I am a commercial pilot and Certified Flight Instructor (CFI). I have been a pilot for just over a year and a half and an instructor for four months. I started flying after I took a private pilot ground school course during my senior year of high school. I mainly took it because I thought the simulator looked fun. Little did I know that that was the first step in my career! Much of my post high school writing experience has come from this certification process. The flight instructor certification process is extremely difficult, I had to make over sixty lesson plans, take two written tests, and then a huge practical test. The practical test was seven and a half hours of me teaching on the ground to an examiner, followed by an hour and a half of flying, not to mention it cost $1,300. Overall, I wouldn’t say that I liked the writing very much, but I really love airplanes, organization, and teaching effectively, therefore, I really have enjoyed making my lesson plans. I learned a lot over the course of preparing for the practical test, and since getting my license, I have continued to learn from teaching actual students. With this process I have come to realize a few different things about myself as a writer and teacher. These things include techniques I use to teach effectively, how I adapt my writing to my audience, and how different situations either make my motivation for writing wax or wane. In order to illustrate my points, I will reference two lesson plans I made: “Radio Communications and Air Traffic Control (ATC) Light Signals” and “Runway Incursion Avoidance”.

The first written test I took is called the Fundamentals of Instruction (FOI) test. This test is all about techniques of instructing. As I looked at my previously made lesson plans, the first thing I noticed was that I highlight the things I struggled to learn when I was doing my training. For example, I had a lot of anxiety when I first started speaking on the radios because I had to talk quickly, use certain words in a certain order, and also because talking to the tower that was talking to bigger aircraft felt intimidating. This caused me, in my lesson plan, to give a lot of examples of radio calls and emphasize the fact that the goal is simply understanding and safety. My goal of using this technique is to pass my knowledge on to my students so that they do not make the same mistakes I did.

I mentioned that I like to be organized. For me this is less about keeping my desk neat and more about putting information in a logical order. I believe that the order in which I teach can help remove many learning roadblocks. It really has to do with the efficiency of the communication process that I have with my students. In my lesson plan titled “Runway Incursion Avoidance”, I completely changed the order of teaching from the Practical Test Standards (PTS) order to an order that made sense: chronologically. The following was my order:

1.Introduction

2.Hazards unique to taxiing

3.Hold lines

4.Before taxiing: Towered

5.Before taxiing: Non-Towered

6.While Taxiing

7.Before Takeoff

8.Before Landing and After Landing

9.Reduced Visibility

The following is the order of the PTS, skim it over and notice how long, repetitive, and disorganized it is:

1.Distinct challenges and requirements during taxi operations not found in other phases of flight operations.

2.Procedures for appropriate cockpit activities during taxiing including taxi route planning, briefing the location of hot spots, communicating and coordinating with ATC.

3.Procedures for steering, maneuvering, maintaining taxiway, runway position, and situational awareness.

4.The relevance/importance of hold lines.

5.Procedures for ensuring the pilot maintains strict focus on the movement of the aircraft and ATC communications, including the elimination of all distractive activities (i.e. cell phone, texting, conversations with passengers) during aircraft taxi, takeoff and climb out to cruise altitude.

6.Procedures for holding the pilot’s workload to a minimum during taxi operations which should increase the pilot’s awareness while taxiing.

7.Taxi operation planning procedures, such as recording taxi instructions, reading back taxi clearances, and reviewing taxi routes on the airport diagram,

8.Procedures for ensuring that clearance or instructions that are actually received are adhered to rather than the ones expected to be received.

9.Procedures for maintaining/enhancing situational awareness when conducting taxi operations in relation to other aircraft operations in the vicinity as well as to other vehicles moving on the airport.

10.Procedures for briefing if a landing rollout to a taxiway exit will place the pilot in close proximity to another runway which can result in a runway incursion.

11.Appropriate after landing/taxi procedures in the event the aircraft is on a taxiway that is between parallel runways.

12.Specific procedures for operations at an airport with an operating air traffic control tower, with emphasis on ATC communications and runway entry/crossing authorizations.

13.ATC communications and pilot actions before takeoff, before landing, and after landing at towered and nontowered airports.

14.Procedures unique to night operations.

15.Operations at non-towered airports.

16.Use of aircraft exterior lighting.

17.Low visibility operations.

I find it extremely satisfying that I worked all the information from 17 PTS points into 9 points. Just adding the above 17 points added 293 words to this essay.

