Before I offer my opinions and suggestions I'll qualify that I've only been a fledgling instructor since the beginning of the year, in basic pistol classes not intended to be taken into defensive context. Prior to that I was, and still am, mostly a training enthusiast, though I've taken some instructor development. None of my ideas are original and I apologize in advance for anybody's messages I'm about to garble, or anything you've already thought of.
Great thinking and suggestions, many thanks!
I've seen incredibly few trainers email a pre-class questionnaire getting to know their students' backgrounds and expectations, which more importantly provides an opportunity for the students to put undefined thoughts and feelings into written words that may or may or may not be said to you in person. When I took Ian Strimbeck's classes, this also included a self-assessment of skills of what they felt they could and could not do well. I don't remember if it included skills that were beyond the scope of the class, i.e. medical or unarmed techniques, but I think it would be worth bringing up.
I could definitely do better with this. I'll have to think on a good question set, but I can definitely derive one. Participants tend to be good folks who feel like they know enough, but need to go jump through this hoop to get the cert., or good folks who really don't know anything but want to learn. Both groups inevitably learn something. I could formalize both my pre and post-class interactions through a questionnaire and feedback form.
Firearms education is education by any other name. I'm guessing you probably have pens and notepads ready in the classroom, or tell students to bring note-taking material in the list of items to bring. Tom Givens is adamant about preparing a handout for them to keep regardless of whether they take notes or not. I like that he has a good dry-practice program in his, when I went through Intensive Pistol.
Yes, I provide a paper copy of my slide deck.
Follow-up emails after class may go a long way toward thanking students again for their time, reminding them of key bullet point takeaways of what you guys went over, and any personalized individual feedback you managed to gather. Tim Herron takes copious notes and gave me about four paragraphs' worth both times I've taken his 2-day Pistol Performance but it doesn't have to be that much; Jeremy Bennett took one Coach's Eye video of each student and gave each of us an index card that he tried to put at least two points in our technique to improve on, with one point we were doing good on. The follow-up is also a great place to plug additional training that you and others offer.
Agreed about the follow-up emails. I'm not much of a marketer, but this is such a "gimme" that I should have dont it all along. I believe the feedback cards would be helpful during a follow-on, pistol-instruction class. During the live-fire portion of the CCW class it is really just demonstrating basic safety, with not enough reps to give meaningful feedback--because they haven't really had enough reps to make meaningful growth. It's intended as a "check," rather than instruction, though it almost always incorporates both.
At the end of my last time with Tim Herron, John Correia noted that of many handgun classes he's been through, Tim was one of the few that had a pre-class AND post-class standard that were the same thing, to show measurable improvement in the students' performance. I know John has his own; Tim's is in the form of the USPSA-style stage that everyone attempts cold on the morning of day one, and does again at the end of day two. However, I think there are plenty of good reasons to have the pre- and post- be different though, i.e. if the finishing course of fire is for a prize, especially if it is relatively well-known. Something like warming up with a couple minutes of dry practice at Gabe White's PSS to get a feel for everyone's confidence, perhaps with a small block of instruction first if there's any completely new shooters.
This would definitely be useful in a pistol training class rather than a CCW class. Just need to get them to sign up for a pistol instruction class! The email follow-ups may help with that.
Since you don't incorporate holster draw, perhaps to drive the point home that they've only just begun might be to show them footage of a defensive concealed handgun use with a positive outcome that is as close to 'textbook' as you can approximate, and point out about how much time it took for the encounter to start and finish, and how much time it took for the defender to draw to first shot. Maybe also demonstrate the differences on a timer between starting from full presentation to the target, starting from low ready, and starting from the holster. Do you teach low ready? If you do, how would you feel about having the 'final exam' consist of each student firing one round at five yards from low ready on the timer individually, as everyone else watches? There would need to be some explanation of human reaction time to an
anticipated stimuli, and what a timer is (and what it isn't). Just a heads-up, if you want to use videos from Active Self Protection, it's free if you're not charging your students, but if you do
they want $40 for licensing.
I like it!
Students struggling with racking the slide and/or locking it back has been a common occurrence for me. I walk them through what Kathy Jackson said.
https://www.corneredcat.com/article/...ack-the-slide/
Yes, I was thinking about following up with an email about Cornered Cat to all female students.
Some additional resources that came to mind while typing this up:
- Strategies and Standards for Defensive Handgun Training, by Karl Rehn and John Daub. Refer to their KR Training and Stuff From Hsoi blogs about 'Beyond the One Percent' and 'Minimum Competency for Defensive Pistol', respectively.
- Street Focused Handgun Training, Volume 1-3, by Ralph Mroz. If I taught CCW classes I'd write him up and get his permission to take a list of 25 things he made and make it a handout.
https://pistol-forum.com/showthread....73#post1071273
- Primary and Secondary ModCasts #214 (Helping New Shooters), Foundational Carry Concepts (Especially for Women); Civilian Carry Radio #129 (Judi Wells), #145 (Lou Ann Hamblin). Extended listening, but I think it is worth enduring the podcast format to get the nuggets.
- FBI Pistol Qualification. I like the things that Lucky Gunner, John Murphy, and Active Self Protection's dry fire challenge have all done with it.