Teaching at a school that runs on paper

Start where nobody has to approve anything

Your records. Endorsements you've signed, documents, the trail you're personally responsible for keeping. An unpublished profile gives you all of it with no public listing at all, which means nothing to explain at the Monday meeting. In the US, your 61.189 endorsement records are a three-year personal obligation no employer can hold for you. In Canada, your recommendation history is the currency your class upgrades and renewals are bought with, and the school's files stay the school's when you leave. Either way: your signature, your liability, your copies, kept somewhere that doesn't depend on your employment.

List yourself when you're ready

Publish your profile and put the school's name on it as plain text: "Flies out of" whatever the sign on the hangar says. The school doesn't need an account for that, or even to know what a browser is. If they ever do claim a page here, a real link replaces your text automatically and you appear on their page.

Sessions the school bills can be marked "school rates, pay at the school"; your own work keeps your own rates. Students book either kind the same way, and you can require your confirmation on anything you want a look at first.

The front-desk handoff

The availability page mints a read-only calendar link of your bookings. Hand it to whoever runs the desk: it opens in Google Calendar, Outlook, or a browser tab, and your online bookings appear alongside the whiteboard without anyone re-typing them. You can also have each booking notification copied to a school email address. Both of these are one-way by design; nothing about the school's paper system leaks back the other way, and you can replace the link any time.

Your own students on the side

Your listing is yours, and students who find you through it are yours: your rates, your invoices if you want them, card payment if you turn it on. One US note that surprises people: for your own side students, TSA considers you the flight training provider, separate from the school, with your own citizenship record duties. The documents page has a purpose-built record for that. In Canada, if your side work is training toward a licence, the Pilot Training Record duty follows you personally; the independent guide has the details.

If the school comes around

Send whoever owns the place to the schools page. The day they claim theirs, your listing links to it, you appear on it, and their desk can start confirming requests with one click instead of a phone call. Until then, everything above works without them.