Hunter Education changes

[Bob33]

Denny I would not take the no call to heart. I called down there every day for a week to get them to post my class on line and never got a live person.
New instructors who apply never here anything for weeks, if at all.  Chuck and Dan looking after all the old and new instructors for the whole state is stupid they cannot do it. Any program signed waiver or not has risks. If someone wants to sue they will find a way.

I got a call this morning from Sgt Cline, I offered to help if I am qualified, he said he would check with the team in my area. The future of HE worries me, I hear a lot of folks complaining that they couldn't get their kids or an adult family member in a class. Someone took the time for me when I was a kid, I figure it's my turn to try and return the favor.

Helping out with a range day for online students would actually work best for my schedule, so that's what I volunteered for.

Dale, I'm glad to hear that.  Sgt. Klein is a good man and you are too to volunteer.  Class attendance in our area tends to be 100%, even in the spring.  There is often a panic in the fall as potential students rush to get qualified in order to hunt.  It's a double whammy because fall is the time when the vast majority of instructors take time off to hunt.

I think you will enjoy the experience!

[ghosthunter]

Well, I'll say this...

It is going to be an interesting meeting in Yakima next month!

BTW, in my classes we teach in the classroom with non-live firearms and ammo, and we have a live fire session with "real" guns - the students are not told the classroom guns are disabled.  They seem to learn just as well as if they were "live". 

I agree that it is a foolish rule, but In my mind, walking away becuse they want you to use disabled guns in the classroom is cutting your nose off to spite your face...  It would be a shame to punish the future generation of hunters to make a point to WDFW regarding a policy change.  But that is just my opinion.

What color are your fake guns?

[danderson]

  We know that the hunter education program is becoming more computerized, it will have to be to remain cost effective, lets face it everything is, this year is the first year that registration can only be done on-line, no more dreaded bubble forms to fill out in class, I had to create my own class schedule along with instructions to direct students to my class, plus print a parent agreement form that they will bring to class already filled out, that was a challenge since I am not the most computer savey person but I figured it out, all done by the student or parent well before the class starts, I get an email letting me know a student has enrolled in my class, sent by the program, I teach two classes each year and at times struggled to get 20 students per class, this year enrollment is way down, just a guess but my feelings are not everyone has a computer, or they cant figure out the website.
It may work good for the larger city's were theres a greater number of potentail students but not so great for rural communities.
  As far as all the rumors going around about non-functing firearms in the classroom is concerned, that isn't true, at least theres been no directive that I am aware of, what has changed is the instructor certification process, it used to be anyone that wanted to get involved with getting certified as a instructor contacted chuck (east-side) took a pre-test, enrolled in a pre-servce training class, usually one full day, then found a class and helped teach, the lead instructor signed off that they participated and they were ready to be certified, now anyone wanting to get certified must first contact chuck, and he assigns a mentor instructor, the mentor instructor works with the want-a -be instructor until he or she determines that they are  ready to teach, however long that may be, then the want-a -be instructor takes part in a two or three day hunter education class with other new instructors and actually teach a class, this might be were the non- functing firearms are used. My classes are going to be  taught the same way that I was taught, hands on with lots of examples of real working firearms, dummy ammo and lots of common sense.

[Paul Sims]

I think most of us are waiting to hear what the proposed changes are at the ISTm some chaNGE IS NEEDED REGARDING CLASS LENGTH, NO REason one class to "get er done" in 16 hours while another takes over 25 hours. Some standardization would be good. But--there are some hot button issues, like samples of firearms in class and live fire. I won't teach with toy firearms any more than I would EVER pass a student who had never fired a firearm. We'll just have to see.

[ghosthunter]

  We know that the hunter education program is becoming more computerized, it will have to be to remain cost effective, lets face it everything is, this year is the first year that registration can only be done on-line, no more dreaded bubble forms to fill out in class, I had to create my own class schedule along with instructions to direct students to my class, plus print a parent agreement form that they will bring to class already filled out, that was a challenge since I am not the most computer savey person but I figured it out, all done by the student or parent well before the class starts, I get an email letting me know a student has enrolled in my class, sent by the program, I teach two classes each year and at times struggled to get 20 students per class, this year enrollment is way down, just a guess but my feelings are not everyone has a computer, or they cant figure out the website.
It may work good for the larger city's were theres a greater number of potentail students but not so great for rural communities.
  As far as all the rumors going around about non-functing firearms in the classroom is concerned, that isn't true, at least theres been no directive that I am aware of, what has changed is the instructor certification process, it used to be anyone that wanted to get involved with getting certified as a instructor contacted chuck (east-side) took a pre-test, enrolled in a pre-servce training class, usually one full day, then found a class and helped teach, the lead instructor signed off that they participated and they were ready to be certified, now anyone wanting to get certified must first contact chuck, and he assigns a mentor instructor, the mentor instructor works with the want-a -be instructor until he or she determines that they are  ready to teach, however long that may be, then the want-a -be instructor takes part in a two or three day hunter education class with other new instructors and actually teach a class, this might be were the non- functing firearms are used. My classes are going to be  taught the same way that I was taught, hands on with lots of examples of real working firearms, dummy ammo and lots of common sense.

