AOPA Turbine Pilot Magazine - August 2017 - 18

PROFICIENT PILOT

Creative instructing

BY BARRY SCHIFF

New approaches to training challenges
A MONTH SELDOM PASSES without someone asking me
to recommend a flight school. My response is always
the same: The school is not as important as the instructor. I am then asked to recommend a good instructor.
I'm usually unable to do that either. I am acquainted
with many CFIs, but I haven't flown with them and
cannot judge their instructing abilities.
A good way to find a good instructor is to ask other
students. Another is to ask designated pilot examiners who can rate local instructors on the basis of how
well or poorly the students they test have been trained.
There are, of course, significant differences between
instructors. The least effective are like drill sergeants
barking orders. They demonstrate a maneuver and
require the student to repeat it over and over again until
satisfied with the results. The best instructors are far

All students should realize that their job is to
learn and the instructor's job is to teach.

BARRY SCHIFF

obtained his first
of seven flight
instructor ratings
in 1956 when he
was 18 years old.

18 | AOPA PILOT August 2017

more creative. They analyze the needs of their students
and tailor their teaching methods accordingly.
Some instructors, for example, teach stalls in the
time-honored tradition of having their students raise
the nose of the airplane until it points as high as the sun
at noon. The predictable result is a student who develops a justifiable fear of practicing such a maneuver.
The instructor's responsibility is to teach stall
recovery from attitudes during which inadvertent
stalls are most likely to occur. Recognizing that such
steep entries can frighten and discourage new pilots
(and almost never occur inadvertently in the real
world), the enterprising (and considerate) instructor simply asks his student to retard the throttle and
bleed off airspeed by maintaining altitude (or climbing
slightly). The airplane will eventually and obviously
stall but in a more gentle, realistic manner.
One of my pet peeves is an instructor who seems
more interested in having the airplane flown perfectly than in having his student learn to fly it. Such
an instructor is in too much of a hurry to correct a
student's mistakes and does not give his student an
opportunity to make mistakes and profit from them.
All students-whether presolo or checking out as
an airline captain-should realize that it's their job to
learn and their instructor's job is to teach. If a student

becomes frustrated by a lack of progress (regardless of
the type of training), he or she should speak up and suggest that the instructor adopt a new approach to the
training challenge. If the instructor is unable to adapt to
a student's needs, it might be time to change instructors.
As an 18-year-old instructor in 1956, I prided myself
on being innovative, but my creative efforts were not
always appreciated.
Although I do not think that he knew it, Tom Paris
was my first student. Because of his seemingly natural ability to fly, he made remarkable progress and was
ready to solo after only seven hours of instruction in
the Aeronca Champ. Every one of his landings was a
squeaker. The problem was that Tom never needed
to demonstrate that he could recover from a bounce.
Before I could allow him to solo, I had to determine
that Tom could safely recover from a botched landing.
So while in the pattern I told him that I was going to
bounce the little taildragger during the next few landings. His job was to take over and recover. As expected,
he recovered each time without difficulty.
After three such landings, I advised the tower that
I was about to release a student for his first solo flight
and then climbed out of the rear seat of the tandem
taildragger. This apparently got the controller's attention. He later said that he had never before seen an
instructor release a student for solo after a series of
such horrendous landings. In fact, he alerted the emergency equipment to stand by (really!) and called the
inspector at the local FAA office on the field after clearing Tom for takeoff.
The familiar gray Ford with the federal markings
pulled up just as Tom made his first landing-a greaser,
as was the second and the third. (The inspector pulled
me aside and suggested that I consider tempering my
creativity.)
I learned to fly in that same airplane (N81881), and
my instructor, Mike Walters, had his own creative
method of teaching. He would express displeasure with
a student's performance by whacking him on the back
of the head with a rolled-up sectional chart. I measured
my progress not by his praise-there never was any-
but by how long his chart would last before having to
be replaced. My reward was not as much the joy of solo
as it was the escape of his dreaded chart.
AOPA
WEB

www.barryschiff.com

http://www.barryschiff.com

AOPA Turbine Pilot Magazine - August 2017

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