Orientation, human behavior, and communication

What this lesson is for: you already know how to fly. This lesson starts the part where you learn to teach, beginning with the person you are teaching and whether anything you say is reaching them.

Read:

• FAA-H-8083-9B, Aviation Instructor's Handbook, chapter 2, Human Behavior.
• FAA-H-8083-9B, chapter 4, Effective Communication.
• FAA-S-ACS-25, Area of Operation I, Task A. Read the task itself, not a summary of it.
• program/PROGRAM-STRUCTURE.md, all of it.
• policy/RECORDING-AND-RETENTION.md, all of it.

Deliverable: One page, written, bringing to the lesson: for each of the five learner emotional reactions in FI.I.A.K2, one occasion from your own flight training when you experienced it, and one sentence on what your instructor did or did not do about it. Your own training, not a hypothetical student.

That last constraint is deliberate. You have been anxious, impatient, bored, tired, and badly taught at some point in your training. Recalling which is worth more here than any example we could give you.

1. The whole program: four phases, 42 lessons, where flying starts, the two knowledge tests, the two mocks.
2. How this program works, including that your ground lessons are recorded and that you read your own transcript before your instructor does.
3. What human behavior is, and the instructor and learner relationship.
4. Motivation and human needs.
5. Defense mechanisms, and what they look like in a cockpit.
6. The five learner emotional reactions: anxiety and stress, impatience, worry or lack of interest, physical discomfort and fatigue, and apathy due to inadequate instruction.
7. Teaching the adult learner.
8. Communication: its basic elements, the barriers to it, and how the skill is developed.
9. You teach.

• Name, from your own training, occasions when you hit at least three of the five emotional reactions.
• Teach a five to ten minute block introducing power-off stalls to a Simulated Student. Your instructor will be role playing a private pilot student about 12 hours in. They will not tell you in advance what they are playing.
• Notice what they are doing, and change how you are teaching because of it.
• Critique your own teaching before your instructor critiques it.

1. You teach a five to ten minute block to the Simulated Student and adapt your delivery within the block when the Simulated Student shows a named emotional reaction, rather than continuing your planned delivery unchanged.
2. You name the emotional reaction that was played, and name one specific thing you did differently because of it.
3. You give an example from your own flight training of at least three of the five learner emotional reactions in FI.I.A.K2.
4. You state one barrier to communication that occurred in your own teaching block, and what would remove it.
5. You deliver a self-critique before hearing your instructor's, naming at least one error, its probable cause, and a correction.

None of these is met by reciting a list. You can know all five reactions perfectly and fail this lesson by not noticing one happening in front of you. That is not a trick; it is the actual job.

Watch for these in yourself.

• Memorizing the list. The most common failure in phase 1, and the one this program is deliberately built against. You will be able to recite the five emotional reactions. That is not the same skill as spotting one, and the gap between them is the whole point of the lesson.
• Talking past anxiety. A student asks "what happens if it doesn't recover" and gets an answer about aerodynamics. They were not asking about aerodynamics.
• Reading the silence as agreement. When your Simulated Student goes quiet, you have received no information at all. Most candidates carry on as though they received a yes.
• Teaching the way you like to be taught. You have a learning style. It is probably not theirs.
• Filling every gap with words. A frightened student needs a pause more than they need your next sentence.
• Reading from your notes at someone who is frightened. That is a communication barrier, and you will be able to name it as one by the end of the lesson.

Not applicable. This is a ground lesson.

This lesson has no Video Slots. It teaches no maneuver, so it carries no Clips.

Your ground lessons are recorded, and you will read the transcript of what you actually said before your instructor reviews it. That order is deliberate. Reading your own words first is the most useful thing this program does for you, and it is uncomfortable the first two or three times.

Being recorded is a condition of enrolling. If you have questions about what is kept and what is deleted, policy/RECORDING-AND-RETENTION.md answers them, and this lesson is the right place to ask the rest.