Comments on: Student or teacher: Which is harder?

By: Cary Alburn

Cary Alburn — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 19:49:52 +0000

“It depends”. There were parts of instructing which I found pretty easy; there are other parts which were really challenging. Yet for me most of learning to fly was pretty challenging. It’s been a lot of years since I learned to fly, and also a lot of years since I last instructed. But my recollection is that it was much harder to learn to fly.

Having a student freeze at the controls who was bigger and more powerful than I was, was a very definite challenge (I had to physically knock his hands off the controls). Sometimes things happened faster than I could talk–like talking someone else’s IR student through an approach in actual IMC when he wasn’t quite ready for it yet although his instructor had scheduled him for approaches in the next lesson (I had to complete the approach myself–easier to do than to talk him through it). But lots of instructing falls into place as the blocks of the student’s learning are built, one on top of the other, so long as the student cooperates by studying in advance of each lesson, arrives reasonably rested, listens, etc., in other words makes an effort to learn.

I found instructing to be a lot of fun–watching the various “ah ha” moments occur is pretty gratifying. I admit that I also learned from my students–it’s amazing what some students will do to try to kill themselves and their instructor!

Cary

By: Brett

Brett — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 18:03:14 +0000

I would have to agree with everyone saying CFI. As a student, you may have certain difficulties learning to fly, but as a CFI, you have to manage various and constantly changing difficulties of multiple students to different points in their training.

By: best flight school india

best flight school india — Sat, 02 Feb 2013 10:59:01 +0000

Learning to fly requires that you obtain the ability to manipulate the controls of the airplane and make it perform certain maneuvers.

By: scott mcilvoy

scott mcilvoy — Wed, 23 Jan 2013 22:11:05 +0000

My CFI once told me that his job was to keep me from “killing him”
Thanks could not have done it with out you..

By: Tim

Tim — Wed, 23 Jan 2013 16:52:32 +0000

I think the hardest part about being a CFI is remembering what it was like to be a new student.

By: Daniel Brooks

Daniel Brooks — Wed, 23 Jan 2013 16:18:05 +0000

I honestly think that its harder being the CFI than the student.. as a student you only have to learn to replicate and learn the material your being taught. I think that the CFI has it harder because he has to worry about your safety and that of the aircraft, learning how to teach you to learn, how to get you to perform the material, having to know all the terms and meanings so that he can teach you, as well as many other more complicated things. The CFI has to learn and go thru the Instrument course as the ATP course and get signed off on all those before he can teach others to fly. So I think that a CFI has the harder job as they are trying to impart knowledge to the student in such a way that the student can learn..

By: Aaron Daniels

Aaron Daniels — Wed, 23 Jan 2013 15:31:33 +0000

Not an instructor, yet, I think the instructor role is going to be more challenging, because no matter the level of experience, somewhere in the process you are going to have to untrain a bad habit or two. I’ve rented in a lot of different locations as my club meets all over the country. And every check out instructor has helped me unlearn something that has crept in, or made easier something I was doing the hard way.