MSDT Prep Questions

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I wish i would have found this board a few weeks before signing up for the school. Not saying it would have made me choose a different school but would have given me a lot more questions to ask my self and the school before pulling the trigger. But I can still learn from from the advice and knowledge that is being given.
Again thanks for every bit of it.
Time to go pack.
 
I wish i would have found this board a few weeks before signing up for the school. Not saying it would have made me choose a different school but would have given me a lot more questions to ask my self and the school before pulling the trigger. But I can still learn from from the advice and knowledge that is being given.
Again thanks for every bit of it.
Time to go pack.
Good luck :thumb:
 
i will be going through the MSDT prep course next month. I am wondering how many specialties i can pick up, if it is dependent on the school, or i can just pick up a few and then self certify for those specilties?
Not trying to break the rules or find a way around them. Would like to do things properly.
Thanks

I'm not sure if you ever said what school but I used GI Bill and went through Rainbow Reef's MSDT in January. It was an enjoyable time and lodging was very comfortable. Living and studying with the other instructor students was beneficial. MSDT courses are normally 5 instructor specialties. RR has a policy buy 5 get 1 free so they include 6 in their MSDT course. They are willing to sell you more and/or teach more provided you pay the PADI registration fees. For example, RR counts full face mask as one specialty but it's four specialties with PADI (generic FFM, brand specific, with comms, etc) I paid the extra PADI registration fees and ended up with 9 rather than the 5 + 1 free that is RR standard.

At least at the MSDT level RR expected you know the material. It was more me demonstrating existing skills to the course director's standard than a traditional course where student is assumed to know nothing. I had ~450 dives so it was a matter of me proving that I had the skills.

The most important instructor certifications are whatever sells in your area. Probably nitrox, deep, night, navigation, and wreck or some of the project aware stuff.

In hindsight I'm still happy I did it. It was enjoyable diving in great location with great lodging. I wish I did all my professional courses down there though I wouldn't necessarily have done them back-to-back, but that's mostly because here in Virginia it's not easy get all the required tasks so DM took over a year and OWSI ~ 6 months.

Finally, with MSDT I'm not stuck on only OW and AOW; when COVID-19 hit we stopped OW but kept doing specialties.

Sam
 
3. I find PPB to be useless. Teach students the right way (neutral and in trim) from the start and it is not needed. If I were to get a student who needed help, I am more likely to do a workshop with them rather than pushing a course on them that is typically not very good. Yes this does depend on the instructor. No need to sell a card when you can get paid for your time and assist a diver.

I find PPB a better substitute for Reactivate. For my shop at least it shifts it from the pool to open water and I get to spend some time with the students finding out what they remember or improving their skills.
 
My one piece of unwarranted advice would be to spend quite a long time team-teaching / DMing and being mentored after you've got your ticket.
Yes, that may be extremely valuable, but it could also do great harm.

In my former life working as a staff developer for school teachers, I came to the realization that one of the most important factors in a teacher's development was the friendships formed in the teacher's first year of teaching. The experienced teachers he or she encounters will impart attitudes and beliefs about the profession that will have a huge impact on the teacher's attitudes and beliefs. That could be very positive. It could be extremely negative. It could be anything in between.

As for me, it took me years to shake off the negative effects of the friendships I formed in my first year of teaching.
 
True, but the goal of an IDC / IE is to learn how to teach within a certain method, not to cover each and every aspect you possibly might encounter.
I can only describe my IDC, but in that IDC I had to teach skills many times, and every time I did, the Course Director threw in some sort of problem I had to diagnose and fix. The IE does the same thing, and you do not know what it will be, so a good CD will prepare you for many possibilities.

As an instructor, you will eventually see pretty much every possibility, including some you would never believe possible, but a good IDC will give you a good head start.
 
I can only describe my IDC, but in that IDC I had to teach skills many times, and every time I did, the Course Director threw in some sort of problem I had to diagnose and fix. The IE does the same thing, and you do not know what it will be, so a good CD will prepare you for many possibilities.

As an instructor, you will eventually see pretty much every possibility, including some you would never believe possible, but a good IDC will give you a good head start.

Problems yes, but creative solutions are rather limited in my experience. You will get all the familiar problems, but as soon as you catch those and remind the "student" (this is another instructor candidate) how to do it properly, they just do it. If you use mask clearing as an example, common problems would be to not exhale through the nose, not creating a seal on the top of the mask, lifting the mask of the face, that kind of thing. Correct the student, and voila, they suddenly can do the skill.
You basically tick the boxes if you organised it safely, reminded the student about the specific pointers, had a cheerful attitude and have the student meet the performance requirement.
What you don't get (or at least I didn't) is actual experience in how to handle somebody who absolutely panics the second a drop of water hits their nose / eyes. And yet, in real life, stuff like this is what you will encounter on quite a few DSD or OWD classes. I've had classes where it took me half an hour to get one of the students 20 cm under water, but after that the student was cool as a cucumber and the class progressed smoothly. Or how about when you make too big a deal out of telling the class to equalize, suddenly everybody has ear problems. Yet if you just mention it and move on ("... and remember to equalize, you can do it as often as you like") most people will have no issues with their ears at all...
Stuff like that isn't really covered in an IDC (or at least not in my experience), but is extremely valuable experience when you are actually teaching a class.
 
welp. I am done and heading home. I woke up with some DCS symptoms and had to go to the chamber so no diving for 6 weeks and then a test to see of i can ever dive again.....
 
That's a bummer but many people get chamber rides and dive again. I hope all is well in the long run.
 
Yeah I do as well. But I am going to go home and take a few months to better prepare and pick a different place to go for pro training, get in better shape and a better state of mind, get my passport and make sure I have all my cards to play. Have more options.
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/perdix-ai/

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