Flight Training - February 2014 - 50

ADVANCED PILOT»

CFI TO CFI

Don't be the big bad wolf
Helping your students recognize their weaknesses
» By Natalie Bingham Hoover

HAVE YOU EVER felt like a nagging
flight instructor during the postflight briefing?
"You need to watch your airspeed
on that short field takeoff...you have
to do a better job of controlling your
heading during the stall recovery...."
After the third critical comment
or so, your student starts to look like
a chastised puppy, head down and
tail tucked. But these things have to
be said in order to help our students
improve, right? Isn't that our duty
as flight instructors to point out our
students' deficiencies so they can

THE SIGN OF ANY
GREAT TEACHER IS A
SELF-SUFFICIENT
STUDENT.

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grow into the safe, skilled pilots
they are meant to be? Well, maybe
that's not our job at all.
The FAA says there is a better
way to approach the evaluation
and critique of our students' flying
capabilities. The Aviation Instructor's Handbook presents a technique
called "collaborative assessment"
in which the instructor facilitates a
student's assessment of his or her
own performance in light of a set of
preestablished standards. Studentbased critiques are good for several
reasons.
First, lessons will become a lot
more enjoyable for both of you
when it feels as if you are on the
same team, working together
toward a common goal. Second,
and more important, helping your
student develop sound habits of
self-assessment is a critical skill
of a safety-minded pilot. It will
help you feel less like the big bad
wolf and more like a helpful mentor on your student's self-led path
to becoming a successful, competent pilot.

In order for a student to be able
to accurately assess his or her own
performance, you must lay out a
clear set of standards before you
ever leave the ground. If a student is
preparing for solo, those standards
should look different than if one is
preparing for a checkride. This is
where a well-organized syllabus
comes in handy, complete with
lesson objectives and end-of-flight
performance standards. Tell your
students that in order to get your
solo signoff, you expect very specific
margins of altitude and airspeed,
as well as safe decision making. By
the time the student approaches the
checkride, he or she should be well
versed with the practical test standards and understand that the goal
of every maneuver is to perform
well within those boundaries.
Once you actually make it to the
air, however, it's time to scale back
the instructor-led communication so you can function more as
observer and safety pilot, allowing your students to focus as they
work through the lesson. After each
maneuver, ask your students how
they thought it went. Then-only
if they don't come to the conclusions on their own-you can offer
some guidance to help improve the
second attempt.
Although it may be tough to
do for us talkative instructors,
sometimes the biggest lessons occur
when we allow students to see the
natural outcome of their decisions
in the airplane (provided those
natural outcomes still have you
arriving home safe for dinner). For
example, we all know it's tempting on a cross-country flight to
help students locate waypoints and
airports before they pass them by.
But how much more of a learning
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Flight Training - February 2014

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