Divemaster Candidate Teaching Advanced Dive... Acceptable and Normal?

[ppo2_diver]

Wreck dives need to be supervised by the instructor.

 

[Thalassamania]

When you sign up with me to teach you, I teach you. End of story.

 

[japan-diver]

When you sign up and pay for instruction from an instructor thats what you should get not a tag along with another student. The reason that this has become standard practice is that students let the dive shops get away with it. You paid the instructor to teach you that is not what is happening. If he can not preform the dives he should make arrangements for another instructor to do the dives not another student. There are limited exercises that can be viewed from the surface in navigation but that requires the instructor to be watching the divers not running another class under the water 100 yards away.
Demand what you paid for- instruction from a certified instructor not another student. Even when one of our instructor candidates is teaching a course there is a certified instructor right there making sure things are done right- normally two instructors as the candidate is getting graded and that requires a CD and IT to be present. Your advanced course should make you a better diver in all aspects if it didn't/doesn't you are getting ripped off. If your dives are unsupervised dives with another student you got ripped off demand a refund.

Just because something is standard practice doesn't make it right.

 

[Colliam7]

The reason the LDS owner/instructor isn't doing more of the AOW dives himself is because he's running the Open Water course he's also offering this weekend. … Maybe I'm expecting too much out of my AOW course, but I kind of get the feeling that the shop owner offering this course sees his role as making sure I can do the basic skills required to pass the course rather than actually teaching me new skills.

For all my AOW checkouts I was paired with a DM candidate. The Instructor stayed above on the NAV dive and watched bubble trails, but came along for the Peak Buoyancy, Deep, Night and was on the platform for the lift bag portion of Search and recovery, during our actual searches, he stayed on shore and watched us from above.

There is a matter of meeting standards, and there is a matter of what an instructor believes is the best way to help the students learn. Your description of the situation does not suggest a failure to meet standards. In fact (and some would say, unfortunately) PADI encourages multi-level training, which is what it sounds like the instructor/owner may be doing – running an OW course, and indirectly supervising some of the AOW dives that do not require him to be directly (i.e. in the water) supervising. Does it work? Well, a lot of AOW classes are run this way. (Which is like a salesman saying, 'We sell a lot of these.', when asked about the quality of a product.)

When you sign up with me to teach you, I teach you.

When you sign up and pay for instruction from an instructor thats what you should get not a tag along with another student.

Personally, I lean toward the views of Thal and japan-diver on this one. You are paying to learn (and for a teacher to facilitate that learning), not merely to have someone check a box that says you met a requirement. You should share your concern with the AOW instructor.

I have seen the nav portion done several ways. With two students in an AOW class, I have seen an instructor accompany the students, underwater, on the nav dives, trailing nearby and checking their compass headings, kick cycles, teamwork, etc. - not leading the dive, but checking their performance in order to provide feedback (and mid-course correction in one case). I have also seen a scenario in a larger AOW class (6 students), where the instructor had 2 DMCs in the water for the uw nav portion, who served as buddies for two divers, one certified assistant in the water (me) checking on the progress of the four buddy pairs, and the instructor on the shore (but ready to immediately enter the water if needed) tracking their bubbles. It worked, but one of the DMCs did less than a stellar job as a buddy, and at one point he (the instructor) lost track of the bubble trail for the pair that included the particular DMC, which caused some anxiety, to say the least. When I did my AOW, there were 2 CAs (DMs in that case) in the water, the instructor was on shore watching bubbles, and my buddy and I were on our own during the square nav dive.

 

[JSharp13]

I don't see any problem with this. I considered the underwater portion of nav a kind of "final exam". You should do all the learning topside in classroom, reading the book, and then in brief and debrief. If, in your underwater portion, you get where you were suppose to get, then you passed your test. If you had any problems on the way, you should bring them up in debrief and the instructor can talk you through those issues.

 

[String]

Nav in a shallow bay is often easier to assess from out of the water if you have them towing an SMB to see the patterns and where they end up.

 

[jviehe]

I thought the point of "the AOW course (and any other course for that matter)" was to provide an income source for the shops. That doesn't mean you shouldn't get something useful in return. But don't get too caught up in what's correct, proper, or even "acceptable". Welcome to the wild, wacky world of self-regulated industry, and non-standard standards. I'm a big fan of standards organizations like ANSI, DIN, and ISO; and of the idea of standards in general. I think some of those organizations even have some standards concerning dive training. But that's over in Europe; this here is the good ol' US of A! We don't want the government messing around in our business, so don't go making waves.

Seriously, diving is a great way to learn about personal responsibility. Even though you are paying somebody to teach you something, ultimately you are responsible for your own experience. If you have concerns, take them up with the course provider. I think you did a good thing by asking about it here. It doesn't sound out of the ordinary to me, but whether it's acceptable is up to you. Good luck.

The point of the AOW course is to experience different kinds of diving under instructor supervision (direct or indirect). Yes, its perfectly normal for the instructor to indirectly supervise advanced dives, and have DMs do the direct supervision or even let the diver do it on their own.

PADI standards state that a instructor must directly supervise (in the water with the student) any dive deeper than 60ft unless the divers have completed the Deep Adventure Dive. Anything else is indirect supervision except dry suit, night, wreck, which an instructor or a certified assistant must directly supervise.

 

[Mark Duddridge]

You know the other thing too is that, at least with my instructor, they may not dive outside of the required deep and night dives with the class for AOW because they want you to be independent. In my instructor's own words, "you guys are certified divers now, you shouldn't need me there with you" regarding the dives outside of deep & night. Honestly, he's right. If you're taking AOW, you're obviously an OW diver, and a nav dive say to 30 feet or whatever should be well within the limits of your training.

Sure, you're paying for a class, so of course you want to get your money's worth out of it....but isn't that what's happening when the instructor is there to brief you, debrief you after the dive, offer feedback, and before you even went to the beach you had classroom time and lectures?

We won't have had any class time. He gave me the course book and told me to do the readings and knowledge reviews. His only involvement will be whatever happens at the lake.

 

[Mark Duddridge]

When you sign up with me to teach you, I teach you. End of story.

Any chance you're looking for any students in the Manitoba, Canada area

 

[b1gcountry]

We won't have had any class time. He gave me the course book and told me to do the readings and knowledge reviews. His only involvement will be whatever happens at the lake.

Urrrghh!