Instructors - Agencies Split from overweight

[Walter]

Some people are always going to freeze and scream when confronted with a deadly situation, I expect it would be equally hard for them to remain calm when they are sinking in the water and can't breathe.

That's why we teach them what isn't a deadly situation and how to keep them from becoming deadly situations. If they are sinking in the water and can't breathe, they have screwed up big time. OTOH, there's no reason this should be a deadly situation, screwing up doesn't have to be the end. Solve your problems. Turning on your air will usually fix the problem. You can reach your valve, can't you? If you have no air or a faulty regulator that isn't delivering air, your buddy should be right there. No buddy? Dump your lead. Very negative rig? Dump the rig. I can come out of mine in less than a second.

The key to preventing panic is to feel in control of your situation. If you are in control, you are not afraid. If you are not afraid, you will not panic.

 

[Meister481]

I was looking at IANTD standards a few days ago, pretty tough on instructors. Their water skills must be top notch and be about as comfortable in the water as a person can get. I would think this type of boot camp style skills assessment would be great to ensure that an instructor can handle themselves plus their students. A high experience level would be almost a certainty.

Once again we come back to instructors' teaching technique. It's always going to be up to the CD to make an appropriate decision, same as the instructor makes a similar decision to allow a student to get his learners permit. The person who signs their name and writes his number on the pic is the person guaranteeing proficiency, not the standard.

No standards change will prevent every accident.
Standards are in place to set a Bare *** Minimum of performance.
In the end, Dive professionals teach diving, not the standards.

As long as there is an instructor willing to give the bare minimum to his/her students, this thread will continue to grow. I hear so much about how scuba would die if boot camp style classes were the norm, I can see how many would shy away. Maybe that's a good thing, our coral reefs are the ones taking the damage. It's the same with advanced classes, I've seen the face plant smears in the clay of Ginnie and Peacock.

Sooner or later you have to go back to personal responsibility. It's up to the student to be prepared for class. Once you get your plastic card and gear YOU are the person responsible to make it happen. If YOU failed to learn the basic principles of diving because YOU wanted to flap your gums during confined water session, so be it. It just sucks that someone else will take the heat because they trained YOU and YOU were a schmuck. (Generalization!: This has to bearing on this accident, there's not enough info for complete analysis.)

That article in dive training magazine about personal responsibility was a great read, I hope everyone here takes a gander at it. If everyone in the industry were willing to accept nothing but adequacy, that would be a start, but the unscrupulous are the ones who set the stage for disappointment. If everyone did as they should, this thread would have been over with in 2 pages.

http://www.dtmag.com/05-07-Editorial.shtml

I talk to our shop owner weekly about switching over to a different agency, but the money machine that is at the helm of diving opens too many doors for referrals and such.

BTW: I just checked the 2006 manual OW dive standards and it never says anything about kneeling as a performance requirement in OW Dives 1-4. Maybe having the students kneeling too much is the problem, not the standards.

 

[Ronmedic]

You went through all of those? (YMCA doesn't have an ITC nor an IDC)

I did not go through the YMCA program but was YMCA trained 30 years ago, The instructor knew even less about teaching then, the instructors were the guys who wrote the book on diving in general, they were not internet divers. The whole point to the post is agencies do not in general teach instructor candidates anything about the mentality of an adult learner, who learn by doing, they focus more on delivery of skills presentations. One main focus lately is to dumb down curriculae to the point of it reads like a comic book (SSI). Stop selling scuba courses like a big mac charge what they should be charged and pay the instructors enough to meet their expenses

As far as being overweight and diving not being a factor. My father taught for New England Divers, which was the first SCUBA store franchise nationwide, with its HQ in Beverly Mass, the Instructor who trained my father, weighed 400lbs. He was the best instructor by far. My father was 150lbs soaking wet until the day he died, the 400lb guy is still alive and diving, albeit he weighs 245 now. All agencies are looking at are numbers. The standards that they all must adhere to for recreational training is set forth by the RSTC, which is the committee comprised of represenatives from all the training agencies, they all have voting priviledges and all have a say in the requirements for recreational scuba training. It doesn't mean they are not biased

I myself have been diving since the age of 8, whether it was legal or not my father taught me to dive. I have 7000 dives in many varied situations over the past 32 years, I would personally as well as professionally rather see someone who has actually dived some complex and stressfull dives, be my instructor. With operations and standards of agencies only requiring 100 dives to be an instructor, we will always have sub standard instructors due to a lack of experience with complex dives. I have a ton of stories to pull from my dive locker, does it make me a better instructor, yes because I can give real world experience to my students and thoroughly explain and show a student why they need to perform a skill without thinking. How many instructors that Ocean Divers or Hall's, have experienced zero visibility? Or have cold water dive experience? Needless to say, in my opinion if you dumb down the requirements for instructor then you end up with dumb divers

 

[MikeFerrara]

I was looking at IANTD standards a few days ago, pretty tough on instructors. Their water skills must be top notch and be about as comfortable in the water as a person can get. I would think this type of boot camp style skills assessment would be great to ensure that an instructor can handle themselves plus their students. A high experience level would be almost a certainty.

I was an IANTD instructor and there are a lot of things that I like about their standards. I was fortunate to have an instructor trainer who intended that my training and testing be thorough with the goal of making the training that I provided others be fun and safe.

