Wow.
Good for you for really wanting to be a good instructor. Many people look ate their CFI days as a torturous, necessary stepping stone. Fact is, it's a great opportunity to really develop an understanding of the fundamentals, while learning to work with different personality types and helping them to achieve their goals.
I've ben out of the CFI arena for 5 years, but my former students still call and e-mail me regularly with updates on how they are doing. (Everything from "hey I got an interview" to "I just bought an Ercoupe")
For you as a CFI, I would highly recommend you get and read Kershners Student Pilot Flight Manual in addition to his Flight Instructor's Manual.
http://www.kershnerflightmanuals.com/
In this day of CD-ROMs and flashy presentations, your students may have a hard time focusing on Kershner's old school back and white text and hand drawn illustrations. Rod Machado's primary color texts do better in that regard. But Kershner's books for instructional value are gold. The Flight Instructor Manual is like a companion book to the Student Pilot Manual. In the Instructor Manual it goes into the nitty gritty that YOU need to understand, but you don't necessarily need to overwhelm your timid, nervous, slightly airsick student with it all. Then you look at what the Student Pilot manual has to say, and it distills it down a bit. You can take that and formulate a lesson plan, hitting the important points, and bolstering your knowledge of the mechanics of how/why stuff happens.
Even so, you will inevitable get a student that asks you something like: "Does the sodium gas in the old radio number displays expand with altitude and does it affect the brightness of the numbers?" An engineer-type student asked me that in all seriousness. Never tell them "You don't need to know that" even if that's the gawdhonest truth. I always asked stuff that gave my instructors fits, and I still do. Last year whilst getting another type, I had an instructor (jokingly) wad up some paper and throw it at me in the classroom for asking questions that kept him hunting for answers during our 10 minute breaks. Say, " I have no idea, but I'll find out for you" ....then actually do it. The sodium gas question involved walking down to maintenance and bugging one of the avionics guys. He said the gas is sealed in there and the only dimming you'll get is from a rheostat. Armed with the answer, I tell the student and now I've just ensured credibility, NOT because I know everything, but because I don't, I said I'd find the answer, and I did.
Doing what you say you will do is a two way street, whether it's an instructor finding the answer to a question, or a student doing the assigned reading. Hopefully your students will recognize your commitment to their success and they will step up and give their best as well.
Of course that isn't always the case, and sometimes you get people who want to do no work and have you wave a magic wand and make them a pilot. Unfortunately you still have to deliver the same quality instruction and standards as you would for the motivated ones. Some will step up and meet the challenge, some will decide it's too much effort.
Best advice here is to "give them their money's worth." Always be instructing. Don't BS in the ground briefing, or the taxi out. Always be showing them something new. Also, never compromise your standards of expectation to "baby" a student that you are afraid of losing. They need to know that this hobby/career is all about learning discipline and improving on the last lesson. If they fail to prepare, don't even read the 5 pages you assigned, and show up with a bad attitude, it's easy: You repeat the last lesson again until they show up prepared for the next one. You waste their time and yours by going unprepared into new maneuvers.
Honestly, these cases were few. Most were hard working, never quitting, great people to teach, and like I said, I still talk to many of them.
In fact just yesterday I got a call from a student I soloed back in 2001. He was getting ready to go in for his first type rating checkride with his airline and he was just calling up his old CFI for a pep talk.
I gave him the same one I gave him for his Private: You would not be signed off if you were not ready. Go in there and give 'em hell. And if you embarass me, I will personally beat your a$$...
(I'm 5'6", he's 6"5)
He called me back a few hours later to say he did a great job and thanks for the motivational kick start.
You'll find that you will have a lasting effect on the lives and careers of some of those students you have. Those CFIs you had that did nothing for you? Use them as an example of how NOT to be. The good ones that really lit the fire and made it fun...take those qualities and make them yours.Keep that in mind through the slow flight, the stalls and the endless trips around the pattern.
Best of luck to ya.