CFI-to-CFI Newsletter - Volume 11 Issue 1 - 7

PLANNED LESSON TIME-BREAKS

About an hour into the ground session of one
CFI test the applicant looked at me and said,
"Hey, let's take a break. If you were a student,
you would be getting pretty knowledge saturated
by now and a break would help you refresh your
learning ability a bit."
Huh, she wasn't wrong.
She went on, "Plus, I would like a couple of
minutes to get some material ready for the next
thing you asked me to teach."
OK, I get it. We all might want a break for a
bathroom, to get a fresh cup of coffee, or just to
stretch. But this applicant was correlating the
need for a break to the learning process. She
must have actually learned something from that
darn FAA Aviation Instructor's Handbook!
Breaks are a good thing. The ground portion is
going to be long for both you and the DPE!
Use those breaks, talk about how they help a
student and how they help you as an instructor and
set yourself up for presenting more material on the
test. Even a break can be a teaching moment.

CFI APPLICANT SENT ME HOMEWORK!

It is common for a DPE to assign a couple of
systems and maneuvers to a CFI applicant
ahead of time that they should be prepared
to teach. This is a way of demonstrating
the ability to develop a lesson plan, present
material to a student, and have prepared ahead
of time as a good teacher would instead of just
"winging it on the fly."
A good CFI applicant will actually collect
material, prepare a lesson plan, and set up to
teach the student (played by the DPE on the day
of the test) the assigned material. This doesn't
mean that there won't be other material asked
or covered, but this is a great opportunity for a
would-be CFI to show how they will "do it in the
real world" with a student they schedule for a
lesson ahead of time.
In the most surprising of occasions, and this
has only happened once to me, I actually got an
email from the applicant two days ahead of the
scheduled practical test giving me homework to
study, something he noted he would expect his
student to do if they had an upcoming lesson!

He included some parts from the FAA's Airplane
Flying Handbook describing the assigned
maneuvers, sent me the ACS sections for the
maneuvers, and even a couple online videos he
had found that described the selected systems,
and then even shared with me the lesson plan he
had created so the "student would know what to
expect" at the time of the lesson.
I happened to be in a meeting with a bunch of
aviation industry and FAA representatives. At a
break I shared what had just arrived in my email.
I wasn't the only one impressed!
PREPARE TO TEACH, NOT JUST TO PASS THE TEST

On a test not long ago, I had a well-prepared
applicant who had created a great deal of
material, had collected even more material, and
was really ready to teach from the materials
he had brought to the test. I remarked at the
end of the test, "I almost feel bad that we only
sampled content in accordance with the PTS
requirements, you had so much more prepared
today that I feel like the test doesn't do justice
to all the work you put in ahead of time and how
much of your materials you didn't need today!"
CFI-to-CFI Newsletter - Volume 11 Issue 1

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of CFI-to-CFI Newsletter - Volume 11 Issue 1
