Expectations

The first lesson I would want to let my private pilot student know what I expect them to do and what they can expect me to do. Things I would expect the student to do are: be ready for their lesson at the time we are scheduled to meet that way we can make the most of that period of instruction and not waste instructional time waiting for the student to get ready, give me some warning they are going to cancel and not waiting until the last second, and study material outside of the instructional time and to come up with questions on their own for me about things that peaked their interest.

Things the student can expect from me are: returning phone calls or emails within 24hrs of receiving them, making time to meet outside of our regular meeting blocks if the student desires, making arrangements with another CFI if I will be out of town, and will give the student a suitable heads up if I cannot meet and will reschedule promptly. These are the things I would cover with a student on a first lesson making these things clear will help keep the environment professional and responsive. I would also ask the student if there are other things they think should be in here that are not.

New Student

If I picked up a new student from another flight instructor things in the student’s folder I would want to look for our what areas they have covered and if there were any notes on how the student performed. I would like to look at previous stage checks if applicable to see what areas they had had trouble with. I would ask the student’s previous instructor what they thought the students strong and weak areas were. I would ask if there was any areas that they had been rushed to teach on and had not been able cover as in depth as they had wanted to. I would ask the instructor how the student has reacted to previous stressful situations. Things I would ask the student would include what they believed what they thought were the strongest areas and weakest areas. I would ask what they wanted to do as far an aviation career and what areas were they interested in. Then I will select questions from those areas of operations in the practical test standards to see what they really knew. I would prepare different ground simulations to test the student’s ground knowledge. I would want to use oral quizzing to see how well the previous instructor’s training was, see what the student has retained, and help the student stimulate thought to see where they were in their training.