Teaching advice for ground lessons

[Roger, Roger]

Hey everyone. I'm no brand-new CFI (500+ dual given), but I've been running into a problem and I'm wondering if any of y'all have advice for me.

Here's the deal. I consider myself pretty smart and pretty motivated. When I was working on my ratings, my CFIs would do a brief ground overview, give me the PTS and the syllabus, and I'd self-study for the oral and do well.

My problem is that that is the way I tend to treat all of my students. I cover the material once and turn them loose to prepare for the oral. I've found that not all students are motivated or able to study on their own, and consequently they do poorly on the oral exam portion of their stage checks and checkrides. What advice do y'all have for dealing with this? I hate to spend hours on hours of ground time when a student SHOULD be able to figure this stuff out on their own.

 

[Jfk-Pilot]

***Disclaimer*** I'm a fairly new CFI, so i might end up getting some advice myself, but ill still try to answer your questions***

Roger Roger, In a perfect world scenario every student, would be motivated and self study, but the harsh reality is that, what tends to happen is we (the cfi's ) get both ends of the spectrum, for example i have two students that are going for their private pilot ratings both started with 0 hours, student A always studies and he has a very large desire to learn as much as he can, so that in return really makes the ground lessons that are outlined by the syllabus really easy to do, and with that student i have a lot of confidence that he will do just fine on his oral exam.

Student B on the other hand, really needs me to stay on top of him and make sure that he studies. So in the beginning i was really trying to figure out how to get him to see the importance in self study, so what i began doing is quizzing him while were flying, ask questions like "so what airspace are we in right now, and what are our wx minums? and if they are unable to give me a proper answer, i explain to them how not knowing something like wx minums or all your vspeeds can bite them in their ass.

So yea, should your be spending countless hours on ground school?... most likely not.... unless its a very knowledge intensive rating like IR or CFI. But you have to realize that some people need a little more assistance in their studies and they might lack, good study habits, or poor time managment, or just proper motivation in general.

hope this helps somehow.

-stan

 

[Douglas]

I hate to spend hours on hours of ground time when a student SHOULD be able to figure this stuff out on their own.

My one question to you is, why?

As long as you tell them what to read and what to know for next time, your hands are clean.
If they are not ready to move on, you sit them down and spoon feed them again and you charge for that spoon feeding!

"well since you don't know what you were supposed to know, we will go over this again today and save this lesson for next time".

After a couple times of that it will get through to them, if it doesn't then it is not them paying for the lesson, and you can afford to add tuna to your mac and cheese.

Yeah, I know, it's getting tough all over.

 

[Blackhawk]

There is more to flying than just moving the stick (or yoke). While much of this knowledge can be attained from reading or watching videos, much of it can only be gotten through experience. Since aviation is a very unforgiving environment, we owe it to the students to pass on as much of our experience through solid ground training, in addition to flight training. I usually plan on spending as much time going over ground material as I do flight training. Sometimes it's 50/50, sometimes I spend 75/25, such as with pilots getting spin training and CFI training.
As an example- the pilot reads up on performance. Now the pilot needs to apply it. Does he know how to figure PA and DA? Does he know what they mean? Does he use current temperature for performance... or the maximum temperature for the day? If the later, where does he get this? Does he understand why the airplane does not perform as well with the higher DA? Does he know how to adjust numbers from the performance chart for non-standard conditions? How about conditions not listed in the POH- such as snow on the runway? There is only one listed Va for the airplane- that for maximum weight. Does he know how to figure for our lower weight? Does he understand why we lower the speed? At the end the pilot knows how to fill out the preflight data card I've provided for him, and understands what the information on the card really means and hopefully can apply it in the process of keeping him, the airplane and passengers safe.
Remember, we are teachers first, pilots second. Part of being a teacher is making sure a transfer of knowledge has taken place and that the pilot has gone beyond the rote memorization phase.

 

[Jdehawk]

My one question to you is, why?

As long as you tell them what to read and what to know for next time, your hands are clean.
If they are not ready to move on, you sit them down and spoon feed them again and you charge for that spoon feeding!

"well since you don't know what you were supposed to know, we will go over this again today and save this lesson for next time".

After a couple times of that it will get through to them, if it doesn't then it is not them paying for the lesson, and you can afford to add tuna to your mac and cheese.

Yeah, I know, it's getting tough all over.

I agree with this guy. Standards are standards for a reason. If they don't know it then they have to learn somehow.

 

[Fly_Unity]

Here is my problem, I cant get my students to buy anything!!! they wont buy a book, a POH, a FAR, etc, Im beginning to think Im gonna have to make a rule they buy a Kit before they take their 2nd lesson.

One if my current students dont have the money for a medical.

I dont think I had a student yet that self studied like I did Im beginning to wonder if I was this bad to my instructor hhaa

 

[ILS37R]

Thoughts from another relative newbie. Alas, no silver bullets on offer.

I think, for one, that as instructors we tend to think (initially, at least) of all our students as being as motivated and/or intelligent/intuitive as we were at a given stage of our training. Many simply are not. They also may have vastly different motivations for training and similarly different expectations.

