Minimum standards for training and completion of requirements is a sticky subject. It can encompass a lot of issues, to include legalities, which makes it oh so fun to work with. I speak of this largely in terms of police firearms training, but I think some of my observations may be more broadly applicable in the civilian firearms world as well, and possibly in other venues. I'm not sure about the others, because I'm just a dumb gun guy, but I have some experience training people.
To be more specific, I've been teaching people in one form or another since, grr, this ages me... 1995. I didn't really start coaching shooters until 2003ish, and didn't really start working with really large groups until 2014, but there it is. I've been doing it a while. And I don't want to claim that I got any great epiphany early on, I learned a lot of what I'm sharing with you quite slowly and painfully.
I got a lot of lessons, but I want to speak quite specifically about standards and expectations.
In every endeavor I'm familiar with, people will meet expectations and/or standards. While they aren't the same thing, I'm going to be using them interchangeably in this discussion, because typically whatever the standard is, that is also the expectation. There are people out there who will work tirelessly to exceed, but they are not the average person. No, the average person will want to know what they need to do in order to pass, and they'll do that thing. Full stop, they have other things they care about more.
So if you're training people, how you set expectations matters. You can do it verbally through your coaching, but you can also set up your training in order to get more from people, often without them realizing you're doing it.
When it comes to the program I am a part of, I have helped it evolve over time. When I first assumed any sort of control of it, there was no real structured pre-work or coaching before range time. All targets used were very big, and there was never any demonstration of the skills to be used. The instructors said, "do this," the students did their best to accomplish whatever "this" was. In addition, all of the range work was either full qualification runs or isolated parts of qualification runs. No other drills, skills, or separate isolation work was done, or at least very little.
I don't blame the people who came before me when it comes to this status quo. It worked, in that the higher ups wanted people who passed, so that they could then go on to do a job. That means that they fulfilled all of their basic requirements, to include getting at least a 70.0% on their qualification scores.
I too have fallen victim to the, "we do it this way because we've always done it this way," but over time I've managed to shake some of it. I hope to continue doing so. If you're one of the people who ran the program before me, please know that none of this is blaming or finger pointing. It is simply a statement of where we were, where we are, and hopefully, where we are going.
I recall the first time I wanted to demo something, and I was wondering if it would cause any issues. After all, I had never seen another instructor do it, and I was about to do it. I was nervous as can be, but I figured, screw it, I'm going to do it. So I demoed one of the skills I wanted the students to do. And nobody seemed to care one way or the other afterwards, so I decided to keep doing it. Over the next several sessions, I kept adding demos, but not an overwhelming amount. For the most part I just want the students to see what the skill looks like. For the initial ones that I do, I don't do them any faster than the student needs to in order to meet the requirement. Later ones in the instructional period I will do at a higher level of speed in order to show the student what is possible.
I also finally came to the conclusion that doing qualifications over and over again is boring and may be sabotaging the student when it comes to their near and long term development. Most shooters hit a plateau when it comes to just doing qualification courses, and so something needs to be done in order to make the student stretch their skills or flex them differently. Adding some specific drills like Dot Torture really helps the student get a better understanding of specific parts of firearms skills. Over time I added more and more of these into the program. It has become quite apparent to me that if you make a good shooter, they'll be able to easily pass any qualification course you put in front of them. If you make a qualification shooter, they'll struggle with any new challenge they receive, because it isn't just the qualification course that you trained them to shoot. Also, if during their initial training you make firearms as boring and as painful as possible, you can expect them to never practice on their own and continually struggle every time they come back to re-qualify. I understand that this job may not be fun, but if you can't make aspects of it fun, good luck to you and your organization.
Back to expectations, I just started using smaller targets for most of the range work that these students do. Previously we would do all of our shooting on full size FBI QIT targets. Those are 12" wide and 26" tall. Scoring was such that hits inside the scoring area anywhere, from the outer edges to perfect center hits were all full value. So if you only worked on those targets and you got most of your hits somewhere inside the scoring area, you could convince yourself that you were a good shooter. Additionally most of the instructors wouldn't bother explaining why one "full value" hit was better or worse than any other. That is a lot of scoring area in which to be sloppy. What is even worse, is that the Virginia standards are such that hits on the cardboard that aren't even in the scoring area still give you 60% credit. So you could completely miss the actual scoring area with every shot and still score a 60%!
Several sessions ago I started using reduced targets for scoring. These are half the size of the original Q target, so they are 6" wide and 13" tall. I use them for everything except for the qualification itself and a few other assorted drills. What I found is that when I switched to those, most of the students could still score passing scores, with several still getting 80% or 90%! In effect, I gave them a standard by virtue of the target I hung in front of them, and they meet it! I realized that this meant that I had been setting expectations too low all along. To the previous generations of students I worked with in the past who did not get the benefit of this, I apologize. I should've done better by you, but I'm learning very slowly.
Early in the year I worked with a smaller group of new shooters, and instead of using reduced Q targets at 15 and 25 yards, I gave them NRA B8 targets instead, and scored them on the B8. In other words, 10 ring gives you 10 points, 9 ring gives 9, etc. I gave zero points for anything that didn't hit the 7 ring or better. By the 3rd day those students were scoring 70s and 80s on that B8 at 25 yards, and only one of them had any real shooting experience before we started! Once again, I realized that I had been setting standards too low, and by virtue of that, expectations! Now every isolated part of work at the 15 and 25 is on a B8 instead of the reduced target. Maybe one day I will learn, but like I said, I'm getting there.
I added drills on 3x5 cards, more drills on bullseye targets, and some reactive targets. For some of the drills I make them shoot individually while on the clock. I'm pretty sure there is more I can do, but this is where I am currently. I also realized that some of the basic requirements they have to meet were self-sabotaging. Requirements like, "while moving forward, shoot 12 rounds." With requirements like that there is no accuracy or time standard, and therefore the incentive is to not care about either. I have been trying to re-structure how we accomplish some of these basic requirements to include some incentive to be better, otherwise we're just training them to not care.
I also make it a point to tell them that I've put smaller targets, time standards, and other stressors on them because I know they can do it. I explain that I set my expectations high so that they'll meet them, and I KNOW that they will meet them. My results from this drill modality and student interaction have been remarkably good. I usually only lose one student every year from inability to pass their shooting qualifications. I'll never claim that I can teach everybody, but I definitely feel that I can teach ALMOST everybody.
Please don't take this writing to mean that I think I have hit the pinnacle of police firearms training. What we've done up until now has worked well, but there is still more to be done. We are still learning about how to teach people in general, as well as how to do it specifically in the arena of firearms. There is definitely a lot of crossover when it comes to adult learning theory and teaching firearms, and I've been trying to apply it, but that isn't really germane to this discussion.
What I want to close with is this: are you setting expectations too low? For your students? For yourself? If you expect people to do poorly, I can almost guarantee that they will. There's a management corollary: "what you tolerate, you encourage." Some football coach said words to that effect, and while I am no great football fan, you can get lessons from any coach who gets excellence from their players, no matter what the sport or endeavor. Don't let your students be the minimum. Don't let yourself be the minimum. The capacity for more is in all of us, it just takes a spark to get it to come out.
