Thoughts make behaviours

What makes you angry shapes how you feel about things.  How you express your feelings is often ineffective.  What makes anything effective?

Good question.  

To be effective, it needs to make a positive change. 

What would the circumstances have to be for you to change your mind about speeding or reckless driving?

Good question.

Sometimes people avoid these kinds of questions, for personal reasons, and one of them might well be that naturally, it is a hard way to learn anything.  These are examples of problems that are not necessarily easy to answer.

Tell me, verbalise your thoughts.

No speech = no thought.  Don't accept it.  Or at the very least explain that this is an obstacle to learning.

It is not normal, in order to understand beliefs (to road safety) and attitudes (to learning), driving instructors do need to have a window into the thoughts of pupils.

So, then we move on to the pupils who are not 'normal'.

Tag them as you like, parents and teachers love to label them. I have a genuine attraction working with these pupils; I know not why.  But it seems to be consistently the case.  I find that assisting a pupil in the mechanisms of effective learning is time well spent.  It is not a given, in fact, quite the opposite. Our younger generation have become conditioned to a learning environment where they are tested to death, warned (one could say threatened) with the short and long-term consequences of poor grades and pushed through a funnel where their thoughts and feelings really stand for very little.  It is a form of education that is restrictive and ineffectual for all except academics.  Engagement with our pupils is key.  

Picture the scene. You are speaking 1:1 with someone and they get their phone out and start interacting with the phone.  You have a decision to make.

Instantly.

Or not.

You are either in control of the situation or you are not.

The choice is yours.  If you are on a driving lesson, do you have a "no phones" policy when in the car?  If you are in a social environment, do you simply move on to someone who is not addicted to their phone?

I had this situation occur to me only this evening, and I happily withdrew with courtesy.  There is a good argument to say as long as a pupil is pulled over safely on the road with the engine off, they can engage with their phone as much as they like.  It is after all their time, but it does not sit well in my mind.  My pupils do regularly use either photos or videos to help them with manoeuvres I've noticed; technology does have its uses in certain circumstances.

You see we are in times where the 'facts' are all relevant.

Corbyn says that May is "a stupid woman" Did he?

"I have been raped five times".  Have you?

"I braked hard as my pupil was not going to stop". Really?

"My driving instructor put her hand on my hand as I changed gear". Did she?

Many moons ago, I was accused on social media by a mother of being racist.  My "crime" was in not letting her daughter drive the car because she could not show me her provisional drivers licence.  The time I spent with her daughter was positive, constructive, supportive and not one penny crossed hands.  Despite being parked up outside the pupil's house, she literally could not show me a drivers licence.  But that did not stop her mother from making false claims.  

Our emotions shape our thoughts which form our behaviours.

I am increasingly coming to the opinion that in-car training should be compulsorily video recorded.  Driving instructors should be enforced to document their training for a set period, i.e. two years, and anyone, but anyone can legally request to see that footage.  It is in our interests to do this.  I'm surprised that this isn't standard practice in all classrooms up and down the country.

Allegations of malpractice are serious.  It is in the interests of all to be seen to be clean.  As much as many may not like it, I see no reason why a 1:1 learning environment within a vehicle should somehow bypass accusations of unprofessionalism.

A couple of weeks ago, a Mum observed a couple of driving lessons.  I really do recommend that you positively encourage this.  The more engagement we have with parents the better.  It's good because a parent is way more transparent in their thoughts than a pupil.  On one of the sessions Mum actually said "I'll tell you what she is thinking Tom because she is clearly not going to....".  How interesting.  If I don't see either parent, I often will bring them up in the in-car training.  They have an incredible influence on behaviours.   When you are learning something your radar for information spreads far and wide.  You will listen to pretty much anyone who has an opinion on the subject you are learning. A pupil of mine recently talked about a roundabout video on YouTube which they had seen, when I looked it up later at home, it was made by a guy who was not even a driving instructor.  I've fallen into this trap myself, and some of the content is pretty compelling it must be said.

A major benefit of setting goals at the start of a driving lesson and reviewing them at the end is that it does focus the mind of our pupils about their competence.  This feedback is essential.  When they leave your car and their radar picks up whatever it is going to pick up (from whichever source), it really helps for them to be very clear about their particular needs.  Take care with private driving lessons - to be beneficial they should be aligned to what the pupil is working on.  It is not a question of can your pupil drive, it is more about how well can they drive, and private driving lessons can make that point quite fuzzy in the mind of our pupil.