Is anyone familiar with SDI Supervised Diving certification?

[Marie13]

My dive trainer does not tell me what I have accomplished nor does she tell me the skills I need to be complete. Is this common practice among dive organizations and trainers?

Did you ask?

 

[VikingDives]

My dive trainer does not tell me what I have accomplished nor does she tell me the skills I need to be complete. Is this common practice among dive organizations and trainers?

You might want to sit down with her and ask. To answer your question, no I don't think it's common.

You can also look at the Standards and Procedures for your course on the website, that will show the minimums that have to be taught. That being said, your instructor can teach and require more than what is in the standards.

For example, if I was your instructor, you wouldn't move to open water until you could hold a horizontal hover in confined water. That's not a course standard, it's mine.

 

[Jim Lapenta]

My dive trainer does not tell me what I have accomplished nor does she tell me the skills I need to be complete. Is this common practice among dive organizations and trainers?

No, it's not. My students know from day one what I expect from them at the beginning and end of every session. There is a checklist of skills that the instructor needs to verify. There is some flexibility in when those can be checked off. For example, I have a student that is having issues with something that the list says needs to occur in session 2. They get through it, but with difficulty. Rather than stay on that and add to them getting frustrated, we move to the next item and come back to the troublesome one in the next session. The confidence and comfort they gain from completing another skills successfully 99.9% of the time results in the troublesome skill turning into a non-issue. They get through it and do it like a champ. To make sure though, no skill is done once. All basic skills are repeated multiple times in every session. Other skills like BC off and on at depth is done maybe 3 or 4 times.

 

[Jim Lapenta]

You might want to sit down with her and ask. To answer your question, no I don't think it's common.

You can also look at the Standards and Procedures for your course on the website, that will show the minimums that have to be taught. That being said, your instructor can teach and require more than what is in the standards.

For example, if I was your instructor, you wouldn't move to open water until you could hold a horizontal hover in confined water. That's not a course standard, it's mine.

Same here. And I make sure that they don't go to open water unless I'm sure they can assist me if I have a problem. In the SDI Open Water class I teach, the same rescue skills I taught as a YMCA and then SEI instructor are covered.

 

[VikingDives]

My dive trainer does not tell me what I have accomplished nor does she tell me the skills I need to be complete. Is this common practice among dive organizations and trainers?

You should take a look at @Jim Lapenta 's first book. It will give you a good idea of what you don't know, but should. I borrowed liberally from his way of teaching open water when I started teaching.

Jim's book is the reason I teach rescue skills in my classes now.