight arena. In a low visibility situation today I chose to get all the radar help I could by getting an IFR clearance for practice work in the vicinity of a VOR. With the next student we did vertical-S airspeed practice. I had the student depart by requesting a climb in pattern to above a cloud layer before flying to the VOR. We then tracked upwind on a radial that I knew would be relatively safe and then tracked crosswind for a period before returning downwind on another radial over an under cast that was most likely to be avoided. The fact that we never saw an airplane doesn't mean anything for certain but it was a nice flight. I began instruction in 1968 and I lay some credit to the fact that instructional accidents have fallen nearly every year up to the present. At least I have not contributed to the accident rate.

Wearing Thin Pants
In many respects flying an airplane is much like riding a horse. A horse goes where its head points, so does an airplane in coordinated flight. A rider feels the horse and dressage riders give the horse directions in the ring with just pressures and feel the correct movements via pressures and sight. So can an airplane be flown by feeling pressures. Airplane feel is inside your body much like horse feel is each push and pull is mutually sensed. You feel airplane and horse movements in your hands, feet, chest and stomach, and muscles. Airplanes and horses feed back feel that tells of performance.

The most subtle of sensations are fed back and forth you to the airplane and the airplane to you through the transfer of centrifugal and centripetal energy. Some parts of you and the airplane sense inertial effects before others but they are always there and your sensitivity can be learned and increased. There is an associated danger in flying by feel. Feel must be supported by visual reference or bad things happen to you and your flying. Any time your sensations are in conflict, you must go visually to your instruments. You only have a few moments in which to do this. You are overcoming very powerful instinctive forces and extreme mental concentration is required continuously Any lapse of continuity will result in loss of aircraft control.

You can become sensitized to your body pressures by performing specific maneuvers that affect specific areas of the body. Once such place is to each side of your seat cushion that presses on your thighs. By paying attention to these pressure point and performing a series of turns, climbs and dives without using the rudder you will become aware of pressure differences. By doing the same series, while moving the rudder side to side and keeping the wings stabilized you can develop a sense for when the ball is centered.

Once you have gone through the extremes of sensation due to a misplaced rudder, you should practice. You know that you step on the ball when it moves to the right, you should also step on the ball when you feel pressure to your right. You apply rudder until your 'seat' tells you the ball is centered. Check the ball to see if it is centered. By using a safety pilot and closing your eyes except to check the ball you can become quite skillful even in thick pants.

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