Teaching student pilots how to be confident aviators can be one of the most challenging tasks facing a flight instructor.\u00a0 Older instructors probably have a better handle on this problem, while new CFIs may still be working on the concept.<\/p>\n
What is confidence? \u00a0Self-confidence begins with self-esteem and includes a component of knowledge.\u00a0 Part of self-confidence is judgment and yet another includes experience. All of these components make up what we describe as a confident pilot, one who exercises good judgment and possesses great skill.<\/p>\n
The issue for flight instructors becomes one of how to teach their students confidence.\u00a0 How do students acquire judgment?\u00a0 How do they obtain experience?\u00a0 Moreover, what do flight instructors have to be wary of in their students?<\/p>\n
What makes a person a dangerous student pilot?\u00a0 Can a student be over confident?\u00a0 Which students would be prone to taking abnormal risks?<\/p>\n
These are all very serious questions for a flight instructor, particularly a young and inexperienced CFI.\u00a0 If you are one of the latter, how would you deal with the over-confident, risk-taking student?<\/p>\n
The key is training the student properly and setting the training environment by proper leadership.\u00a0 Performance in the airplane is dependent on a student\u2019s perceptions of his or her instructor\u2019s personal confidence.\u00a0 Then you have to work with each student individually.<\/p>\n
When we talk of flight students, let us disregard their chronological age for a moment.\u00a0 There are those who are very experienced at a young age, and there are those who are older with no experience.<\/p>\n
As flight instructors, we are the experienced ones.\u00a0 We are, if you will, the parents.\u00a0 It is our job to develop the student pilot into a well-rounded, highly motivated, and confident pilot.\u00a0 To this degree, our job is not unlike that of a parent.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, parents can do great harm to their children\u2019s developing self-esteem and self-confidence.\u00a0 In his book, The Power of Self-Esteem<\/em>, Nathan Branden points out parents can hinder their child\u2019s growth and self-esteem in any of several ways.\u00a0 A parent can harm children by emphasizing the child\u2019s shortcomings, ridiculing or humiliating the child, especially in front of others, or telling the child, he or she is valueless, or their ideas are not important.<\/p>\n Now you can take this list by Branden and where it says, \u201cparent,\u201d insert the term, \u201cCFI\u201d or \u201cflight instructor.\u201d\u00a0 Likewise, where it says \u201cchildren\u201d or \u201cchild,\u201d use the term, \u201cstudent.\u201d<\/p>\n As instructors, we are essentially parents: treating the student pilots as children.\u00a0 And I don\u2019t mean in a condescending manner as you might treat a troublesome adolescent.\u00a0 In other words, we have to treat students as people for whom we truly care.<\/p>\n I have often told the student flight instructors I have helped develop that whenever you teach anyone to fly, the first thing you must do is to teach each one of them as though they were a blood relative.\u00a0<\/p>\n There should be no difference in the way you would teach someone you don’t know as compared to teaching your brother, sister, father, or mother.\u00a0 They should all get \u201cthe same treatment.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n It is part of being a professional.<\/p>\n -30-<\/p>\n \u00a9 2010 J. Clark<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Teaching student pilots how to be confident aviators can be one of the most challenging tasks facing a flight instructor.\u00a0 Older instructors probably have a better handle on this problem, while new CFIs may still be working on the concept. … Continue reading