How many dives to be a PADI scuba instructor?

[diver 85]

Our middle child(this was in 1998)@ 19 YO moved to Roatan(we owned a house on the north side since 1994 just east of ARK @ the time) with 125+ dives & got his DMs in the 1st 2 weeks he was there----immediately starting DM'ing ie working for the dive shop he was certified thru... About 2 months later, he went 'next door' to Guanaja & got his instructors---so he had a about ~325 dives when he became an instructor......Saying this, when he moved off the island about 3 and a half years later, he had something over 3500 dives-- ie somewhat experienced.......

 

[Bob DBF]

Back in October the shop asked me to do a few AOW dives for a guy who had just that weekend completed the OW class. What's the rush? Well, this guy really wanted to fast track through the system. I advised against it, but he completed the AOW requirements and started on the Rescue Diver requirements. He was fascinated by the tech stuff I was doing and wanted to work toward that. We did the Dry Suit and Deep Dive specialties soon after that. He got in about 10 dry suit dives on his own and then started the TecReational Diver class with me. I spent much of today in the pool with him in our dry suits, and he is now surprisingly good with his frog kick, modified frog kick, modified flutter kick, back kick, and helicopter turn. By the end of this morning's pool session, he was swimming squares backwards around the deep end of the pool, making each turn with a helicopter turn. Next weekend we will do the open water dives for the TecReational Diver specialty.

At the end of that weekend, it will be not quite 4 months since he first got in the pool for his OW class. He will not quite have enough OW dives to begin working on the DM course. He is a competent and confident dry suit user. He knows his SAC rate and can make solid dive plans, including gas management decisions, for dives to 130 feet. He can hover in horizontal trim. As part of the TecReational Diver class we will go into advanced decompression theory and more advanced dive planning. I have seen more than a few divers with more than 100 dives who are not nearly as skilled and knowledgeable as he is.

The number of total dives one has can be very misleading.

I have no argument with that, however I see no reason to lower the dive requirement because one individual is extremely talented. Patience is a fine attribute for an instructor.

Without knowing anything about the subject, as is the norm on on an internet board, I think the following should increase the quality of dive professionals. There should be a progression of X number of dives (100 ?) after MSD rated (preferably in different areas and conditions), time under water (70 hrs), time diving at your certification level (1 year), and testing both written and practical showing you retained the prior information and skills before you to go from diver to DM. The same from DM to instructor, with an added requirement to DM 12 OW classes in the year (12 in 2 years in the frozen north).


This will also limit the DM's and Insturctors so that they might actually become professionals rather than hobbyists.



Bob
---------------------------------
I may be old, but I'm not dead yet.

 

[boulderjohn]

I have no argument with that, however I see no reason to lower the dive requirement because one individual is extremely talented. Patience is a fine attribute for an instructor.

Without knowing anything about the subject, as is the norm on on an internet board, I think the following should increase the quality of dive professionals. There should be a progression of X number of dives (100 ?) after MSD rated (preferably in different areas and conditions), time under water (70 hrs), time diving at your certification level (1 year), and testing both written and practical showing you retained the prior information and skills before you to go from diver to DM. The same from DM to instructor, with an added requirement to DM 12 OW classes in the year (12 in 2 years in the frozen north).

What you are describing is very much old school thinking in terms of educational philosophy. In modern, standards-based thinking, a person has reached the target level of performance when that person demonstrates the required skill level, regardless of the time it took.

A couple of years ago someone in a SB thread mentioned that she had accumulated 200 dives over a number of years in her career. Every one of them was from a cruise ship. Only a handful were deeper than 50-60 feet. The student I described earlier has a fraction of those dives, but I am quite sure he is far more competent at diving than she. Not only that, he is about to graduate with a teaching license, so he is trained in instructional theory. That should give him a real advantage should he choose to become an instructor.

Last year I worked with a student in the same class he took today. This person had many more dives than he did. I would say she was close to hopeless in the water. I have never been so baffled in my attempts to teach someone skills. She did not complete the class. She said she would practice on her own, and I never saw her again.

In modern education, you look at what the student can do and judge accordingly.

