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.
It is extremely difficult to wrap your head around the sheer volume of what you need to know for the CFI Initial, let alone how to organize it. I was at a Pt 61 school that had access to one, 2-yr CFI and his schedule was extremely limited; add to it my busy schedule, I only received a handful of lessons before he left. I wasted so much time trying to figure it out on my own until a friend suggested I purchase "The Whole Shebang" from Backseat Pilot. These documents were a game changer. Each instruction area comes with a Syllabus, ACS review, set of both abbreviated and in-depth lesson plans, and associated slides for your presentations. They are updated monthly, as needed, so you always know you have the most up-to-date information. It also comes with a 90-day Training Guide to help you schedule your studies and keep you on-track and progressing.
The abundant and well organized material removed one layer of stress from the preparation process, but I also needed to know I could teach. I spent any free day sitting at the flight school, day-in and day-out, hoping for the opportunity to practice teaching. Even when I did, it is hard to get constructive feedback from a student. This stiffled my confidence building. Due to a lack of DPE availability in my area, I had to look out of town. It was still going to be delayed several months but I found a DPE with a slot at a Pt 141 school that would allow me to do my final prep, sign off and checkride as Pt 61. That is when I knew I couldn't keep doing my preparations alone; I needed more structure and feedback. So I signed up for Backseat Pilot's CFI Class Pass and it was exactly what I needed to quickly up my game.
I passed on my first attempt. Leading up to my sign off, 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. I went from feeling stuck in a short-term memory loop to feeling completely confident in my ability to adequately teach any lesson in an in-depth manner.
Thank you to everyone at BackSeat Pilot. I'm looking foward to working with you guys for my CFII and beyond.
One of the very best. Really enjoyed this course! Thank you - backseat pilot. SEEEYUHH!
I ended up purchasing the double I lesson plans. They are very good sometimes you'll have to reword things to help teach someone new to instrument training. I would add that backseat does cover FAA plates versus Jepp so it's good information on both ends. As I teach Jepp plates.