When We Started Treating our SHOOTERS Like THINKERS
It's been a half-dozen years since I became infected with the problem-based learning virus. Some call it a shift in teaching style; I see it as a radical and revolutionary flip upside-down. My personal experience has been that positive and significant. As have the results in our learners. I joined the police department's firearms training unit in 2001. Immediately after receiving my instructor certificate, I began training police officers to be the best shooters they could be. I taught my shooters using the training techniques that I learned from my instructor school...which, predictably, where the same methods that my academy firearms instructors used on me. It's the perpetual loop of "we teach the same way in which we were taught." I found myself recycling old drills. These were repetitive technical exercises - static marksmanship, reloading, clearing stoppages or malfunctions, shooting with opposite hands or from different body positions.