 

[TSandM]

What worries me a little bit is related to what a friend once told me about Fundies: "The class can make a 50 dive diver look like a 200 dive diver . . . but they are still a 50 dive diver.". One can master skills -- talented people do it very quickly. But the, for lack of a better term, diving "maturity" that you get from a lot of time underwater just doesn't come from anything but time. Experiencing a number of small problems and resolving them teaches poise and gives confidence. I think someone who intends to instruct should have enough dives that they have encountered some difficulties -- been caught in current, or gotten lost, or had equipment malfunctions, or dealt with a bad or scared buddy -- and have overcome them. God knows, teaching OW, you are going to encounter difficulties

 

[Jim Lapenta]

I'm guessing you'd have the same situation with a NAUI, SSI, SDI, SEI instructor of the same age. (Or any other agency that didn't exist way back then.)

If it was sei they would know. The first ow class lesson is a history of diving with a time line of when all the agencies came into being. When you're one of the originals you don't mind admitting when things happened. LA County was first over here in the US. Then came the ymca program with naui coming in shortly after. SEI instructors are proud of their ymca and LA County roots. So they would easily recognize the card and know what it was.

 

[boulderjohn]

If it was sei they would know. The first ow class lesson is a history of diving with a time line of when all the agencies came into being. When you're one of the originals you don't mind admitting when things happened. LA County was first over here in the US. Then came the ymca program with naui coming in shortly after. SEI instructors are proud of their ymca and LA County roots. So they would easily recognize the card and know what it was.

History is an interesting thing. I am a real student of history. Unfortunately, the history of an organization is often not all that much attuned to its present.

The United Church of Christ is, by most estimates, a pretty liberal church in comparison to others. What is its history? It is a direct descendant of Puritanism, with a history of burning witches and destroying entire villages if they did not conform to their views. Read its views today, and you will see nothing remotely like the strict theology of that Puritan past.

 

[RJP]

If it was sei they would know. The first ow class lesson is a history of diving with a time line of when all the agencies came into being. When you're one of the originals you don't mind admitting when things happened.

As my grandma used to say "That and 50 cents will get you a cup of coffee."

---------- Post added January 10th, 2015 at 11:29 PM ----------

SEI instructors are proud of their ymca and LA County roots.

Really? You'd never know that from the way it's never brought up, irrespective of topic of discussion.

:d

 

[dallaskincaid]

What worries me a little bit is related to what a friend once told me about Fundies: "The class can make a 50 dive diver look like a 200 dive diver . . . but they are still a 50 dive diver.". One can master skills -- talented people do it very quickly. But the, for lack of a better term, diving "maturity" that you get from a lot of time underwater just doesn't come from anything but time. Experiencing a number of small problems and resolving them teaches poise and gives confidence. I think someone who intends to instruct should have enough dives that they have encountered some difficulties -- been caught in current, or gotten lost, or had equipment malfunctions, or dealt with a bad or scared buddy -- and have overcome them. God knows, teaching OW, you are going to encounter difficulties

I agree with all of this.

 

[boulderjohn]

. Then came the ymca program with naui coming in shortly after. SEI instructors are proud of their ymca and LA County roots. So they would easily recognize the card and know what it was.

That pride requires creative history.

Here is a history of NAUI. It was written by Al Tilghman, who first directed the LA County program and then founded NAUI. There is barely any mention of the YMCA in it. It does talk about how the YMCA was unable to form a unified vision because each location was fiercely independent. It does talk about the fact that when the first agencies were looking for the right way to look to the future and find the right way to work with new students, they followed different paths. It says that NAUI made the mistake (their admission) of focusing on university classes. The YMCA made the mistake of focusing on local clubs. Neither approach worked. The winning approach was working with local dive shops.

Other than that, the YMCA is not mentioned.

 

[TMHeimer]

I have no argument with that, however I see no reason to lower the dive requirement because one individual is extremely talented. Patience is a fine attribute for an instructor.

Without knowing anything about the subject, as is the norm on on an internet board, I think the following should increase the quality of dive professionals. There should be a progression of X number of dives (100 ?) after MSD rated (preferably in different areas and conditions), time under water (70 hrs), time diving at your certification level (1 year), and testing both written and practical showing you retained the prior information and skills before you to go from diver to DM. The same from DM to instructor, with an added requirement to DM 12 OW classes in the year (12 in 2 years in the frozen north).


This will also limit the DM's and Insturctors so that they might actually become professionals rather than hobbyists.



Bob
---------------------------------
I may be old, but I'm not dead yet.

Problem with "preferably in different areas and conditions" is the person may not be able to do this for financial or other reasons. As I suggested, lots of experience in the place you are going to teach counts most to me.

Problem with even DMing 6 OW classes per year in the North is that this may depend on location and such things as how many classes are offered each year by the shop and how many DMs are on staff that all want them.