I Miss Teaching - Chris WiegmanSkip to main contentI Miss Teaching<br>Friday, 14 August, 2026 | 3 min read<br>Teaching
It’s been a very long time since I’ve formally taught in a classroom, almost 13 years, and I miss it.<br>Since then I’ve given plenty of conference talks, Meetup presentations and other more informal teaching, but it’s not the same as being in a classroom.<br>There’s something to be said about helping folks move forward in their lives, whether it’s a classroom, where I taught computer science, or an airplane cockpit, where I taught folks how to fly. For all the experiences I’ve had before or since, it is the teaching that was the most rewarding.<br>People often ask me why I quit flying for a living. The truth is that the fun part of flying was the teaching. The rest was honestly incredibly boring. Sure, I loved the travel, but that gets old after a while. Considering my first day as a professional pilot, as a flight instructor for SIU, was on September 11, 2001, I can’t say being around an airport was ever a fun part of the job. And let’s face it, no one really enjoys dealing with air travel today on any level.<br>What I miss about flying was teaching someone how to fly. More often than not the student is someone who dreamed of flying an airplane most of their lives. They, as the student, sit in the left seat, which is normally the captain’s seat on a passenger jet, and I, as the instructor, am in the right, co-pilot seat. Most importantly, from the moment we walk out to the plane to the moment we sign a logbook we both want to be there and we both take something away from it.<br>If we want to sight see from the plane we can do that. If we want to do more touch-and-gos, we can do that too and each and every turn, landing, takeoff and communication is geared towards making sure that student is that much more ready to meet their goal. When the time comes for their first solo or their checkride I might not be physically with my student, but my heart sure is. Their success is the point, and for every one, my nerves are as bad as theirs, as I can’t wait to hear (or see) the results.<br>In the classroom, it isn’t much different. From the first day through the final exam I love working with each and every student, especially at the moment when a complex topic “clicks” for them.<br>Whether in the classroom or in the cockpit, though, there’s nothing like seeing someone succeed at their own goals and knowing you had a part of that.<br>When I left flying, being a flight instructor wasn’t much of a career. To most of aviation, it is considered “time building” as the instructors are just there to log hours of their own for their big airline job. That wasn’t me. I always thought I would go back to it part-time, but life has never worked out that way.<br>I’m fortunate. I’ve been able to teach at the college level in two very different disciplines, aviation and computer science. Today, though, every time “back to school” is talked about on TV I remember those days and think maybe this will be the year I find myself teaching again. A guy can dream, right?
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