As far as all the rumors going around about non-functing firearms in the classroom is concerned, that isn't true,

You are mistaken. I have a letter in my hand from the director of Fish & Wildlife Phil Anderson. NO WORKING FIREARMS IN HUNTER ED CLASSES. They will anounce it at IST it is a done deal. Some instructors are already are using them.
This is not only on line it is all hunter ed classes.
I have already said a dozen times here that when I can no longer use working firearms in my classes I would quit.
Dan Boes is coming to Skagit County on the 26th to discuss the matter with us . One of my teaching team has already quit after SGT kline called him.

at least one person here has already seen the non guns.

[Brownarola]

The non functioning firearms have everything the live ones do except they have an orange stock, cost$1500 for a set and have no firing pins. It's nice to have a variety of firearms in the classroom but face it, no matter how many firearms you bring in, students really need to become familiar with their own guns; an action is an action. I.e. a semi auto shotgun is pretty close to a semi auto rifle and a pump is a pump. Plus there are so many videos online about how a the various firearm operate, you can honestly learn more about a firearm online than you ever could hope to learn in a class. Not to say we do not have some pretty knowledgeable instructors, but you can do a search on YouTube for your particular action type and figure out how it works outside the classroom.  I think this is also a good thing because it should eliminate the no-touchy touchy syndrome that I have seen in some courses, meaning the instructors did not want the students handling their firearms because they were afraid the students might harm them.

In regards to the online sign-ups; The state is starting to put more information in the hunting manuals and after a while people will know where to look. Personally I think stores should have a terminal at their counters that people could use to sign up for classes. That would make things easier.

In regards to course standardization; I was always able to kick out students that met the state requirements in 13 hours of class time. I actually heard horror stories  of courses running 25 and 30 hours? In my opinion that is not a class; that is a college course. Unless you hold a degree in education or you a degree in modern child and adult learning theories you would think that a 25 or 30 hour course is ok. However students of today are not the same as the students of yesterday. They are multi-taskers who get their information from the Internet, TV, radio, podcasts, school, books, social networking, friends, etc. If you look at how most instructors are forced to teach firearm safety, it's a little bit of hands on training with the majority of the class being more of an information dump (lecture) with a 75 point test to see how much of that short-term memory information they remember. Most courses I have observed are still preaching from the books, with little student involvement. They show students firearms but they are not allowed to touch them. My question if you are doing this is how are students able to learn how to operate firearms if they are not allowed to place their hands on them and operate them with snap-caps? In addition to that, on the range day evaluation I see instructors still preaching and teaching instead of evaluating. If you have done your job, there should be no need to teach or preach on the range day. They either can handle a firearm safely or they cannot and it does not take all day field event to prove they can do this.

For those of you not holding a degree in education let me give you a short lesson on learning theories which is a theory of the way people learn. A learning theory that was introduced back in the early 1960's called Constructivism was about the student learning by doing. It was dismissed as ineffective back then because the person behind the theory, Siemour Papert, was simply ahead of his time. Actually Papert invisioned using a programming language called Logo to teach geometry in 1960 and by 1969 his dream became reality when he introduced the Logo software into the education system which btw is still being used today to teach geometry. Anyway to put it mildly, his learning  theory has proven to be correct. What stopped it from entering mainstream eduction systems? Cost.. Computers in that day were old and costly and no everyone had access to them so schools opted to stay with the old traditional teaching methods introduced by B.F. Skinner in the 1940's and that is how the current firearm education teaching system is still designed.

Fast forward to now and computers are everywhere and the traditional learning style used by the educational machine for all these years is  going by the wayside because Siemour Paper's 1960 learning theory is strongly coming back into the lime light along with other learning theories that were build on his theory by Howard Gardner and George Siemens.  Educators are starting to see that old traditional preaching style of education is actually a very ineffective method of teaching but as everyone knows the education system is slow to change.

With the implementation of the No Child Left Behind Act, teachers had to face the reality that the old way of teaching was ineffective, and they needed a better form of teaching and if you look at some cutting edge schools, you would be amazed with how students are now being taught and how well they are responding to the new form of teaching. Unfortunately we still have holdouts and the traditional firearm safety programs happen to be one of them. Until both the instructors and the management staff realize there are better ways of teaching besides lecture, there is going to be students forced to take some rather dry  firearm safety courses.

