instructors, need input PLEASE READ

[Paul Arden]

Good question I’ll have to have a look. It’s a difficult and probably rather thorny subject. I do know that it’s a major criticism in some places that instructors can cast but can’t catch fish.

[Lasse Karlsson]

Isn't that the usual excuse and complaint from people who can't cast?

Cheers
Lasse

[Flybye]

I would say the ability to cast and the knowledge of where to cast are mutually important. The problem with guiding is you need to identify quick fixes to casting problems,and sort them out quickly. This entails a pretty good understanding of instructing principles but doesn't necessarily need to apply them in quite the same way as a beginer/imtermediate/advanced lesson.
Most fishing casts are pretty simple and personally as a guide I tend to steer clients away from what I can see they are not equiped to achieve. "Find the fish they can catch not the ones you could" and (if the fish will allow it) introduce them to harder stuff through the day. It is however a fishing day not a casting day and no matter how many clients say if you can point out faults in my casting what they want is to catch fish. So the need to know the water and the behaviour of its inhabitants is probably just a bit more important at times.
TK

[Bernd Ziesche]

Hello sexy loops community
Do you accept payment for instruction?
Do you not? Sometimes?
Under what circumstances do you accept payment or refuse it?
What is your view on instructors who accept payment or refuse it?
What do you think should be the circumstance to accept or refuse payment for instruction?

So what is your response to these questions? If you respond, would you be willing to have your response appear in the Loop?

Thanks, Brian DeLoach, MCI
Associate Editor at The Loop

Hello Brian,
A lot of questions.

I make my living on teaching fly fishing, fly tying and fly casting. Of course I charge my clients for teaching them.
I teach children under 17 years of age for free. And I do offer lower rates for students.

Fly fishing is a huge area of hobby. Probably it's therefore that I often missed serious professionalism (compared to the job world) when it came to teaching fly casting.

For me it's important to put huge effort in staying updated in my fly casting knowledge as well as improving my teaching skills. I always make sure to immediately identify every cause for every trouble my students bring into the lesson.

Mostly my lessons are running like:
What exactly is my student doing? (explaining, demonstrating + video analyzing, casting together)
How can my student best possible improve? (explaining, demonstrating, casting together)
Running thru a series of structured exercises. (training to constantly improve)
Delievering a handout with 100% of the teaching content. Making sure my students carry home all content.

After the lesson I expect my students to be able to:
- understand all causes for any trouble they had in their casting as well as how to get rid of them. That counts for the trouble they knew about and the trouble they didn't knew about.
- understand all key elements of fly casting.

Of course I expect to see significant improvement during the lesson.

In addition to all that I make sure to motivate my students to regularly train their casting after the lesson. For that I make sure they understand all the typical training faults like training with too much of line outside the tip for example.

I don't care much (if any) about what other instructors do. But if I would be about to set a standard for what an instructor should be able to do in the first place, being able to immediately identify all causes for trouble in the cast and knowing how to best improve would be it. Proper teaching skills are the logical basement to ship this over.
That seems to be a fair basement to charge money in my point of view.

Feel free to use my answer.

Regards
Bernd

[Paul Arden]

Have you seen the new Masters Test yet, Bernd? I’ve been going through it with a few candidates and it is excellent! It’s really a completely new level. It falls short in a few areas, but it’s certainly a huge jump forwards. There is the concern of course that there are a large number of current Masters who wouldn’t pass this test, but that would always be the case.

Cheers Paul

[Flybye]

Same assessors one presumes

[Paul Arden]

No they have a new system of assessor examinations. This is a very good thing. I was one of the guys suggesting it 15 years ago.

[Brian McGlashan]

No they have a new system of assessor examinations. This is a very good thing. I was one of the guys suggesting it 15 years ago.

If your suggestion resulted in what is happening now,thanks.

Through every Level(There are 3) of Examiner training there is a PPC (Peer Performance Confirmation).This is where assessors all cast together to get a feel for what they are looking for during an Assessment.It is a long haul an a lot of work,I started in 2012 and managed to gain L3 at the end of 2017.
The assessor needs to be able to do the tasks.
Gone are the days of two or three assessments makes us assessors.Surely a good thing?

Regards
Brian.

[Paul Arden]

Yes it's excellent Brian. It's the first thing I said when I joined the FFF and I certainly said it many times since. I also maintained that assessors should be assessed independently (or at the very least the assessors of assessors) and that everyone should be paid. But I'm not involved in that side any more - it was just too much of a headache and someone else can bang their head against the wall!

The last straw for me was being told that charging less to Instructors of certain countries was "one of my preferences" and that I had to "think of the Korean who paid his dues with pride". Korea FFS. Not Kim Jong Un I am sure, but South Korea. How can you have an International organisation that thinks that South Korea is impoverished?! The FFF lost 25 instructors in Eastern Europe and that's appalling. And only because it was too expensive. What a complete waste of mine and everyone else's time.

It still makes me angry I need to spend more time in the jungle! There are no idiots in the jungle. They don't survive

Cheers, Paul

[Paul Arden]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_South_Korea