Here I sit in the too-early morning — even too early for me (stupid daylight savings time). Later today (at the time of this writing, which isn’t the same as the date of publication) I will be sitting in a classroom to renew my Texas Concealed Handgun License Instructor certification.
I dug back through some emails I sent to myself, finding an article Kathy Jackson wrote titled Instructor Ethics 101:
When you step up to teach a self-defense class, you are literally asking students to bet their lives on the quality of the information you have and on your ability to teach it to them. This is no exaggeration, but just the simple truth.
[…]
I have even heard some handgun instructors deny that they are teaching self-defense. “It’s just a carry permit class,” they say — as if people carry guns for any other purpose. Or, “I’m just teaching them to use a handgun, that’s all.” But if your students think otherwise, if they come to you to learn skills they think they can use to protect themselves and their loved ones, you’re still on the hook. It’s so tempting to engage in these kinds of denials, and maybe that’s a more comfortable place for us to live as instructors, but it does our students no good.
As I prepare myself to sit in a room full of other CHL Instructors, I hope every single one of them understands it’s not “just a carry permit class”. That they take the gravity to heart, and will go forth and teach accordingly.
Even for myself, it’s a good reminder.
Stuff From Hsoi 
Even when teaching the “Handguns 101” course, lots and lots of tactical questions pop up, so they get answered.
I also like to give my students a big reading list and refer them to subscribe to my blog so they can continue their education beyond the relatively short time I have them for. Some subscribe and continue their education, some don’t.
Biggest sins for instructors to do are:
1) Pencil whip students below the minimum state requirements just to save on time and range costs. An instructor in Missouri got in trouble for doing just that.
2)Not following the NRA material when teaching an NRA class.
3)Not delineating non-NRA material from NRA material during a class. I know of an NRA training counselor who got all of his NRA credentials pulled for turning his instructor workshop into a CFS promotional seminar.
Yup. If questions come up, it’s good to answer them. It’s good to keep class on track and within scope, but if they have questions, we should answer them to the best of our ability.
1. Yeah, that’s not good. Does no one any service.
2. Yup. NRA’s pretty on about that.
3. and that too. If you’re teaching an NRA class, you need to do it by the book, period.
The training philosophy of at least half of the Texas CHL instructors, from my observations over the past 20 years in the CHL program, is “if the minimum wasn’t good enough, it wouldn’t be the minimum.” That was evident again this year, in the mad rush of many who had been teaching CHL for years to get NRA certified due to the change in state requirement. One of the criteria I tell students they should use to choose an instructor is whether that person does annual professional development. Someone that doesn’t care about the topic enough to take a class or shoot a match once a year really shouldn’t be teaching others. If that requirement was imposed on CHL instructors probably at least 25% would not meet it.
If they could do less, they would. *sigh*
I have started doing that with instructors I see. Fine you have your list of NRA certs. But what have you done lately? Where is your continuing education? And frankly, that holds for any facet of life (e.g. your day job).
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