What are the few things I wish someone would have told me
before I became a flight instructor?
Hey, everyone. Jason Schappert here of MZeroA.com,
and you are listening to the CFI Podcast, Certificated Flight Instructor Podcast,
brought to you by our number one-rated online ground school,
of which you can become a partner of.
CFIs, we get you in our online ground school
when you become a partner of ours free of charge,
so you can track, see your students' progress, if anything.
We actually pay you 30% for any students you refer to us.
Wayne is who you want to reach out to.
We call Wayne our office dad.
He's like a dad to everybody.
Wayne is our office dad.
Wayne@MZeroA.com, reach out to him.
You can always send a support ticket into, and Wayne can get it that way as well.
But, we'll happily set you up with that.
As CFIs, you are the lifeblood of what we do here at MZeroA.com.
You and I have the same mission, which is to create safer, smarter pilots.
And, that is a mission and a vision I would arguably we share very closely.
I want to share with you today about what I wish
someone would have told me before I became a CFI.
I'm not talking like horror story kind of stuff.
So, sorry, if that's what you're looking for.
I want to talk about
what I wish they would have told me
to help better prepare me for my CFI checkride,
better prepare me just to be a thorough and a great, forget great,
just a good CFI in the real world,
because I was less than average, to start.
And, that's just how the system is set up, sometimes.
It's unfortunate how that actually works.
So, I want to talk with you, really,
about four key factors that I want to make sure you understand.
Maybe, ideally, you're not a CFI just yet, if you are a CFI now, this is awesome.
It's just going to reinforce some things
that you've probably learned the hard way, perhaps.
Maybe, someone told you.
And, as you prepare CFI candidates,
well, you're going to be able to share these things with them as well.
The first thing, and this is something I will always be passionate about.
I shared this on Inflight Coffee not too terribly long ago.
Inflight Coffee is a show I do on Facebook every Saturday at 1:00 p.m. Eastern Time.
I just make a cup of coffee in my kitchen.
And then, we sit down and talk all things aviation,
with CFI themed this past few weeks ago.
And, one thing I'm very passionate about is always creating your own lesson plans.
I saw it time and time again.
I went to an aviation college.
And, at that aviation college,
the students would share CFI lesson plans.
They would buy CFI lesson plans.
They'd sell CFI lesson plans.
They would do all sorts of stuff.
And, eventually, one day,
the examiner got smart and goes,
"Wow, this is my third or fourth CFI checkride,"
and everybody seems to have the exact same lesson plans.
And, they put a stop to that pretty quickly.
And, I remember seeing that happening, going,
"I'm going to always make my own lesson plans.
There's no borrowing of lesson plans around here."
And, I made my own lesson plans.
Many of you who followed us, you've seen my CFI notebook.
It's impressive, to say the least,
when it comes to that.
So, again,
you need to be creating your own CFI lesson plans.
This is how, first off,
not only do you know what is in there,
but you know how to present the material in a thorough manner,
so they can actually see it as well.
So, they have all of that.
If you follow me, and so, you'll understand that.
When you create your own CFI lesson plans,
not only do you know what's in there,
but you know the content and you learn the content forwards and backwards.
And, that's what's so important,
because you have to be able to teach,
you have to be able to instruct,
you have to be able to show and talk through these things,
and break these things down into plain English.
That's what we're really after with that.
And, that's why you're truly creating your lesson plans,
because you're going from a basic level of understanding to, now,
having to know and understand this at just such a high level.
That's what's crucial.
That's what's so important.
And, that's what I need you to understand.
The next thing in there is flying from the right seat.
No one ever told me how challenging it would be
learning to fly from the right seat.
Everyone always asks,
"Jason, why do you sit in the right seat even when you're solo?"
It's just the easiest seat for me to be in.
I fly much better in the right seat than I do in the left seat.
I can fly to a greater precision.
Especially in the instrument environment,
my eyes are so used to what's called parallax,
I'm kind of reading the instruments at an angle.
My eyes just get so used to actually seeing that.
That's more difficult to scan, my instruments,
when they're just plastered right in front of me there.
I'm used to the angle that I have to look at my instruments at.
So,
I just find myself now a better pilot from the right seat.
And, I hope you can get to that same comfort as well.
Maybe, not as excessive as mine.
You should be able to bounce back.
And, I can bounce back and forth just fine.
I just prefer the right seat.
Right seat flying just has its challenges.
Centerline lines up differently.
Your maneuvers, your steep turns look differently.
Slicing the nose across the horizon, it all looks a little bit different.
