{"id":3108,"date":"2014-11-21T07:03:07","date_gmt":"2014-11-21T15:03:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.mechadigital.net\/?p=3108"},"modified":"2021-08-26T20:37:56","modified_gmt":"2021-08-26T20:37:56","slug":"118-teach-protect","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/118-teach-protect\/","title":{"rendered":"#118 To Teach and Protect"},"content":{"rendered":"

 <\/p>\n

I thought it was a clever P.R. scheme when the LA Police department first put \u201cTo Protect and to Serve\u201d on the side of their cars.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t believe it for a minute.\u00a0 I felt then and I feel now that many police have a \u201cthem and us\u201d mentality and really don\u2019t believe that their role is to protect and serve.<\/p>\n

\"Sealmotto\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Similarly, it\u2019s worth thinking about what the role of a flight instructor is.\u00a0 I\u2019ve never liked the term.\u00a0 I prefer \u201cteacher\u201d to \u201cinstructor\u201d.\u00a0 I guess it\u2019s semantics, but \u201cinstruction\u201d just seems so damned didactic compared to the warmer term of \u201cteaching\u201d.\u00a0 But I\u2019ve said it before:\u00a0 I think that every CFI should have two roles.\u00a0 One is to Teach<\/strong> and the other is to Protect<\/strong>.\u00a0 Gee, maybe the right-hand door of every training airplane should say, \u201cTo Teach and to Protect\u201d.<\/p>\n

With very few exceptions, those are the only two roles the teacher of flying should fulfill. It is not that teacher\u2019s job to maximize the number of Hobbs hours the student racks up.\u00a0 It is not that teacher\u2019s job to limit the pilot operations the student learns to only those his teacher is capable of performing.\u00a0 Can\u2019t do it?\u00a0 Learn to do it so that you can teach it.\u00a0 Or arrange for the student to spend time with the teacher who can do it.<\/p>\n

\"DSCN3538\"<\/a>
\u201dLet’s see, the squirrel goes into the hole, then out around the tree…”<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

There\u2019s an amazing test that a teacher can perform:\u00a0 Take a simple task which you do well.\u00a0 Recently it was the tying of a clove hitch.\u00a0 I tie it every day to tie down the airplane.\u00a0 One of my students was having trouble with it.\u00a0 I had a really hard time teaching her how to tie it!\u00a0 It occurred to me that this was a very simple but telling test.\u00a0 If you can\u2019t teach something which you can do, then maybe you need some work in that area!\u00a0 When I taught Hot Air Ballooning, I found that there were two things that were particularly interesting.\u00a0 One was trailer-backing.\u00a0 Most balloons are hauled in little trailers.\u00a0 Many of my students had never towed a trailer.\u00a0 They needed to be taught how to back it accurately.\u00a0 The balloon also has a Nomex skirt at the bottom which helps to channel the heat from the burner.\u00a0 It\u2019s made from Nomex because it is prone to being blasted by the burner.\u00a0 One of my students earned the nickname, \u201cTorch\u201d because of her tendency to blast holes in that skirt.\u00a0 Because it must retain its shape, the skirt has a steel ring at the bottom.\u00a0 When the balloon is folded up, that skirt must be included and that big old ring must be folded up as well.\u00a0 That big hoop of steel can have a life of its own and the balloonist must be taught to do what is often called \u201cthe<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>
A balloonist performs “The Hoop Dance”<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

hoop dance\u201d in order to transform that one big hoop into three or four little ones which will fit into the bag.\u00a0 Once more, it\u2019s an operation which you might be able to do, but can you teach someone else to do it?\u00a0 It can be a test.<\/p>\n

\"DSCN2697\"<\/a>
It helps to have a gifted student.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Many who know me have gotten the impression that I think modern flight instructors are under-qualified?\u00a0 Well, maybe I do, but don\u2019t get me wrong.\u00a0 The measure of a teacher of flying is not his total time. \u00a0It is not his age. \u00a0It is his ability to teach and protect.\u00a0 The good teacher of flying must have the necessary skill and experience to demonstrate the pilot operations he is teaching.\u00a0 He must have the ability to let his student get far enough \u201cout of shape\u201d to learn by doing without bending an airplane or hurting himself doing it.\u00a0 And every time I run into an operation which a particular student just can\u2019t get his head around, I realize that I\u2019m lacking in the ability to teach that operation.\u00a0 I have to back up and go at it from another direction because I \u201ctook a wrong turn\u201d on our way to mastery.<\/p>\n

A young flight instructor may have a level of enthusiasm that is just what his student needs.\u00a0 An older flight instructor may be set in his ways and not flexible OR enthusiastic enough to provide a stimulating learning atmosphere for his students.\u00a0 I\u2019m no longer a young flight instructor.\u00a0 But I AM a case of arrested development, so perhaps I can provide some of the advantages of a younger teacher.<\/p>\n

When I was a young pilot, entering the ranks of professional aviators, I was told by several working flight instructors that a student should not change flight instructors.\u00a0 He should stick with one all the way through.\u00a0 I bought it at the time because of the respect I held for those guys.\u00a0 I thoroughly reject it now.\u00a0 A student is a mature individual who knows how he learns and who is perfectly capable of selecting the teacher who best brings out the flier in him.\u00a0 He should probably fly with several teachers in order to satisfy himself that he\u2019s flying with the right one.<\/p>\n

But when that student is flying with his teacher, he needs to be confident that his teacher has what it takes to teach him the ropes.\u00a0 And he has to know for an absolute fact that his teacher has the ability to protect him and keep him safe while he\u2019s learning.\u00a0 We don\u2019t have those little emblems on the side of the plane that say, \u201cTo Teach and to Protect\u201d.\u00a0 Our students can\u2019t go looking for such an emblem. And they don\u2019t have the experience to accurately judge whether their flight instructor can truly Teach<\/strong> and Protect<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

To teach and protect are what we must do while seated next to that person who is learning to fly.\u00a0 But the test of our ability to teach will come when we are no longer seated there to protect.\u00a0 When the student leaves the nest it will become clear whether or not we have done a good job of teaching. \u00a0Maybe the role of protection continues for years and years\u2026 If we did a good job of teaching. In thirty or so years of teaching, I\u2019ve fallen down in that area twice.\u00a0 Two of my students have crashed.\u00a0 The first may have been partly due to my ignorance as a young teacher.\u00a0 The second we will never be able to figure out.\u00a0 Both aircraft were destroyed but both pilots lived.<\/p>\n

To TEACH and to PROTECT\u2026 \u00a0we\u2019d better be able to do both and we should never stop learning how.<\/p>\n

Happy swooping (and learning, teaching and protecting!)<\/p>\n

Brian<\/h4>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“The measure of a teacher of flying is not his total time. It is not his age. It is his ability to teach and protect.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":3111,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3108"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3108"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3108\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3111"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}