@MyEarHurts,
To give you some context for why so many instructors here are incredulous that your class of eight students spent a total of three hours in the pool, it may help to explain a few things that are supposed to happen in a pool session and how long it takes to teach eight people to do them right.
Waterskills Assessment: Each diver is required to do a 10-minute survival swim/float and either a 200-yard continuous swim or a 300-yard swim with mask/fin snorkel. With a bit of a rest between the two events, that's a minimum of 30 minutes.
Gear assembly. The standards require OW students to assemble and disassemble their gear five times before they finish their pool work. How quickly can eight people get out of the water, doff their gear, break down their gear, swap tanks as needed, re-assemble their gear with progressively less help, get their gear get back on, and get back in the water? Ten minutes would be an amazingly efficient pit stop. That's assuming nobody needs to go to the bathroom, eat a sandwich, warm up, or check messages. Add two minutes per transition for the required pre-dive safety check on all five dives. That's a minimum of 60 minutes just for gear assembly.
So between the waterskills assessment and gear assembly, half of the three hours would have been used up before anyone got underwater.
Hover (30 seconds) Oral inflate/hover (60 seconds): The performance requirement calls for students to hover without kicking or sculling. In confined water dive 3, students have to do it for thirty seconds without kicking or sculling. In dive 4, they have to orally inflate to become neutral, then hover for 60 seconds. OW students almost never perform either of these skills successfully on the first attempt. Either they rise or sink, or else they work their arms and legs before reaching the required time. These skill pretty much require full attention by the instructor on one student at a time to re-start the timer every time they lose buoyancy or use their arms or legs. To run eight students through these two skills would require at least 30 minutes.
That leaves just one hour to learn mask skills, regulator skills, regulator snorkel exhanges, scuba kit removal and replacement at surface, scuba kit removal and replacement underwater, weight checks, no-mask swim, descents or ascents, air depletion exercises, simulated horizontal CESA, emergency weight removal, disconnecting and reconnecting the LP hose to the power inflator, a bunch of other skills, and oh yeah, learning to dive, practicing not coming into contact with the bottom, and so forth. All of these skills have performance requirements, and students have to perform them well enough for the instructor to believe they can do them consistently well--that takes additional reps.
I don't see any way that session could have been completed for that many students in the time you say without either skipping skills entirely or not making students fulfill the performance requirements.
I generally allot five hours for the pool work in a private or semi-private class--but the clock is never the boss. We work on every skill until both the student and I agree it rates a smiley face. Sometimes it takes longer. Sometimes it takes a lot longer.
You stated somewhere in your comments that you thought you successfully performed the skills. You may have done them as well as the other students were doing them, but I am skeptical that you received the training you should have--and that's not counting the way your injury was handled.
When you get a clean bill of health from the doctor, I recommend you get a referral to have another instructor somewhere else finish your training properly.
Best wishes,