Obviously, your hands are opposite now.
I remember doing my double eye,
and I'm right-handed,
and I did my double-eye in an SR20.
And, it was all well and good for flying the airplane
until I had to write down the clearance
and I'd flip-flop and fly with my left hand
and write it down with my right hand.
I'm not ambidextrous.
So, lefties, you would do quite well
in the right seat.
You would do very, very well with that.
Right-seat flying poses some challenges.
It's like a two or three-lesson challenge, though.
And, after that, you've been flying so much,
you just kind of get it.
And, it becomes so much easier.
Third thing here.
I wish someone would have told me that my teaching had to be in plain English.
You see, I made a mistake and I made this mistake in aviation,
I made this mistake in business, of thinking everybody thinks like I do,
everybody understands the words coming out of my mouth,
everybody understands and sees the world like I do.
And, I was 18, 19 years old.
What else did I know, right?
That is, as we know, the furthest thing from the truth.
How I explained something while it may click
and it made sense for me back in the day or make sense for me here now today,
it may not click and make sense with my student.
So, I have to be willing to change, which brings me to the fourth point,
because these two points are so intertwined,
is we have to address and accept--
students just have different learning styles.
And, learning styles can be as big picture as my visual learners,
my kinesthetic learners, my auditory learners.
It could be like that.
But, even deeper than that and diving into different personalities,
and who needs to see something done, and who is the monkey see, monkey do.
Who is the one who needs the ground before we actually get into the flight,
kind of a good pre-flight brief as well to go with that.
And, drawing the line and knowing these people
and you, as the CFI,
become a psychologist,
asking the right questions, getting the answers.
Questions are the answers, right?
We have to, as a CFI, ask more questions.
I don't mean like, "What kind of airspace is this?
What's our next radio call?
What's this on the airplane?”
Ask questions to learn more about our students,
so we can become more effective teachers.
Questions that come up in just general conversation
of what do they do for work is a great conversation starter, right?
Someone tells me they're an engineer.
I realize not all engineers have this personality,
but some engineers want to see all the details.
There's a small segment of engineers, too,
that still fall in the visual learner category, though.
So, we can't pigeonhole all engineers as super detail-oriented,
"Tell me all about the horizontal and vertical components
of lift in this turn."
We can't pigeonhole people based on that.
We still have to ask more questions.
You can just point-blank ask them, "How do you believe you learned best?"
In school, what did some of your favorite teachers do?
So often, we just say, "Let's hop in the airplane, and let's go."
And, we're not doing our students a benefit.
We're taking our student's money is what we're really doing at that point
and not providing any benefit for such, other than hours in the logbook.
But, maybe, not experience between the ears.
That's what we're looking to grow and to solve.
These are just some of the things I wish I would have known
going into becoming a CFI.
I learned early to make my own lesson plans, thankfully.
I wasn't one of those students who showed up
with someone else's lesson plan.
I was very proud of my lesson plans.
I was just giving this advice on the webinar not too long ago.
Someone was asking, "How long would it take to get my CFI?"
I said, "It's 80% on the ground, and it's about 20% in the air to CFI."
And, that's not Jason exaggerating something.
That's a very realistic ratio.
It is so much groundwork, because the lesson plans,
I didn't really make PowerPoints.
I'd probably, now, today make some PowerPoints or some Keynotes,
depending what platform you use.
But, make some sort of slides, now,
just to help you track,
just to help you follow along, using technology as an asset with that.
Right-seat flying, by Lesson 3, you'll be nailing it.
You'll be flying at a very high level of precision.
Look what you did
when you went to a TAA,
a technically-advanced aircraft, or a complex aircraft.
You got that thing quick.
Look at multi-engine.
If you've done multi yet,
most people knock out their multi in 10 hours.
That's a lot of airplane.
But, you also probably realized,
it was a lot of groundwork for multi, too, wasn't it?
The systems and understanding VMC and why I have a critical engine.
Those things pose some challenges.
It's a lot of groundwork.
And, of course, we must teach in plain English
and accept and assess our students' unique learning styles as well.
CFIs, you are such a blessing to us
and to all that we do here at MZeroA.com.
It is absolutely all for you all,
as we're on that same mission
of making safer, smarter pilots.
We are so blessed, so thankful to be on that mission here together.
If there is anything at all you need, anything at all your students need,
please, please, please, never hesitate to reach out to myself
and this amazing team here at MZeroA.com.
Have a wonderful rest of your day.
And most importantly, remember,
that a good pilot is always learning.
Have a great day, everyone. We'll see you.