I much prefer to write and include visuals rather than just using text. When I taught my “Runway Incursion Avoidance” lesson, I had an airport layout diagram to show where and when you would give certain radio calls. In the “Radio Communications and ATC Light Signals” lesson, I showed the diagram below in order to help students better understand and remember the different light gun signals used if the radio fails.

I use visual aids to help my students better understand the content I teach. I myself am a visual learner, so the visual aids help me teach, as well as help any other visual learners in my class better understand and recall the content I am teaching.

In both the “Radio Communications and ATC Light Signals” and the “Runway Incursion Avoidance” lessons, I used what is called Scenario Based Training (SBT). This is where I make up a scenario for my student to consider how they would apply information that I have taught them. The goal of using SBT is to help my students go from rote memorization to actually applying the information I give them. This will aid in retention as well as safety. Here is an example I might give my students: “you are about to land at Ogden airport. What are some things you would want to take into consideration before landing so that you do not cause a runway incursion?” Besides SBT, I also added multiple choice questions at the end of my lessons in order to help the students get ready for their written test.

The next thing I would like to look at is how I have adapted my lesson plans as I have changed audiences from a government examiner to an actual student. This changed the amount of information I gave on different subjects. The change in audience drastically changed the focus and length of the content I was teaching. This is because I was required to cover certain content for the examiner, but it didn’t make sense to cover it for my students. I also decided to add clarifying information for my students. These changes came about because I know that the examiner is an experienced pilot who definitely knows more than me, whereas a student doesn’t know much and would need more information on certain subjects. For my students, I wanted to focus my information more on what they would need to apply rather than just giving them a bunch of useless information. One change I made was in the “Radio Communications and ATC Light Signals” lesson. I decided it would be best to cut out the information about radio licenses because a radio license is only needed when you fly internationally. These changes reflect my sensitivity to who my audience is.

The last thing I would like to look at is more about what I personally like and do not like about the writing process for my lesson plans. When I got hired as an instructor, two new factors were brought into the equation of my lesson plan making: a team and a boss. I found that the most frustrating part of this change was that I was no longer in control of the content I taught nor the order of what I taught—my boss was. Over the course of my time working at my new job there havebeen a lot of changes made. The first being a new boss and the rest being things that the new boss wanted to change. This has made me realize that complying my writing to what someone else wants is extremely difficult for me. Making lesson plans, for me, is more of an art than a formula. The new boss has changed the syllabus about four different times. After a while, this has made the work feel a bit pointless because I am afraid it will just get changed again. This has made me extremely frustrated about the slideshows and lesson plans I am working on because I have had to put the lessons in an order that is, in my opinion, inefficient. My frustration has made it harder to focus and be enthusiastic about my job. After communicating better with my boss, hopefully we will be able to come to a better understanding of our project expectations.

In conclusion, my lesson plans have become a writing situation that I quite enjoy. The $1,300 practical test was definitely worth it. I have really grown as an instructor as I have studied different teaching techniques, adapted my lessons to my audience, and as I have learned to collaborate with others in my writing. Continually engaging in this writing process has helped me become a better instructor and writer.

Reflection

For me, the hardest thing about this project was gathering the data and making insightful comments about my writing abilities. This was a challenge because I had never done any data collection on myself before. It felt weird to make comments about what I was doing while I was doing it. In response to this challenge, I followed the instructions given in the assignment and made a recording of myself while I was writing. I also wrote notes about what I was doing and how I felt about it. This helped me better understand what my attitude towards writing is and the factors that either make me enjoy writing or hate it. In my future writing situations, I can use what I have learned from this project to help me as a teacher, student, and team member. One specific example is that I can use the insight that I do not like writing when I am not in control of what I write to motivate myself to do better at working in a team, collaborating with my boss, and get better at voicing my own opinions. I can do this because I know that if I don’t step up to the plate, I will likely end up being frustrated and not enjoy my writing situation when I otherwise would have.

Works Cited

Fly8MA. (2017). [Digital image]. Retrieved from https://fly8ma.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/light-gun-signals.jpg

Federal Aviation Administration. (2012). Flight Instructor Practical Test Standards for Airplane. Retrieved from https://www.faa.gov/training_testing/testing/test_standards/media/faa-s-8081-6d.pdf

titled “Runway Incursion Avoidance”, I completely changed the order of teaching from the Practical Test Standards (PTS) order to an order that made sense: chronologically. The following was my order:

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