Moving to the Right Seat: Tips for a New CFI

HOWARD GREENBERG Presents "Moving to the Right Seat: Tips for a New CFI": Congratulations on that new CFI certificate! Now the real learning starts, for your students and for you. Howard Greenberg, CFII-MEI/ATP, a part-time instructor at Lynn University in Boca Raton, Florida, shares practical tips he has gathered (and, as he puts it, borrowed from master instructors) on being a successful CFI both in and out of the airplane. He begins with a quick look at becoming a CFI and passing a checkride where you must prove you can teach.

Howard covers the FAA's telling-and-doing technique; making ground lessons stick with props, a rubber-band airplane, a fidget spinner, pictures and good YouTube videos (including Spencer Suderman's gyroscopic precession demo and Rod Machado's rudder lesson); adapting to how each learner learns; and training exercises such as covering the instruments, flying down the runway just above it and Dutch rolls to build real rudder skill.

He closes with habits that keep instructor and student safe and growing: don't assume understanding, recheck the preflight, move deliberately, talk less and listen more, let students fix their own mistakes while being ready to block the controls, use the ACS from day one, brief every phase, trim and fly smooth, stay professional, keep learning and have fun. The session ends with audience questions and suggestions.