Steve in Vermont
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- Jan 16, 2011
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Most, if not all of us that having been in the instructing game for any length of time have had the student like bigcholla had with a similar outcome which to me is what it is really all about. Very gratifying to me and I am sure to my colleagues as well.
It is with the challenging, and have never fired before student that makes me earn my keep as an instructor. Working with these folks will find and magnify any weakness we have as instructors. We can all enjoy working with the motivated and adept student. I have found that with the challenging comes great rewards as well.
Last year I had a couple that were in their mid 70's and neither of them had ever fired a handgun in their life. They bought a Ruger MKIII and a SW Sigma 9mm for the NRA Basic Pistol class and seemed scared to death but were determined. ( They had a home invasion attempt)
The lady, Char did well in the classroom but froze badly when it came to live fire. Having the ability to explain things in a number of ways until the light bulb came on in her brain took a great deal of patience. In Char's case like all other students, we would not let her progress to the next layer until she had mastered the skill we were working first.
Yet, when it was all done and over it was Char that said to her husband, " Now that was fun, we need to go shooting more often honey!"
What a dramatic turn around that had a high potential of going sour.
Isn't that a big reason we became instructors in the first place?
In the OP's case I would have seem this failure as MY failure as an Instructor, NOT the failure of the student.
Randy
This, and the previous post by Bigcholla, said it all. Image if drivers training instructors acted like this. Every student who did something stupid in their first classes would be banned from training and made to feel they should never get behind the wheel of a motor vehicle. I would look at this student as a challenge to me as an instructor. Any instructor can teach the average student to shoot/drive/fly, whatever the skill. But what separates the average instructors from the best ones is their ability to take the very difficult students and, through patience and good training, turn them into graduates. This instructor saw the challenge and walked away from her.