djackd

I am just starting out on the CFI. The plan is to spend about a month doing ground instruction and then get into the airplane to do the flight portion of the course of a week or two. I like my instructor a lot and think we have a good plan going. He has taught dozens of people to be CFI's and CFII's.

That said I am frustrated by the fact that I really don't feel comfortable with the material. I learned to fly more than 15 years ago and there is so much about learning to fly that I have forgotten.

I'm finding it hard to "teach him" a lesson when I feel like I'm learning it for the first time.

I'm thinking that I would find it helpful if I could "teach" someone else it before getting in front of him. Anyone else in a similar situation and would want to try to trading lesson practice over skype?

Cubdriver

Not sure if you can make use of this or not, but a senior FSI instructor gave me an acronym that helps organizing your ground school lectures on systems topics. GOLE

G General info on the system, what it does, how it does it.
O Operational procedures for the system.
L Limitations. What they are and why.
E Emergency indications and how to deal with them.

djackd

cool. thx,

threeighteen

Youtube is also a great tool. Record yourself giving a lesson, then request feedback.

I used this for many presentations in school in which it was critical that I conveyed my message.

allflight57

What really helped me was I just went straight through the PTS from the beginning and made a lesson plan (pretty general outline) along with an extensive few pages of notes to go along with it. I would read the entire chapter covering the subject and pull out all the pertinent info and put it on the notes page that way I have a quick reference without having to pull out the book. Doing it this way really helped me to get familiar with the material. Let me know and I'll email you a few examples if you'd like.

tralika

Part of being an instructor is expanding your depth of knowledge and figuring our how to convey that knowledge to your students. That means you have to study the material as hard or harder than your students. I'd be a little careful about soliciting feedback from someone that is not an instructor. That is what your instructor is for. He or she will be the one to tell you if you got it right or not. As far as practicing your delivery, just practice out loud using what ever AV tools you would use for your class. Very few people are born comfortable speaking in front of groups. As you practice and get really familiar with the material your comfort level will increase. It's all part of the challenge of becoming an instructor.

When I was adding CFII to my CFI certificate the FAA had just added GPS approaches to the Instrument Rating PTS. My instructor told me to do a lesson plan for GPS approaches and teach it to him the next day. I didn't know much about GPS approaches at the time so it took me almost two days of research and writing to come up with two lessons plans. One on how the GPS system works and another on how to fly GPS approaches. Afterwords my instructor asked for a copy of my lesson plans because he didn't have anything for teaching GPS either. When I sent my first student up for an instrument check ride he performed a GPS approach during the check ride. Afterwords the DPE said "That's really cool, that's the first GPS approach I've seen".

Keep plugging away on those lesson plans and your presentation and check your ego at the door. Good luck.

TI 3VOM

When I was doing my CFI training at my school, we were required to do 3 hours of 'tutoring' with a private student a week. This really seemed to help the CFI students learn the material better and practice using their lesson plans.