Textbooks tell us what to teach, but they can't do much to address the how of it. Only observing how people learn gives us the how. I don't know how many bucks per hour the instructors make in your neighborhood. But if you have ever come out to the field and found your CFI brimming with ideas on how to tackle the task of the day, he or she has probably spent time off the clock brainstorming ways to teach flying. Invariably, success comes from finding out what other students taught other instructors about how people learn.
As instructors, we learn that our job will be easier in direct proportion to the motivation displayed by the student pilot-symbiosis. We learn that the example we set-much more than the words we speak-is the only important signal sent and received. Patience is one of a flight instructor's most valued virtues. But equally important is being able to conceal a loss of patience when it has occurred. Try keeping a smile on your face and an encouraging tone in your voice when you are busting out all over with frustration! Not easy. But mastering this skill may keep a discouraged soul from giving up, whereas an outburst has the potential to push the dejected student into the realm of despair. We also realize that if we can do this in an airplane, we can do it almost anywhere.
The opposite charade-feigning rage when you are chuckling inside-can also be useful on occasion. A wonderfully talented teenaged student (now a jaded 25-year-old commuter captain) was getting a little lazy. I knew that I had his respect, but my gentle prods to be more attentive to his aeronautical studies were getting nowhere. So I tore into him with mock ferocity, trying hard to hide the grin that kept threatening to spread across my face. It worked; we both laugh about it today. His comical mimicry of my ancient sermon is uproarious. Don't confuse this display with the sincere expression of outrage designed to make the dangerous and arrogant pilot-wannabe re-consider his goals. Fortunately, that is a performance that needs to be staged only rarely.
Another cagey deception broke a grip of fear that for years had prevented a talented older student from completing his training. His flying was top-notch, but he was petrified at the idea of taking a flight test. In cahoots with the local designated examiner, I scheduled the checkride, unbeknownst to the student. Our practice flight that morning was fine. I asked him to fill out a Form 8710 for a checkride. "Why now?" he asked.
"Because the examiner is waiting for you," I said.
Brutal approach? Darn right. But this fellow wouldn't have taken that ride any other way. He passed.
If that is an example of a flight instructor suffering for a student whose lack of confidence had not yet been overcome by his considerable skills, the opposite is to suffer with inner fears for pilots who are not cautious enough to worry about themselves.
Whether they are our students or someone else's burden, we pray that such people will have memorable learning experiences-not bad enough to harm them, but vivid enough to tame their boldness. Most of these pilots already have a day of reckoning in their future-they just don't know it yet. The few truly irredeemable ones fail to recognize this event even after it has occurred. If you recognize that you are engaged in teaching such a person, discontinue your association because the heirs may one day blame the results of the victim's aeronautical dabbling on you.
Just as the best pilots seem to do the least when flying, we learn that sometimes in training, less is more, and the student must be left to work things out with the aircraft. Recognizing this may require remaining silent or passive when one's whole body is tensed with the effort not to say or do something about that nav radio not yet tuned, that configuration not yet established, or that drift correction not yet under control on final approach. We learn that even if the result is sloppy, learning has taken place-more so than if we had interceded. One of the most surprising things we learn, with experience, is just how long we can keep our hands in our laps without feeling alarm. We also know that in this judgment call we can never afford to be wrong. But even this cautionary note must balance against an overprotectiveness that implies mistrust and denies the student confidence.
We learn, in time, to deal with the complexities of the human ego, and how to blend diplomacy with truth. A high-powered student with a checkered training history convinced himself that the checkride was only an hour or two in the future, and his past instructors had unjustly refused to send him for the test. When I went flying with him, it quickly became clear to me that the fundamentals had not been mastered. Why was he so deluded about this? My hunch was that his own strong personality had overpowered the ability of his previous handlers to give him the true picture. I had no such trouble. But rather than tell him that he wasn't the pilot he thought he was, I employed a "mock checkride" technique, combined with some self-effacing humor about my own rusting skills, to show him where his performance would not have been up to standards. This helped.
It is easy to dwell on successes. But a thoughtful CFI learns as much from failures. Why was I unable to deliver a particular student pilot from the fear that seized him in an airplane? Rather than waste his time and money, I turned him over to a more experienced friend and colleague. The results were almost instantaneously successful. I was glad for this but also troubled by the experience. This led to an examination of my own many shortcomings, and I like to think that the benefits of this contemplation were reaped by the students who came later.
One cannot overstate the responsibility flight instructors take on when preparing students for solo. I never had any illusions about the trust implicit in having been awarded this responsibility. But it hit home deeply when, during a young student's first session alone in the traffic pattern, his parents appeared on the ramp to watch. They were beaming. "He said it would probably be today," said the father. Is there any flight instructor who would not second-guess himself with his student's mom there saying, "That's my baby!" and the student's dad snapping pictures to record the day that their son's flying career was born?
Of this, if not of riches, is the flight instructor's daily job composed. It is tempting to wish that people who have never flown could see life as we see it, sample our exhilaration, face their problems and opportunities with the skills that we learn in the air-thinking ahead, having an out, weighing risk, taking responsibility, and staying calm in a pinch because panic, and its associated foggy thinking, may be more treacherous than the emergency itself. I often think how much safer the roads might be, how many fewer injured people, bent guardrails, and dead animals there would be if drivers were exposed, just briefly, to the operating principles studied by the newest of pilots.
So the next time you have a less-than-perfect day in the cockpit, don't view it as a waste of time. Consider that you and the CFI have simply reversed roles this time. Next time out, you will reap the benefits of what you have taught your instructor today.
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