Contributor Rich Verdi has provided us with another excellent article, this one called Keep an Open Mind! Rich discusses a critically important lesson about the importance of teaching students without being tied down to personal preferences about your gear. All too often, instructors like to wax philosophically about their personal likes and dislikes, but a good instructor understands it’s the Indian, not his arrows.
Good article.
A few thoughts:
Being an effective firearms instructor involves much more than attending a few schools and getting a bunch of sexy certificates. It’s a journey of learning and understanding we are all still students to some degree.
An additional criticism that I’d add are firearms instructors who never really learn how to shoot better than the average student/cop. Not being able to practice what you preach is a huge killer of credibility, in my book.
Unless an instructor can truly understand the shooting process there’s not much of a chance he can diagnois issues or provide the right advice beyond what was in the Firearms Instructor School handout material.
Keeping an open mind is a great start and it’s essential in keeping a learning mindset – More important is to be a serious student of this topic and doing the hard work to build the skills and performance capabilities necessary to be both an effective/credible instructor AND shooter.
Rich did a good job and Bryan is completly correct in that you have to keep working hard to maintain your abilities as an instructor. I had a student post a compliment for me recently that really struck me and motivated me. He said that instead of being an instructor, I was a teacher. If we’re out there instructing folks, we should know our craft at some serious depth and be as objective as we can. Most of all, we should always be looking for our own learning opportunities in a class because they are there.