Yesterday as I got back in the game of instructing watching the student with his other instructor I noted a few things. Many instructors all approach training differently which probably a good thing, because the student gets different perspectives with the other instructor picking up on different things.

The student I was working with had flown a number of flights, made a few takeoffs and landings with the other instructor. The student had not been instructed on proper ground handling, aircraft pre-flight, starting, and shutdown. Yet he had flown! The other instructor was doing all the preflight, starting, taxing, and shutdown. So the student and I spent a few tanks of fuel on the inactive runway having him taxi the airplane with the wing off around chairs in figure 8's and circles. First starting close the chairs and inline with them. Then moving the chairs out to about 60yds apart with the student standing at each pilot station so he was 90 degrees to the chair line the prospective for takeoff and landing. We also worked on preflight, proper starting procedures, and shutdown. Proper use of the radio and some ground school on flight as that student has little or no knowledge of why his airplane flies. Items like why he looses altitude in a turn, how the pattern should be flown, ect., ect................

The point of this rambling is that I think even though everyone teaches differently there are certain items that should be covered at particular stages of progression. A STUDENT SYLLABUS would provide instructors with some standardization of instruction. A different instructor could easily review where a student is at if they had a training syllabus folder showing what training points had been covered.

What do you all think should be included a syllabus? I'm going to put a syllabus together for our club and its students.

Ya, I know you can tell I was military