Fundamental problem frustrates instructor
I have been instructing for a bit less than two years, and I have become somewhat frustrated by the fact that it seems you can only teach as much as your student is willing to allow you to teach. Some students are like a sponge--they soak up all that you can present to them. I find myself spending a lot of time preparing lesson plans for them, and I get a lot of personal satisfaction from watching them absorb all that I teach.
On the other side of the spectrum are the students who are unmotivated to learn or even think for themselves. These students must be told over and over how to perform a task in the airplane. After much repetitive practice, I ask them to perform it without me coaching them, and they act like they have never seen the maneuver before. They constantly have to be coached. It seems that they have no motivation to excel; they are just content to have me tell them how to do it every time.
I find myself not teaching to them at the same level that I teach to my motivated students, because they obviously do not care about learning. I know this is wrong, but I can tell they are not interested in learning. I sometimes even try what I call "dumbing down" the material, to make it easier to learn so that they will not have to think so much, but then I feel like I have not presented the material as it should be. Please do not misunderstand me, I really love to instruct, but I guess I should not expect everyone to be as enthusiastic about flying as I am.
I believe that some people, even though they say they want to learn to fly, really do not. They spend their time and money, but will spend no effort. Any advice would be much appreciated and well respected.
����Sincerely,
����Frustrated CFI
Greetings Mr. Frustrated:
You've hit on a fundamental problem facing many outstanding flight instructors. There are good and poor instructors in aviation as well as good and poor students in aviation. We openly profess that students should find a "good" instructor to work with and avoid poor instructors. Why is it not OK to tell CFIs to fly with the "good" students and avoid the poor ones (defined as those who have little or no motivation to learn and not as those who learn at a slightly different pace than others)?
I'm telling you to furlough the poor students if they don't meet a basic standard for a commitment to learning. There's no reason for you to spend your time teaching lazy students and learners who aren't committed if you don't want to. And you're spot on when suggesting that there's only so much energy and enthusiasm you can have for someone who wants to be spoon-fed. That's human nature. This, in fact, is the reason I once wrote an article on how to be the kind of student your instructor loves to teach. One aspect of that article involves acting excited and motivated to get the most out of their instructor.
I suggest you raise the bar for admittance into your flight training schedule. The entrance exam is based on enthusiasm and commitment to learning. To remain enrolled with you as their teacher, students will have to meet you more than halfway in terms of dedication to learning. Stop training those who are wasting your time. Let them find someone else to fly with. You sound like a good instructor, thus you have a right to demand that your students make a reasonable commitment to working with you in a learning partnership. And if they ask why your student standards are so high, just tell them that you're concerned about their well being, the well being of their family, and the well being of the naive souls they'll carry if and when they become pilots.
Stalling out of the sky
Dear Rod,
I am a glider pilot and am adding a power rating to my certificate. My problem is that I have this weird fear while practicing stalls in the airplane. I always feel that the airplane is getting away from me right at the break and that I'm going to fall out of the sky. I have almost reached the point where I feel that I need my instructor along to even practice stalls. I love to do stalls in my glider! Turning stalls that break on the 45 with recovery at a crisp 90 degrees of turn are a proud accomplishment of mine. I want to be able to reproduce these results in the airplane as well.
Do I just need to try and fly more by myself and practice stalls until the fear goes away? I really can't explain it, and I'm quite baffled. I just feel like the airplane is not as solid as the gliders I fly, and it's going to come apart. I haven't decided if I don't trust my equipment or if it's my abilities that are causing my problem. My assumption is that it's a combination of both.
My instructor has all the confidence in the world in me and tells me to get in as much solo stick time as I can and keep practicing the stalls until I am comfortable. I feel completely comfortable with and implicitly trust my instructor and his abilities. However, I wonder if he's overestimating mine. What do you think?
����Mr. Something Wrong Man
Greetings Mr. Something Wrong Man:
I'm thinking that you're overthinking the entire stall entry issue. From what you've said, it's not the stall recovery you're having trouble with. Perhaps you're not considering why we actually practice stalls in the first place. We do so to avoid accidentally stalling an airplane. We don't do them to get good at entering the stall.
Stall awareness is why we learn to pay attention to the sensations that accompany stalls (buffeting, pitch change, horn sound, kinematic sense of acceleration, diminished control response, G-loading, et cetera). By default, we're required to practice entering stalls, because that's the only way we can learn to recover from them. It seems to me that you're placing too much significance on stall entry, and feeling uncomfortable as a result.
As I see it, if you need to have your instructor on board to practice stalls, then so be it. There's no federal aviation regulation requirement that you ever practice stalls solo. You can still be a perfectly good pilot if you only practice stalls with your CFI on board from now on. The most direct solution to your problem is to fly a bit more with your CFI to perfect your stall entry and recovery skills. You don't ever need to practice stalls "by yourself" again. And just to be clear here, this doesn't mean you shouldn't practice stalls. You just don't need to practice them alone. When you want to practice stalls in the future, do them your CFI on board. This shouldn't have any negative effect on your piloting ability. None!
Rod Machado is a flight instructor, author, educator, and speaker. A pilot since 1970 and a CFI since 1973, he has flown more than 8,000 hours and is part owner of a Cessna P210. Visit his Web site.