Many are questioning the online option and that they do not wish to sign them off. They feel they are not as safe as traditional classroom students. I for one will tell you that if you tell students precisely what is expected of them on the range day evaluation and what constitutes a go and no go situation well in advance of the test date, not only will students come prepared to handle the task, but in my own personal observations, they displayed a higher degree of safety than the traditional classroom students. The true key to the online course is providing the student with detailed information about what is expected of them on the range day and then when it comes time for the range day, instructors need to stop teaching and do what the military does; evaluate them. They either pass or fail but it is also up to the instructor to use some common judgement when it comes time for a go or no go.

I'll jump down off my soap box now..

[BOWHUNTER45]

how many freakin years have we used real guns in hunter ed.? has anyone ever been shot ? how can you teach someone the proper way to run a gun without using a real one ...They need to load - unload- run the action - use the safety and learn where to point it ....It seems every day they have an issue of some kind ...how are we going to stop all this sheet they keep coming up with...it is seriously going way to far !

[Bob33]

"They need to load - unload- run the action - use the safety and learn where to point it "

Which of those cannot be done with a gun that has a firing pin removed?

[ghosthunter]

The non functioning firearms have everything the live ones do except they have an orange stock, cost$1500 for a set and have no firing pins. It's nice to have a variety of firearms in the classroom but face it, no matter how many firearms you bring in, students really need to become familiar with their own guns; an action is an action. I.e. a semi auto shotgun is pretty close to a semi auto rifle and a pump is a pump. Plus there are so many videos online about how a the various firearm operate, you can honestly learn more about a firearm online than you ever could hope to learn in a class. Not to say we do not have some pretty knowledgeable instructors, but you can do a search on YouTube for your particular action type and figure out how it works outside the classroom.  I think this is also a good thing because it should eliminate the no-touchy touchy syndrome that I have seen in some courses, meaning the instructors did not want the students handling their firearms because they were afraid the students might harm them.

In regards to the online sign-ups; The state is starting to put more information in the hunting manuals and after a while people will know where to look. Personally I think stores should have a terminal at their counters that people could use to sign up for classes. That would make things easier.

In regards to course standardization; I was always able to kick out students that met the state requirements in 13 hours of class time. I actually heard horror stories  of courses running 25 and 30 hours? In my opinion that is not a class; that is a college course. Unless you hold a degree in education or you a degree in modern child and adult learning theories you would think that a 25 or 30 hour course is ok. However students of today are not the same as the students of yesterday. They are multi-taskers who get their information from the Internet, TV, radio, podcasts, school, books, social networking, friends, etc. If you look at how most instructors are forced to teach firearm safety, it's a little bit of hands on training with the majority of the class being more of an information dump (lecture) with a 75 point test to see how much of that short-term memory information they remember. Most courses I have observed are still preaching from the books, with little student involvement. They show students firearms but they are not allowed to touch them. My question if you are doing this is how are students able to learn how to operate firearms if they are not allowed to place their hands on them and operate them with snap-caps? In addition to that, on the range day evaluation I see instructors still preaching and teaching instead of evaluating. If you have done your job, there should be no need to teach or preach on the range day. They either can handle a firearm safely or they cannot and it does not take all day field event to prove they can do this.

For those of you not holding a degree in education let me give you a short lesson on learning theories which is a theory of the way people learn. A learning theory that was introduced back in the early 1960's called Constructivism was about the student learning by doing. It was dismissed as ineffective back then because the person behind the theory, Siemour Papert, was simply ahead of his time. Actually Papert invisioned using a programming language called Logo to teach geometry in 1960 and by 1969 his dream became reality when he introduced the Logo software into the education system which btw is still being used today to teach geometry. Anyway to put it mildly, his learning  theory has proven to be correct. What stopped it from entering mainstream eduction systems? Cost.. Computers in that day were old and costly and no everyone had access to them so schools opted to stay with the old traditional teaching methods introduced by B.F. Skinner in the 1940's and that is how the current firearm education teaching system is still designed.

Fast forward to now and computers are everywhere and the traditional learning style used by the educational machine for all these years is  going by the wayside because Siemour Paper's 1960 learning theory is strongly coming back into the lime light along with other learning theories that were build on his theory by Howard Gardner and George Siemens.  Educators are starting to see that old traditional preaching style of education is actually a very ineffective method of teaching but as everyone knows the education system is slow to change.

With the implementation of the No Child Left Behind Act, teachers had to face the reality that the old way of teaching was ineffective, and they needed a better form of teaching and if you look at some cutting edge schools, you would be amazed with how students are now being taught and how well they are responding to the new form of teaching. Unfortunately we still have holdouts and the traditional firearm safety programs happen to be one of them. Until both the instructors and the management staff realize there are better ways of teaching besides lecture, there is going to be students forced to take some rather dry  firearm safety courses.

