I thought I would add more advice.
1. When I had AOW students (I almost only teach technical diving now), I would sit down with them and listen to their plans and goals. I would assess their skills carefully on the first dive. I would then make sure the rest of the class was designed to get them as far as possible on the path to diving excellence. If you can find an experienced instructor with that approach, take the class as soon as you can.
2. Choose your dives carefully while consulting with your instructor. One of my AOW dives in Cozumel was Fish ID, which a lot of people mock. For me, it was one of the most valuable training dives I ever had. The instructor was very thorough, and I grew to understand not only the names of fishes, but I learned how they behave and interrelate. For example, when I later saw a big midnight parrotfish being followed by a small trunk fish, I had an idea what was happening and went in for a closer look. Sure enough, the midnight parrot was biting off big chunks of coral, creating a floating cloud of debris with each bite, and when it moved away, the trunk fish would come in, blow away the light dust, and pick off the leftovers. My knowledge made dives much more interesting. It also made them memorable. Science tells us that if you can name something you see, you will remember it much better.
If you asked me teach the Fish ID dive in my home area of Colorado/New Mexico, I would refuse. There is no point in identifying one crawdad after another.
3. On the other hand, there can be a benefit to doing a dive that does not teach too much during the dive itself. Here in Colorado, there is no point in doing a number of the common dives--like boat diving, drift diving, and videography (videos of silt???). One of the least valuable dives as a dive is altitude. There is nothing to do on the dive itself--nothing except make adjustments if you are using dive tables, which you aren't. All the instruction is academic and completed on land. I liked to teach it as part of AOW, though. I went way beyond the course in the academic instruction, and then used the dive itself as a wild card where I could focus on whatever skills the diver needed most.