Expelled PADI instructor?

[OldNSalty]

H2 is a program set up to bring in workers on a temp bases from outside the US to fill critical shortages (in theory). You have 2 types, farmers and non-farmers. The companies say they can't get workers to do a certain job so they need the program, US workers say "the companies can't get US employees to work for low wages so they want to bring in overseas staff."
There are many issues with the program. I was just surprised it would be used to bring in SCUBA instructors, not exactly the high paying/high tech jobs that I was more familiar with.
I am lucky in that the type of work I do can't be done by H2 workers.

 

[Scubagolf]

I wonder how many people who know expelled instructors are on the annual 200/300 lists, or know people on both lists.

I know people in those lists every year, and I know people on the expelled/suspended lists every year. Hell, I taught at a place where as I discovered later one third of the 25 instrcutors were on QA suspensions at any given time. They were still teaching classroom, doing pool sessions, and dives 1,2, and 4. And someone not suspended/expelled would sweep in for dive 5.

The shop in general was turning out over 5k OW students a year though.

It is far easier to get expelled from PADI than from other agencies because of the nature of the PADI "Membership" in which a PADI member is a member of the training agency in the same way a gym goer is a "member" of the gym.

As in, not really a member just someone paying to play.

How is it different for instructors in other agencies? Isn't pay to play pretty much how it is?

 

[Centrals]

It occurs to me that all those expelled in Philippines do not have Filipino sounding names!! And interestingly most of them who got the boot in Cebu have Korean sounding names!

 

[KenGordon]

Agencies have different policies. For example, PADI, SSI (GUE?) and some others do not allow an instructor to arbitrarily add material to the course and then test students (and possibly fail them) based on that material. PADI's philosophy is that THEY decide what needs to be taught, not the instructor.

Other agencies (NAUI, SEI, BSAC, CMAS for example) give their instructors a VERY long leash and don't police what is being taught very well, if at all.

R..

I am sure your point stands, but in the case of BSAC it insists that instructors teach to the manual. Below is from the introduction to the Instructor's Manual.

"The information contained in this Manual defines the scope and depth of knowledge, skills and experience required for each BSAC diver grade. In order to maintain a consistency of application, no additions to, or deletions from the scope and depth of these training and experience requirements are permitted.
This does not however imply a dogmatic adherence to the detail of individual techniques or presentational styles. Given the infinite variety of diving conditions, what is required are 'thinking instructors' who adapt the training, where required, to ensure that it is appropriate to the actual conditions under which the trainees will normally dive. The detail provided in these notes is there to ensure that, in adapting techniques, instructors can maintain the right scope and depth of training."

 

[boulderjohn]

Just to clarify, PADI instructors are allowed to add material to the course. In fact, in past discussions about this, people have correctly trotted out a copy of an old statement from CEO and President Drew Richardson strongly advocating that they do so. What is prohibited is making passing some sort of test on that additional material a requirement for passing the course. Instructors routinely "flesh out" the curriculum with such materials, teaching them until students obviously understand them without a need for a formal test. In the shop with which I used to teach, the Course Director had instructors make a list of additional topics they covered so we could have a set of additional topics that would make our instruction more consistent from one instructor to another.

 

[Hawkwood]

With the "revised" course, a lot of what we used to add, or flesh out, is now covered.

 

[boulderjohn]

With the "revised" course, a lot of what we used to add, or flesh out, is now covered.

Yes, it is. I don't know the degree to which these conversations impacted those changes, but several PADI instructors who participate on ScubaBoard argued with PADI for their inclusion, both in the drafting of the aforementioned article and while negotiating the creation of distinctive specialties that were designed to teach the missing material in a formal and approved way.

 

[Subcooled]

My OW water instructor actually did get expelled from PADI.
It had nothing to do with his instructing, he was great.
He got expelled because he had a fling with one of his female DM candidates and she had remorse over it. She claimed sexual harassment and/or date rape/ something of the sort.
That got him booted.

Is that a fact? Was the case tried in a court or does PADI act based on hearsay?

I am shocked, time after time, how human sexuality is such a huge problem outside europe, while distributing guns to school children is ok. These things happen, unfortunately, but the law states the punishment, pay the fines or serve the time, and be done? If someone is molesting children (while not beeing underaged themselves) then there's a good reason to keep a close eye on them, but date rapes? Should such claimed event be punishable by life in unemployment?

 

[boulderjohn]

Is that a fact? Was the case tried in a court or does PADI act based on hearsay?

Good question. Remember that you are hearing one side of the story.

There is a court case going on right now involving a PADI instructor who was expelled after the death of a student. There was a HUGE public debate about PADI's decision in which people were claiming that the expulsion was without merit because the instructor did not violate a single standard. The debate raged on ScubaBoard during the last year. PADI does not normally release information about the expulsions, but it was finally forced to do so. It turns out the violations of standards were enormous--nearly unthinkable.

I ran into a similar problem myself when I was a school district administrator and learned that an employee was doing things that could lead to termination. I began the proper procedures for investigating the issue, a procedure that could be the first step in termination. As the administrator, I was forbidden to talk about it. The employee, on the other hand, was totally free to spout her version of things to anyone who would listen. As a result, I became the big, bad jerk who was harassing this poor defenseless woman. Even after she left the district before she could be fired, no one knew the truth of what she was doing.

 

[Subcooled]

It is a well known issue that an investigator gets sometimes unjustly labeled as the bad guy. Sorry to hear that you had to go through that.

In any case, I whish that the OP engages in a frank discussion and makes his own decision. And I believe that the discussion is warranted.