Many are questioning the online option and that they do not wish to sign them off. They feel they are not as safe as traditional classroom students. I for one will tell you that if you tell students precisely what is expected of them on the range day evaluation and what constitutes a go and no go situation well in advance of the test date, not only will students come prepared to handle the task, but in my own personal observations, they displayed a higher degree of safety than the traditional classroom students. The true key to the online course is providing the student with detailed information about what is expected of them on the range day and then when it comes time for the range day, instructors need to stop teaching and do what the military does; evaluate them. They either pass or fail but it is also up to the instructor to use some common judgement when it comes time for a go or no go.

I'll jump down off my soap box now..

Wow

I sure have no teaching degree. And some chapters we teach still follow the book in my classes. But if we teach nothing else we teach gun handling and really the rest of it dosent cost lives. Every night of class, before and during we handle firearms. Evey firearm they can put their hands on. Not only Mossbergs. Every firearm on the table the student can handle if they want. After two classes the rifles go away. We teach at a shotgun range and range day will be shotguns. So we do skills with shoguns too. When they leave everyone of my classes with a pass they can load,unload and handle safely.

My friend does the internet reveiws after my class range days. I have seen student after student fail it because they could not even work the action a pump shotgun. They did not know where the saftey was, how to release the action. pointing guns in every direction.

One time we tried to run internet students through our skills with the tradtional students. It didnt work. Because the traditional students out handled the internet folks regardless of age.

[Special T]

HF you make a great point abotu the 3 ways of learning.  I could only say that the move to online test/courses is likely a move to reduce liability and the NEED for volunteers...

[Brownarola]

Of course nothing about that statement means I am ignorant on the subject.  You bring up Papert and the military in your text, yet you fail to mention the three different learning styles: visual, auditory, and kinesthetic.  You see in the Corps, when they teach instructors, they teach you to hit on all cylinders

These actually are not learning theories but are teaching methods and much of what is taught by the military originated from the Behaviorist B.F. Skinner. The military needed a quick way to train individuals in mass how to perform a certain skill. If you'll note this is how the new recruits were and are still being trained in basic training.  Remember the Army needed a quick was of cranking out a soldier who would do what they were told when told to do it and the behaviorist learning style seemed to be the most effective method at the time. However in today's age that is no longer the case since kids of yesterday are not the kids of today, teaching methods need to change to reflect the current time.

[ghosthunter]

Right on Sean.

Wait until some instructor some where fails a kid because he pointed a orange gun at someone. And the parent doesn't like it. I can here it now. "Its not a real gun, why did you fail my son"?

You can say whatever you want pointing a orange gun and pointing a real one are two different ponies. And sooner or later some one will challenge it.
Liabilities are still present they have just been shifted around with no net gain.

I have no problem with, class sizes,hours, any of that. But toy guns come on..

These kids grew up with orange guns. Take a walk down any toy store isle. Orange guns and guns with orange tips every where.

Someone posted that the students would have no idea they couldnt fire. Really ?? They are friggin orange.

[ghosthunter]

And for all you "that's how the do it in the Military" people.

They do not train 7 -8 years olds in the military.

If this is the way they want to go than Live Fire should go first.

[Rob]

Someone posted that the students would have no idea they couldnt fire. Really ?? They are friggin orange.

If you are referring to my comment earlier, you are misrepresenting me.  I said our students don't know the guns won't fire for the classes we teach TODAY.

Our guns are real guns, but have had the firing pins removed.  They look just like everyother gun.  In-fact when I started with our classes I did not know they were nonfunctional guns. 

If they say we have to use orange guns in class, then fine.  I don't have a problem with that.  For me, that would be a silly reason to get out of the program.  But if it is important to you, then you have to make that call for yourself.

[ghosthunter]

Someone posted that the students would have no idea they couldn't fire. Really ?? They are friggin orange.

If you are referring to my comment earlier, you are misrepresenting me.  I said our students don't know the guns won't fire for the classes we teach TODAY.

Our guns are real guns, but have had the firing pins removed.  They look just like everyother gun.  In-fact when I started with our classes I did not know they were nonfunctional guns. 

If they say we have to use orange guns in class, then fine.  I don't have a problem with that.  For me, that would be a silly reason to get out of the program.  But if it is important to you, then you have to make that call for yourself.

Being restricted to use only five different firearms for classes is too restrictive for the the type of classes I want to put on. I follow every directive up till now. But I will not cheapen the classes I put on with the use of orange guns. Those who wish too may do so. I am not one of those folks. I care too much about gun handling to be involved in a watered down version.
More variety equals better training. In my view this is a step backwards.