FFI teaching outreach.

[Bernd Ziesche]

Hi Vince,
I don't try to tell or think what a casting instructor should be in general. I leave this to everyone him/herself.
But the FFI offers a certification programm.
Candidates become members, spend both money and time to prepare in order to pass the exam.
I offer help to prepare. That puts me in a position, in which I operate between teaching correct content as best possible and knowing, that presenting what's written in the recommended study material easily might be what some examiners want to hear in the exam. SLP as THE most important essential in fly casting is just one example.
Offering outdated study material puts everyone (those who mentor, those who examine and especially the candidate) in a poor situation.
The exam has been changed many times as have been examiner preperations. The heart of the study material hasn't as far as I can tell.
I like Paul's vid about the 5E's though. It's not perfect, but at least it's a more updated view on them.
I really don't know why it is so difficult to correct what can be corrected. This is what Sexyloops was all about for decades.
Regards
Bernd

[Stoatstail50]

So, the Certification stands for quality in teaching?

I don’t think any of them, of any organisational hue, get even close to quality in teaching. They’re nearly all about quality in casting and cast analysis.

The complaint from the FFI chapters appears to be that the casting standards are too high for people “who just want to teach” to become instructors.

I’ve no doubt that there are many people out there who are way better teachers than casters and there’s more than enough evidence to show that many certified instructors are way better casters than teachers.

The certifying bodies have to find a way to serve the broader angling community instead of trying to serve the career aspirations and egos of expert casters seeking business influence and notoriety. If that is the objective of the FFI then it has my support. If that involves providing the membership with teaching skills then…go to it

However, my personal preference would be to see more emphasis on understanding basic teaching principles in the assessments rather than simply watering down the standards of casting in the tests. This would be very easy to do but I don’t see any sign of anything like that being even contemplated.

[Paul Arden]

Having spent the last 27 years in various associations – STANIC, APGAI, FFF, FFF-E, GAIA – I can happily conclude that no group of instructors will ever agree on any single subject, and the larger the group the greater the disagreements

Cheers, Paul

[VGB]

Having spent the last 27 years in various associations – STANIC, APGAI, FFF, FFF-E, GAIA – I can happily conclude that no group of instructors will ever agree on any single subject, and the larger the group the greater the disagreements

I disagree

[VGB]

The exam has been changed many times as have been examiner preperations. The heart of the study material hasn't as far as I can tell.

I would disagree with that Bernd, the study material has changed considerably.

I like Paul's vid about the 5E's though. It's not perfect, but at least it's a more updated view on them.
I really don't know why it is so difficult to correct what can be corrected. This is what Sexyloops was all about for decades.

Most of the Sexyloops discussion that I saw was about making existing casts longer, adding casts or changing equipment which is more about casting than instruction/coaching in my opinion. Where have you seen perfect, what does it look like to you?

Regards

Vince

[Lasse Karlsson]

Having spent the last 27 years in various associations – STANIC, APGAI, FFF, FFF-E, GAIA – I can happily conclude that no group of instructors will ever agree on any single subject, and the larger the group the greater the disagreements

I disagree

I agree

[Lasse Karlsson]

I offer help to prepare. That puts me in a position, in which I operate between teaching correct content as best possible and knowing, that presenting what's written in the recommended study material easily might be what some examiners want to hear in the exam. SLP as THE most important essential in fly casting is just one example.
Offering outdated study material puts everyone (those who mentor, those who examine and especially the candidate) in a poor situation.
The exam has been changed many times as have been examiner preperations. The heart of the study material hasn't as far as I can tell.
I like Paul's vid about the 5E's though. It's not perfect, but at least it's a more updated view on them.
I really don't know why it is so difficult to correct what can be corrected. This is what Sexyloops was all about for decades.
Regards
Bernd

Hi Bernd

I don't understand why you would teach anything than the most correct content.
Seeing as the examiner pool of Europe isn't that big, a complaint to the FFI examiner development departement might help in rectifying that predicament you seem to have?

Study material has gone through a hell of a change the last years...

Cheers
Lasse

[Bernd Ziesche]

Hi Mark,
Good points, fully agree with your post #72.

Hi Paul,
Took us a long road thru different organisations, but after all I agree with your post #73.

Hi Vince,
Some study material was changed and I agree, that's great. However my impression still remains, that the old 5E broschure is the heart of the study material (as I wrote). Otherwise I wouldn't get candidates for mentoring year by year bringing it into my lesson.

"Perfect" (or good enough) to me is, when I read whatever theory and either I or the camera can easily prove it to be wrong, but correct. If I have a desire to mark several sentences red (red = being incorrect) on every or every second page... Doesn't feel good to me. I don't like to recommend such a paper.

Hi Lasse,
I agree, but my latest student lives in the US and first study material, which was handed out to her: the old 5E broschure as I got it decades ago.
I don't like her to study it, only to then put quite a few parts into correction afterwards. I can offer a correct paper of mine, but it seems the 5E in original shape are still held high with the FFI in the US. It's just not as straight as I'd like it to be.
Of course I don't teach anything but correct content or at least as correct as I know it...
Regards
B

[Lasse Karlsson]

Hi Bernd

Sounds like your student also has a, local to her, mentor, which might have a different journey in mind for her instructor path?
I know I always tell to study everything and then question it. Spoon feeding candidates is setting them.up for failure IMHO...

Cheers
Lasse

[Bernd Ziesche]

Hi Lasse,
she had, but was unhappy with his idea of mentoring.
Study everything and question it, is basically what I think we did. Excellent outcome, I agree. Only it took much more time than most are willing to investigate.
Also this has nothing to do with paying an annual fee, paying an exam fee, paying for being instructed, paying travel costs and cost for accomodation, while in the end you get fed with some outdated content being incorrect. How would a student know the teacher is right, while the study material isn't. How would the student deal with what each examiner may or may not prefer to hear.
I am pretty sure you and I would be on the same page in an exam. But I had serious issues with how some examiners ran exams while they had a lack of understanding basic things themselves.
As an organisation how can you fail a candidate, when yet you should be failed yourself as long as you offer study material holding simply wrong content in the main part?
I will never accept this to be a proper way, because it is not.
Spoon feeding or not isn't my decision. My student pays and decides what he/she wants. If there is little time, spoon feeding can be a proper start and later on hopefully will just have become a start. But that's hardly our decision, I think.
Regards
Bernd