Aviation for Women is the flagship member publication of Women in Aviation International. Articles feature women who have made aviation history, professional development ideas, and current-topic articles.
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38 Aviation forWomen J A N U A R Y / F E B R U A R Y 2 0 1 6 R ecently I visited my alma mater and had the opportunity to sit in on a critique of the campus newspaper. When I was on the paper the initial critique was done by a professor who went through the pages with a red pen circling this and that, making comments, and offering criti- cisms. As I recall there was a lot of criticism—and we were encouraged to develop a thick skin. KUMBAYA M E G G O D L E W S K I T I P S F R O M A C F I With this new generation of journalists, the phrase "that could have been better" was used as a critique tool for a photo graph of an empty room that didn't really go with the story about bike thefts on campus. The critique offered a platform for the students to brainstorm ways that photograph could have been better— there should have been people and bicycles in the photo, they decided. In my day, the editor would prob- ably have bluntly called the photog- rapher lazy. It's not just journalism education that has taken this gen- tler tact. A chief pilot I know refers to this as the Kumbaya ap- proach to education, which, he notes, began in grade school. In the past, competitions had awards for frst and second, possibly third place, and that was it. These days there are awards for just showing up. This makes it diffcult to learn the concept of failure as a means of success—and in educa- tion, especially aviation, there are often many failures before success can be achieved. It's important for future aviators to learn to accept failure as part of the learning process. This doesn't mean reduce the student to tears during the post-fight critique—it means point out the mistakes and have a plan for correcting them. In avia- tion some of those mistakes can be life threatening, so it's im- portant to choose what to emphasize and how you bring the issue to the student's attention. For example, if they consis- tently descended into the pattern, you might point out that be- ing at pattern altitude for pattern entry gives you much better visibility to other traffc. The job of the CFI is to make sure the student learns and, more importantly, wants to keep learning. There will be fights when the student is just not having a good day—air- speed and altitude may be off during takeoff or landing, or the maneuvers just aren't going well. This is when the CFI has to truly pick apart the lesson and fnd something the student does well and point that out to him or her. "You had really good spacing from the runway in the pattern," the instructor might say, "but did you notice how your airspeed increased dramatically when your pushed the nose over during the base turn? Let's work on that so your airspeed is stabilized on fnal and let the runway come to you." Be careful of the words you use during a critique. I recently f lew with a student who had a stage check with the chief instructor and was told he had done fine, yet the chief gave me a list of things he wanted the student to work on. The student became very angry, saying he felt the chief had been disingenuous. I was quick to point out that a stage check is designed to evaluate the soft spots in the training—things that could be improved upon before the student advances. "Done fne" was probably not the best choice of words for that critique. During lessons, you may fnd it helpful to take lots of notes so you have something to refer back to during the critique. I also suggest keeping detailed notes in the student's training folder, so if there is a need for a change of instructor the new instructor has some guidelines. Communication is key here as well. "Student has tenden- cy to fy fnal about 10 knots fast," or "Student has tendency to fy a wide pattern," are much more helpful than, "Student needs work on approaches." Recently I heard from a CFI who is having trouble commu- nicating with students because CFIs at her school are not al- lowed to tell students when they do not perform to acceptable standards for fear of offending them and having them take their business elsewhere. The second instructor also noticed the deficiencies. She asked, "How are we supposed to make them better pilots if we can't tell them they are not fying to standard?" The best answer I can offer is to make sure you use the Practical Test Standards as a metric from day one. The PTS dovetails nicely into the completion standards of each lesson. Nothing makes a student smile more than when you critique a maneuver with the phrase "checkride quality." ✈ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Meg Godlewski, WAI 8165, is a Master CFI. "How are we supposed to make them better pilots if we can't tell them they are not fying to standard?"