CFI Class Pass helped me knock it out of the park.
I was a self-studying, Pt 61 CFI Candidate that ended up at a Pt 141 school for final prep, sign off, and my DPE Checkride. On Thursday, I passed on my first attempt! Leading up to my sign off at the 141, I gave 4 mock orals with 4 different instructors. Each one said I was extremely prepared, more so than most of their 141 students. One instructor even said I was teaching him things he didn't know. When we broke for lunch, the DPE commented on how well prepared I was and that out of all the CFI Initial Checkrides he has given, I was in the 90th percentile. When the Checkride was over and he was filling out my IACRA, he said that he was giving me a 4.0 on the oral exam.
I could not have been half as prepared without the help of Backseat Pilot; the lesson materials, instructors, and fellow students in the classes all contributed to my success; especially because my Checkride was more of a guided discussion vs a "stand-up-and-teach" model.
I was told early on that the DPE dreaded "death-by-PowerPoint" and had been known to "fail" your computer if you were too dependent on it. So I merged and greatly condensed my slides to an at-a-glace checklist to verify I hadn't forgotten anything AFTER I presented (basically the style of flows with checklist verification format). But I didn't even get to use that during my oral.
He wanted to see my lesson plans and how I had organized what I would be teaching. My lesson plan binders included the ACS with the Areas of Operation tabbed out. Behind each tabbed section were my slides. He loved that setup.
But when the oral began, I didn't touch any of it because the DPE's format was completely scenario-based. The only "lesson" I taught was my maneuvers lesson. Instead, he gave multiple scenarios that weaved across different ACS topics. Each story/scenario was pulled from real-life occurrences which made the whole experience very interesting. I was expected to identify a mix of issues across the FOIs, regs, technical areas, etc., then discuss the concepts, the good and/or bad from the example, best practices, and risk management aspects of each. If I missed covering something, he would have a question-prompt to make sure we discussed every issue the scenario was meant to address. When it came to issues he wanted to dig a little deeper on, like a question I missed on the written exam, he would ask me to elaborate more. That typically led to me giving more of a lesson-type response and even getting up to draw out things on the board. Any nervousness I had going in quickly drifted away because I started realizing just how prepared I was.
When starting my CFI journey, the sheer volume of information that I was required to know felt quite overwhelming. I first purchased "The Whole Shebang" lesson plans and PowerPoints package after a friend recommended it to me. Having the abundant and well organized material removed one layer of stress from the preparation process. It helped organize my thoughts and provided a wealth of information to continue my studies. But I still felt like I was stuck in a short-term memory loop. Without the experience practicing teaching, I wasn't able to develop HOW I wanted to teach; this was preventing me from building confidence in my abilities.
There is no doubt in my mind that my level of success was from attending the online Class Pass training. The classes took me way beyond slides to read, or simply memorizing isolated lesson talking points. Class discussions provided fuller understanding, helped clarify concepts and tease out nuances, and Instructors and participants alike brought real world experience that greatly improved my ability to figure out what methods and examples worked best for me when applying the material in relation to my teaching style. Through varied repetition in both classes I attended and in watching previously recorded sessions, I was able to achieve the correlation-level of learning which allowed me to successfully identify talking points within the real-world, complex scenarios on my Checkride and confidently demonstrate my mastery of the material. Most importantly, this whole process with Backseat Pilot has better prepared me to be the best Flight Instructor I can be for my clients.
Thank you to everyone at Backseat Pilot and I'll see you in the CFII classes and beyond.
