Saturday, September 27, 2008

Motorcycle Teaching? Maybe not.

So I had a long conversation with one of the "Old Dog" teachers who would be my boss if I decided to move forward with becoming a motorcycle instructor.  Talk about a bubble pop.  This isn't teaching the way I envisioned it.  Like most bureaucracies, the federal program which administers the motorcycle riding certification is riddled with stupidity.  Instructors are not called instructors, they're called "Riding Coaches" (and I think they need to look up the word 'coach' because even a coach teaches every once in a while).  Essentially, I'd be scripted, time limited, unable to really spend more than a minute or two helping someone who seemed to be stuck or not getting it.  It must be frustrating for all involved including the student.

In addition, they want me to spend a bunch of my own time observing the other instructors to learn how to instruct because when they send you to state-run certification "class", you're expected to know everything already and if you don't pass, it looks really bad for the school that sent you to be certified and politically jeopardizes their ability to get other coaches into these sporadic certification sessions in the future.

So I'm doing the math.  The pay is $700 per weekend, or $300 if you only do a Sat or a Sun.  Each day is 11 hours.  So a full weekend (22 hours) is $31.82 per hour gross and a single weekend day is $27.27 per hour gross.  Sounds like a lot of money, but not when you make $100K per year.  Plus, you must include all the unpaid hours I have to put in to even get certified.  Contrast that with my ability to barter my time with a client/friend for work at $75/hr towards cruises and that seems like a much more effective use of my weekend.

To summarize, I wanted to do this because I love teaching and would love to make some extra money.  It's clear now that the job involves very little teaching and the money isn't all that great.  Plus here's the clincher.  If I make a mistake during class and one of my instructions causes an accident during the training, I'm personally liable.  Did you all catch that?  I just about fell out of my chair when I heard that.  I have a lot at stake to risk that some sue-happy nimrod, "misunderstands" something I said and drives into a wall.

So I'm strongly considering backing down from being an instructor.  The negatives potentially outweigh the positives.  Plus if I really do have weekends available, I need to start focusing on learning to program the iPhone.  The hourly pay for that work can be in the $1,000's (!).

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