Start With a Mission: Redesigned Training Syllabi for Your School
Our redesigned starter catalog gives schools 33 course variants with deliberate lesson progressions, preparation, references and room for local instruction.
The first lesson should give a new student something meaningful to do, remember and build on. A useful syllabus then connects that experience to the next one, introducing skills in a deliberate order and returning to them with a clear purpose.
We have redesigned the Training starter catalog with that approach. Schools now have 33 starter variants across 20 ACS publications to use as a foundation for their own courses. Each starter offers a teaching progression with lesson missions, preparation, references and purposeful review.
One example: a private airplane student's first steps
The private single-engine land airplane starter contains five stages and 35 lessons. Its opening lesson begins with flight and a light ground briefing: 15 minutes of briefing, 45 minutes of activity and a 15-minute debrief in the sample plan.
Those are planning amounts for the school to adapt. The point is to give the student an early flight experience supported by the ground instruction they need for that mission. Later lessons build foundations, introduce abnormal situations and revisit earlier skills as the student's responsibilities grow.
Ground preparation is placed where it supports the learning sequence. Milestones and prerequisite relationships help instructors see how one lesson prepares a student for later work, while deliberate review gives practice a defined place in the course.
More useful detail inside each lesson
The revised starters go beyond a list of headings. Lesson content includes objectives, preparation, instructor and student actions, completion expectations and relevant reading references. FAA ACS tasks connect the lesson back to the applicable standard, and separate school exercises provide room for foundational work and instructional milestones.
References identify the relevant publication and topic so instructors can review the source and give students purposeful preparation. Course variants account for their different audiences and aircraft categories or classes; your school still checks that the selected starter fits its students, aircraft and instruction.
This gives a curriculum lead something concrete to discuss with the teaching team: whether the sequence works locally, what students should arrive knowing and how the instructor will evaluate the work.
Make it your school's course
- Choose the appropriate starter. Review its intended audience and the assumptions behind its progression.
- Apply it to a school draft. Examine the stages, lessons, exercises and task coverage before making it available to students.
- Adapt and publish when ready. Add your school's instructional choices, then publish the reviewed revision for enrollment.
Applying a starter creates a school copy to review and customize. This catalog update does not replace an existing school syllabus or move enrolled students onto a new revision. It works with the published plans and student-history tools already in Training.
Starters support school-led Part 61 instruction. They are not FAA-approved curricula or automatic endorsements, and instructors remain responsible for determining how the plan fits each student. Planning times do not certify training credit or experience requirements.
Explore the complete product-update series for more of the latest school tools.
Give your curriculum team a head start
Starter syllabi are part of Training for authorized schools with active Pro access. Create your school account, or sign in as your school administrator to explore Pro and its early-bird list. Bring your instructors into the review and turn a useful starting point into a course your team can teach with confidence.