On Motivation
Students will only learn if they want to. Contrary to commonly held parent's opinion, children are not inherently resistant to instruction. All student failures can be directly attributable to teacher failure. Given the right motivation learning will take place. The instructional problem is to make the learning take place in the right direction. For, whatever reason, much student motivation tends to be in the wrong direction. I found that teaching gambling was always easier than teaching good behavior.
Learning is keyed to motivation. Threats will work to a degree, but soon wear out. Margaret Meade, the great anthropologist once told me that we should pay children to go to school, with the pay scale based on achievement. Many student pilots of a younger age are motivated into learning to fly because of the promise of future compensation. Older students are trying to recover the dreams of their youth. regardless, a student pilot must be motivated to overcome the sure to come failures, plateaus, and frustrations that are a part of learning to fly.
Every flying success serves as a motivator. It is essential that the instructor provide in each lesson a series of achievable goals that challenge and satisfy the motivational needs of the student. Nothing is as defeating to a student as false praise. The instructor must be creative in finding motivators. One of my most satisfying experiences as a public school teacher was when I was able to motivate an entire class to excel in spelling lessons just by correcting the papers during class and pretending that I really enjoyed making red check marks on missed words. Surprising how hard the kids would work to keep me from enjoying correcting spelling. Do whatever it takes to motivate.
When a Pilot Dies
Two of my pilots have died in airplane crashes. One, I had advised to quit and I thought that he had. Three years later, after his death, I found that he had gone to a friend of mine to finish up his instruction only to kill himself flying home after passing his flight test. The other tried to follow a car along a dirt road filled with family members while flying at low altitude. Stall; spin only a week after passing the flight test. Took a son down with him. I have never been the same.
My question has always been, "What was my responsibility?" I know I failed as a teacher at some point in their past. I have spent considerable time since these events wondering what I could have, should have, done and said. I am much more willing to talk about the student who stole a club plane, took a bottle of whiskey and proceeded to circle at altitude over the S.F. Bay area while drinking until unconscious. He passed out. The aircraft was so well trimmed that it flew him all the way across the Sierras and eventually crashed into the Nevada desert. Plane totaled but student was not injured. Student had not flown with me for over four months but club felt that I had been at least partially responsible. Club nearly went under since they only had one plane. Responsibility? Accountability? If I only knew.
On the other hand, I have taught students who went on to become airline pilots, military pilots, commercial pilots but most have flown for years as private pilots. I have never counted how many successes and failures I have had. We lose touch all too easily in today's world. Now, on the internet I have touched the lives of more pilots than ever. Hardly a week goes by but that some internet friend writes to thank me for the influence what I have written has had on their lives. Responsibility? Accountability? If I only knew.
On the internet I can no longer know ahead of time that the student who has read my material has used it as a jumping-off point for higher ratings and certificates. I can no longer take advantage of my in-cockpit opportunities to learn more from my student than they learn from me.
Joys of Flying
Getting through your checkride successfully gives rise to a sense of elation and achievement that can only be described in superlatives. Just how it is described will vary but the glow lingers, lives and grows. The more you fly the more entrenched will become the satisfaction.
The better you fly and get the kind of performance you want from the airplane, the more deeply you will sense the pleasures of flying. Having control over a beautiful piece of machinery by making it obey you gives you a kind of self-confidence and personal assurance that changes your voice, your walk, and way of dealing with people. Self-assurance can be used to great advantage or to self-destruction. It is one of the most powerful assets we can have. Only with experience can you learn to guide and control the power being able to fly creates. The danger lies in that the better you 'think' you fly the more careful you should be.
Over confidence is waiting in the wings to slap you down. Just ask the pilot who has had a minor accident as to how he has been brought up short and concerned as to just how capable he is. I have a friend who had such an accident several years ago. He flies but has not flown solo since. As I just told a student today, "Mistakes are always waiting out there to teach you a lesson." No matter how good you are, there are situations out there just waiting to take a bite out of the unwary.
Every pilot who flies and survives long enough is going to have phases of his flying life pass by during which he progresses from one experience plateau into another. This may be by way of ratings or hours but no matter how accomplished the 'Passages' come one after another for those who continue to fly. The ability to fly and the changes flying has made in you will be there as long as you live.
Designing Lessons
Giving flying lessons is much like building a tissue and balsa flying model of an airplane of your own design. The plane must be of your own design because the raw material of the student is going to require unique approaches and adaptation to situations and abilities.
At the present time, I am instructing a unique such flight program. I have a student who is the most well read and prepared I have ever taught. Yet my lessons seldom achieve the proficiency level I expect or seek. My student has an airsickness problem. It comes and goes and gets better the more frequency we fly. However, due to the flu season we have not flown frequently. Progress has been slow and erratic. At one point we did not fly for three weeks. The review flight ended in less than half an hour due to illness.
The student senses the lack of progress, as I do. I press because the student early on set time and economic limits for the lessons. I bypass those maneuvers that seem to cause illness but are so basic that weaknesses shine through. It is obvious that avoidance is not the answer. It is apparent that certain skills must be acquired to reasonable proficiency and absence of stress before they can be blended into the instructional program.
A previous student told me that his tendency toward illness was caused by an unexpressed fear of crashing. One the fear faded so did the sickness. It is difficult to surmise the problem of my present student. It is almost as though we must start over to reduce the stresses that once existed in previously learned material. The presence of independent skills in flying are very few I cannot right now even think of one. Prerequisite or subordinate skills dominate the learning to fly program. This particular student gets ill doing ground reference. The latest review flight consisted of little more than left and right level turns before illness struck. I have not
been able to organize lesson sequences that will hold together long enough for connection to another sequence.
Under a normal progression we would have gone through the four basics, slow flight and stalls, radio procedures, airport departures and arrivals, and proceeded into landing preliminaries of go-around and patterns. We have not been able to fly often enough or long enough the link the required skills together. The relevance of basic skills is so obvious as not to require explanation or demonstration.
Each of these areas has prerequisites that once met, must be maintained. Because of the superior preparation done by this student in utilizing study materials, I have tried to keep my student well. The result has been vacancies in his skills and procedures. The student has suffered because I failed to tie the required skills into sequences that would produce success. A lesson learned.
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