Reg Braithwaite
Contributor
I am a Dive Master through NAUI. I am recently in the process of helping an Instructor with an Open Water class. I was asked to teach the NAUI Dive Tables and so I did. But at the end of the lesson I was pulled aside and was told if I am going to teach dive tables, I need to teach every thing, so I had asked what it was that I missed? The instructor explained that I need to talk about the flying aspect toward diving.
When you are assisting an instructor, you teach what they want you to teach, when they want it taught, how they want you to teach it. It is their call, so you simply say "thanks," and thereafter whenever assisting that instructor, you teach things the way they want it taught.
It may well be that when you are an instructor you will want to teach things in a different order, you may want to emphasize some things that the other instructor did not think were important, or skip over some things (s)he wanted you to teach.
This is not wrong. A curriculum is an integrated thing, all the pieces fit together a certain way. You may decide that you can teach students the tables without mentioning flying, but you will get to that on another day. Such a system could also work well. But when you mix the things up, there is trouble. You might put that discussion off until the students are more advanced, but the instructor you are teaching thinks they have already learned it after you presented tables, so if you and that instructor are sharing the teaching duties, students might "graduate" without all of the necessary components of their education.
I guess what I am saying is that when you are assisting someone else, let them drive, that's best for everyone, even if you disagree to a certain point, let it slide.