It wan't at all like boot camp though. My son is a Marine so I've heard quite a bit about boot camp. My IANTD "instructor trainer" is a nice enough sort who is fun to dive with and fun to hang out with. He was very clear about what was expected and very helpful in learning to acheive what was expected. Still, I think it's important to note that he wold not neglect the seriousness of an instructors responsibilities or the importance of their abilities for the sake of pumping a bunch of feel good sunshine up their butt.

I was a PADI instructor before this but my IANTD instructor course was a real turning point in my teaching and all my students and I benefited from it.

BTW: I just checked the 2006 manual OW dive standards and it never says anything about kneeling as a performance requirement in OW Dives 1-4. Maybe having the students kneeling too much is the problem, not the standards.

The standards don't say anything about kneeling or not kneeling. It isn't required but neither is it forbidden. It's more of a tradition. Where does that tradition come from? To find out, watch the PADI video, DVD, look at the pictures in the text, take some PADI training (including DM and instructor training) and you will see that it's all kneeling. Even the DSAT tech course material is ladden with kneeling divers and there is certainly no reason or excuse for kneweling at this level. Whether or not it's what the standards require, it's how divers and instructors are taught and tested! Why wouldn't they be kneeling?

 

[Mako Mark]

Teaching her the physical skills was easy but there was just something about lakes and oceans that she was afraid of and I didn't know how to help her with that. I would never expect her to panic in a pool but just floating on the surface in OW you could say "boo" to her and I'll bet she would crawl right out of her skin.
.

This is my experience of untrainable divers also.

I can only think of three I have had out of thousands of students trained, and all of them were taking up diving to get over a water phobia/siblings drowning etc without telling me. It nearly killed two of them and the third nearly killed me.

Teaching the skills of diving is easy, the rest is all in the head.

 

[Meister481]

Still, I think it's important to note that he would not neglect the seriousness of an instructors responsibilities or the importance of their abilities for the sake of pumping a bunch of feel good sunshine up their butt.

I was a PADI instructor before this but my IANTD instructor course was a real turning point in my teaching and all my students and I benefited from it.


The standards don't say anything about kneeling or not kneeling. It isn't required but neither is it forbidden. It's more of a tradition. Where does that tradition come from? To find out, watch the PADI video, DVD, look at the pictures in the text, take some PADI training (including DM and instructor training) and you will see that it's all kneeling. Even the DSAT tech course material is ladden with kneeling divers and there is certainly no reason or excuse for kneweling at this level. Whether or not it's what the standards require, it's how divers and instructors are taught and tested! Why wouldn't they be kneeling?

Oh, I'm well aware of how things are done, my point was that it doesn't have to be that way.

I'm a charter member of the 1-800-PAY-PADI regime, it's unfortunately necessary until I complete my IANTD training.

 

[Thalassamania]

For you guys dogpiling on me, I'm asking the question because I am not very experienced. My hunch was that some people will never be able to be trained properly. If I knew this as a fact I would just state that instead of asking.

Now, the case may not be that it's impossible for some people to learn, but that it would take more time and effort than they are willing to expend?

Here's the calculus of diving instruction as I see it:

1. Hundereds of people have died while receiving instruction in courses that ran 40 hours and less and the number of students with otic barotrauma during a course severe enough to require medical care is huge.
2. Thousands of peole who received instruction in courses that ran 40 hour and less have died while diving, and the number of such divers with otic barotrauma severe enough to require medical care is immense.
3. Zero people have died while receiving instruction in a Scripps model course that ran a minimum of 100 hours and the number of students with otic barotrauma during a course severe enough to require medical care is less that 30.
4. Zero people who received instruction in a Scripps model course that ran a minimum of 100 hours have died while diving, and the number of such divers with otic barotrauma severe enough to require medical care is less than 30.

These facts are undeniable.

My conclusion is that 40 hours of training (or less) is inadequate, measured either by fatalities or occurrence rate of otic barotrauma and that 100 hours of training performed in a prescribed manner is some amount more training than that required to minimize diving fatalities and yet is slightly inadequate to prevent diving injury as measured by the occurrence rate of otic barotrauma.

Do not ask me to prove the data to you, I state that as fact. If you have any evidence to contradict the data I welcome it. If you have an alternate hypothesis that explains the data, I welcome that too.

 

[Sideband]

Ok. But lets make those numbers mean something. How many people total have taken instruction in a Scripps model course and how many people total have taken a regular 40 hour course?
Just this minute I decided to teach my own 10 minute scuba course. So far I have 0 injuries of any kind and 0 deaths. I've not even had a student catch a cold or have trouble equalizing their ears. Without compairing relevant information my 10 minute course is far superior.

 

[Thalassamania]

Ok. But lets make those numbers mean something. How many people total have taken instruction in a Scripps model course and how many people total have taken a regular 40 hour course?
Just this minute I decided to teach my own 10 minute scuba course. So far I have 0 injuries of any kind and 0 deaths. I've not even had a student catch a cold or have trouble equalizing their ears. Without compairing relevant information my 10 minute course is far superior.

Fair question, but it's been asked and answered on SB before.

 

[Sideband]

so we are talking 20,000 divers trained vs millions of divers trained and 500,000 dives vs 100,000,000 or more dives? That kind of skews any relevance.