Where I work, for example, we have a lot of working professionals as students. As a result, many are on the "Nine Month Plan" for getting their PPL or IR. That, and when they block time from their busy schedules for flight training, they want to fly. Getting done in 40 hours isn't very important to these students.

I find I spend a lot of time doing on-the-fly ground work. Plan a cross-country, throw the autopilot on, and start talking shop. Talk shop while eating the $500 hamburger. Talk shop on the way back. While not 100% as effective as straight-up ground work, I've found I can get good results and significantly reduce the conventional ground time needed.

If you have more career-oriented people who just aren't putting in the home study time, that's another issue entirely. On the one hand, yeah, do as much ground with them as is required and bill them for it. On the other hand, depending on the type of relationship you've built with them, you might want to take yourself out of the equation: that is, schedule a ground work mock "stage check" for your student with another instructor. Go all Good Cop/Bad Cop and see if you can get them to realize that you're only trying to help them out (and even save them money!)

Be honest. Brutally so, if necessary: "You can pay me $100 to go over this with you, again, or you can study it yourself for free. While I wouldn't refuse the work, I have no interest in this costing you more than it has to," has worked for me, in the past.

One other thing to think about: I get a lot of students who have had some training elsewhere and, in many cases, were getting jerked around at their previous school and had gone through many instructors (especially if they started back when a wet commercial got you a regional job), though this sometimes happens even with people who started their training with me. Sometimes students absorb all the information you throw at them but, being new to aviation, don't have a meaningful way to organize it in their heads. When I quiz these students, their knowledge seems spotty, but is occasionally surprisingly deep. I've found if I take about a two-hour session with such students, connecting the dots between wx, performance, principles of flight, aircraft categories, safe practice and airspace, suddenly the disparate globs of information floating around their head become a useful whole. If I'm lucky, it helps with their studying as well, as they now have framework on which to append new information.

 

[Roger, Roger]

Thanks guys. It sounds like I need to:
1. Give good, clear assignments that will enable the students to productively study on their own.
2. Suck it up and spend the time to make sure they know their stuff.
3. Keep good track of what we have covered, and use repetition to make sure it sticks.

 

[moxiepilot]

My problem is that that is the way I tend to treat all of my students.

That is the problem.

Each student has unique traits and abilities. Your job is to motivate them, or spoonfeed them as necessary.

Take, for example, Approach Control. From what I know, here is a person with little to no flight time asking questions on this forum about in depth material far beyond what a Private applicant usually knows by the time they are commercially rated.

Those students are far inbetween.

For the rest, laying out a clear plan of how to achieve the goal for the oral may need to be done. It takes some time, but that's why you bill for ground...

 

[moxiepilot]

Here is my problem, I cant get my students to buy anything!!! they wont buy a book, a POH, a FAR, etc, Im beginning to think Im gonna have to make a rule they buy a Kit before they take their 2nd lesson.

One if my current students dont have the money for a medical.

I dont think I had a student yet that self studied like I did Im beginning to wonder if I was this bad to my instructor hhaa

That is a problem.

Setting clear standards tends to circumvent these issues. You're on track by requiring them to buy a kit, but you may wait for that until they've had a few lessons to decide if they want to continue.

On the other hand, from a business perspective, I try to sell as much necessary material to them before they walk out the door. It racks up between $500 and $1k for the FBO per person (depending on if a headset is bought).

If they're going to lean to fly, they've got to learn to shell out the duckets.

 

[caliginousface]

Remember that being a good CFI, YOU have to adapt to the way your students learn, not force them to adapt to you. So if that means you have to massage them on the ground for 5 or 10 or 20 more hours, make it happen. Unless you become an instructor in the military

 

[BrewMaster]

Here is my problem, I cant get my students to buy anything!!! they wont buy a book, a POH, a FAR, etc, Im beginning to think Im gonna have to make a rule they buy a Kit before they take their 2nd lesson.

One if my current students dont have the money for a medical.

I dont think I had a student yet that self studied like I did Im beginning to wonder if I was this bad to my instructor hhaa

What about headsets? I don't know what it is, but I see students with 25/30+ hours and they ask to borrow headsets....really? I mean reeallly? They spend thousands of dollars to fly the airplane yet they want to nickel and dime about headsets. I don't get it. Rant over.

 

[unclenobby]

What about headsets? I don't know what it is, but I see students with 25/30+ hours and they ask to borrow headsets....really? I mean reeallly? They spend thousands of dollars to fly the airplane yet they want to nickel and dime about headsets. I don't get it. Rant over.

I used the free school headsets (granted not borrowed) until I got my private. Was able to spent the cash on training rather then on an unnecessary expense. Bought the HS once I got the PPL - sort of reward.

 

[Douglas]

Here is my problem, I cant get my students to buy anything!!! Im beginning to wonder if I was this bad to my instructor hhaa

That is an odd problem to have. Do you have those items for sale at the office or do they need to order them from online? It could be a motivation problem.