I was a T-37, T-38 and KC-135R instructor pilot in the Air Force. I am studying for the Military Competence Instructor exam to have CFI added to my ticket.
Since I've never done civilian instructing, I was wondering if anyone else has done this and has any advice.
I made the switchover about 10 years ago and it was surprisingly more challenging than I expected it to be. There are both functional and cultural differences that you're going to need to learn and adapt to.
Quite frankly, there is a *huge* amount of learning to do about the
administrative mechanics of teaching students to fly before you actually get out there and do it....and the Mil-Comp CFI test won't teach you everything you need to know. From verifying student citizenship, to your own logbook and recordkeeping, to (especially) testing and logbook endorsements for your students, there is a lot you are going to be responsible for knowing that your military experience and the mil-comp studying/testing process isn't going to teach you. I highly recommend you find an active CFI to mentor you while you are just starting out to learn this stuff. This was the biggest stumbling block for me that I wasn't really aware of in the beginning.
As referenced above, your students aren't going to be carefully selected military officers and you're not instructing as part of a formal training program (even at a 141 school). They are going to have different motivations for wanting to be there, and you are going to have to use differing instructional techniques to help them actually learn. There is going to be a much wider range of preparation, skill, and knowledge that students will have for every flight -- compared to mil students, civilian students are expecting you to hand-feed them a lot more than your UPT students who are structurally expected to have a higher knowledge/preparation level. They're not bad students...there's just a general difference in expectations in the civilian flight training world that if you haven't experienced you might be surprised at.
What I found most surprising was that the instructional style that was standard in the military (where
if tasks were performed correctly we didn't really spend time to talk about them, and instead the time was spent
identifying errors, isolating root causes, and fixing those) was not well received. Civ students needed a lot more positive verbal reinforcement both in flight and in debriefs.
That being said, teaching for fun is more entertaining to me than it was teaching in a formal training environment where students were under a lot more stress and had a lot more "on the line" with each grade on each flight.
