You do not actually know how to drive until you make an attempt to teach. Being an instructor of driving is such as learning to drive again – only that the focus is more enhanced. Every habit gets questioned. Every reflection of sluggish mirrors is perceived. “Why did you brake there?” a trainer asks. You cannot actually own the skill so long as you cannot explain it. You can also access my blog where I provide advisory tips and knowledge on such trip.
This is preceded by primitive driving lessons. Precision is key. Smooth clutch control. Clean lane positioning. Reaction instead of prognostication. You start to see trouble in its coming–a wobbling bicycle-rider, a thoughtless mother who is going to cross the road. The highway begins to look like a chess board and you are never lacking on thinking several moves.
Then comes teaching. Simple actions are not easily explained. Trying to describe to someone who is afraid of roundabouts what it is. Hands tighten, eyes widen. One of the trainees informed me that her student claimed that they are traffic whirlpools. she dissect, step by step, dissection, observe, find a gap, move. Simple words calm busy minds.
The communication training is direct. Cut the fluff. To the point briefs prevail: “Mirrors. Signal. Brake.” Say it, when it is too late, and things are bad. Say it too early and they lose it. Timing is everything.
Role play is a challenge to comfort zones. Faking that they are stalling, fake panicking. It sounds silly, but it works. You feel the frustration of the learner through the vicarious. Mistakes become lessons and not accidents.
Psychology has a bigger role than what people think. It has learners who give up on the first failure. Others make fun of it and repeat it. You get to study the tone in reading, the posture and the breathing. Even a simple You are alright will assist in making a difference in everything.
The risk awareness training is strict. Crashes on the videos of decision-making in a second. You start measuring speed and space in a new manner. Complacency disappears.
It is not an easy process of qualification. Theoretical investigation is done on road law and hazard perception. Foresight and control is tested through driving exams. AB tests of instructional ability investigate your capability of leading in a stressful situation. One weak place will keep the things to it–but the tensile will be strength.
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The increase in the course of training is gradual, and then sudden. One day you think of all you have been told. then you are calm, careless, and silent. You let silence work. You let the learner process. That pause becomes powerful.
Somebody told me as his mentee, You are coaching judgment not pedals. Cars are tools. Decisions are everything.
The virtue of patience is as tough to shape as marble in a sponge, and it is the gradual, unvarying, operating training. You speak slowly, you are not bossy but you are a mentor and your learners grow.
Then it comes and your student dies. Grinning, relieved, proud. You feel it too. You not only trained driving, but you also instructed awareness and discipline and calmness during stressful situations. The burden of that is immense.