Teaching & learning

G: JV's observations that the importance of students' being able to rely on uniform quality and perspective among FFF certified instructors and that the similarities among casting instructors are more significant than the differences define the quality assurance goals of the CCI program.

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There used to be a number of handouts available for CCI’s on the FFF website. They have since disappeared. I keep everything I get and have put up the aforementioned items and a few others on my website for download. Anyone can go to: http://castflys.net/cert.aspx and access my webpages. At the bottom of the page are links to pages containing study materials and the FFF web pages. I will soon have Dave Diaz’s presentation available also.

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David's question: Telling the student what he's doing wrong frequently does not work. Why is that?

Students come to an instructor to learn to fly-cast and they often learn quicker when we accent the positive things they are doing in the process. While our objective is to teach and correct the problems with their cast, we can fix one problem at a time while praising the things the student is doing correctly. When the teaching and learning process remains positive the result makes for fun. When a student is having fun they generally learn faster and with more enthusiasm.

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Hi Gordy;

I never tell a student that are doing something wrong. Instead I say to them, "let me show you another way of doing that which you may find easier and which will bring you some quicker positive results".

robert

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Mack, I certainly agree with that positive approach. Mel Krieger has emphasized this in his writings on teaching fly casting.

Your comment, "we can fix one problem at a time..." is a good one. Some poor instructors try to fix two or three problems at one time. This confuses the student.

Most accomplished instructors will pick the one which they judge to be the most detrimental to the cast to be the, "first fix".

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Michael says it about as well as it can be put, why start a lesson on a negative note! Even if I had to shade the truth a little bit, I would say something like, I can see you love casting the way I do, what a wonderful passion we have to share, then let him talk about what he thinks he needs to do to improve, a way of getting in his brain and measuring the lesson. Then go into the positive. Let me make a couple of suggestions that may help as you find what works for you, then go from there! To me just showing up with desire to learn is the greatest positive of all so why not fan the flame! I always keep in mind that the end goal is to get one to the water to take advantage of life. This does not require perfection and perfect loops!

Many ways of handling the poor cast without being overly negative. If I sense the student is aware of a fault, I sometimes ask him how he would improve it and go from there. Little statements like, "would you like to tighten your loop ?" are not damaging.

Having said all that, I think there is the very rare circumstance, especially with a student who has an attitude problem, where a good swift kick in the ego my help. One example is the student who refuses to agree that his cast is less than perfect...... blames his tackle or the weather.