Positive feedback...

A couple of nice, life affirming things have happened over the last couple of days.

Firstly, yesterday, I had a brand new pupil.

She'd never driven before, so I was taking her to New Brighton Promenade where it's nice and open and quiet and predictable. A drive of about 15 minutes. Turns out that she's a friend of a girl I taught briefly last summer.

This particular girl had a driving test booked, and her regular instructor was unable to give her a lesson for a week or so beforehand. She didn't feel ready, and so booked a lesson with me.

She was right to not feel ready, because her driving was a lot different to what I would have taught her. I gave her some simple ideas, which we practiced intensively, first for one lesson, then for several lessons.

The difference in both her control, and confidence was huge. A few simple changes to the way she approached things completely changed what driving was for her. She did her test in her usual instructor's car, and passed easily.

I'm told that as he was driving her home, he said "I really don't know how you passed that." The inference being a contemptuous "you fluked  it".

My puipil knew better. She recommended me to the girl I picked up yesterday. She too is thriving under my tutilage.

And then today, a pupil who previously had several lessons with a different instructor. He'd got a few lessons cheap because of an offer on the internet, and after using those lessons, promised to get back in touch with this instructor after he'd had the lessons with me (he'd had a voucher bought for him as a gift)

After the first lesson; again, a two hour slot in New Brighton, he'd kind of decided to switch his allegiance, but felt a bit guilty about letting his previous instructor down. After today, he had no such qualms. He was effusive in his praise for the way I was doing things. Things really clicked. Pretty much the same things I was showing the girl last year were working for him too.

Essentially my job is simple:

1. Be a highly trained advanced driver who uses best practice across the board.
2. Teach people the same techniques I use myself.

That's it. That's all. The whole thing in a nutshell. Right from lesson one, give the pupil the best possible way of doing everything. Why other instructors are not doing this is really a testement to the standard of instructor training in this country. Most instructors didn't get the training I got.

Anyway, feeling good right now. I put a lot of myself into my work. When things go badly, when someone fails their test, when someone decides they don't like the way I do things, it does hurt. So it's nice to get some indication that I'm doing things right.
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