Regarding teaching landing before takeoff:

I teach landings before takeoffs because that gives me the best opportunity to prevent damage to the plane - simple as that. The takeoff is the most difficult part to teach because of the risk of the student putting the plane in jeopardy very close to the ground. He/she may put the plane into the pit area, pull it up into a stall. So many things, so little time to react.

My thinking is they're already in the air learning to control the plane, so while the plane is there, teach them to land. By the time they can regularly control their landings, control the plane in flight, and react to stalls, they're ready to adequatly control the plane on take off. And at that point they've already simulated many take offs (without realizing it) as they throttled up to go around on the aborted landings. I'll still have to react quickly if something goes wrong, but the risk of that something going wrong have been greatly reduced.

Brad