PerroneFord
Contributor
mjatkins:
Hmm... AI apparently has connotations that I do not intend. I "help out" in the pool and in OW.
How's that?
PADI 2 day OW class
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Hmm... AI apparently has connotations that I do not intend. I "help out" in the pool and in OW.
How's that?
PerroneFord:
So essentially what you are saying is that you have no teaching credentials but have taken it upon yourself to educate (mentor) beginner divers.
I have seen you write many posts railing against instructors and agencies who would allow divers to go into situations for which you believe they have inadequate training. And now you are intentionally putting yourself into a situation for which you have no training, and what's more you are influencing beginner divers from that background of inadequate training. How dare you ever criticize someone who has gone to the time, cost, and effort of becoming an instructor when you have not, but are trying to do the same job with no qualifications! Shame on you.
Matthew
PerroneFord
Contributor
mjatkins:
Ah, and there it is...
I don't seek out divers to help. Nor do I charge money. I am not a professional nor do I claim to be. I have told my instructor the same thing. I have no intention of instructing, and take great care with those who have asked me to work on stuff with them to make SURE they do not refer to me as an instructor.
Now that said, these people are dive buddies to me. They are also friends. And I don't really care whether you agree or not, but I intend to help improve my friends in the water, just as more experienced divers do with me. They are not instructors either, but they take the time to show me how to clean up my frog kick, or help me run the reel, or show me other techniques. Regardless of their "credentials" they are good and experienced divers and I find value in what they have to say.
Similarly, these people with whom I work seem to find value in having them fill in where their training from certified instructors was lacking. They want to have fun in the water, and want to understand how to be neutral, or hover, or frog kick. My instructor seems to think it adds value to have me in the water making sure that his CCR students dont go hypoxic in the pool.
So, shame on YOU for criticizing the common joe diver trying to clean up the messes you guys leave behind. And as I alluded to earlier, it's not all instructors, but enough that SB is filled with divers seeking more education, and help because they were taught improperly, or undereducated in their classes.
PerroneFord:
I'm curious about your training as well, from a liability perspective. I am a PADI instructor, and as such, will not allow "helping out" from anything less than a certified assistant. That's a standards thing, and I suppose that I presumed all agencies would have such standards. (I may not agree with PADI's definition of "certified assistant" but that's beside the point.) If I do not follow the agency's standards, I open myself up to liability. The instructor who has you actively working with and training students - what agency is that person with? What level of professional training do you have, and do you carry liability insurance?
I think these are important considerations for an OW instructor. I also think they'd be even more important for CCR and/or cave diving, as each of those introduces many more ways one can get into trouble.
kari
PerroneFord:
What can I say to that? You do not get to decide what undereducated is. You are a blowhard who has no credentials and a burning desire to elevate yourself by making generalizations and criticizing people with more training than yourself. I believe this must stem from a need to be taken seriously without doing the required work to be taken seriously. If all the wonderful things you have said about your ability to work with students is true, then with some hard work you could be an excellent instructor. Sadly though you have only done what is required to be a full blown hypocrite!
The problem with the executive course or similar programs is that the new student diver doesn't really learn diving due the lack of time available. Often times the few skills that are taught are not really diving skills, rather, they are skills to deal with problems or nusiances while diving i.e. mask clearing, regulator clearing etc, etc.
The new student just doesn't realize this and has no basis for comparison.
The new student just doesn't realize this and has no basis for comparison.
PerroneFord:
There's a big difference between friends helping friends, and actively assisting a dive professional. Which are you doing? The posts in this thread lead me to think it's the second. And whether you make it clear or not, when you are "adding value" in your instructor's pool, the people in that pool believe you are in a particular role - the role of "dive professional." When it hits the fan, where are you? "In the unlikely event" that one of those CCR students DOES go hypoxic in the pool, where are you? The instructor is up the creek, but where are you? Please tell me you are right in there with that instructor, because you are actually qualified to be in the role you describe.
I find it amusing that you talk of working with "my instructor" and then talk of "cleaning up the messes you guys leave behind." Sounds like you are cleaning up the messes "my instructor" leaves behind.
kari
Vayu:
What I said was "There's a big difference between friends helping friends, and actively assisting a dive professional."
I stand by my statement.
kari
Wayward Son
Contributor
My experience with auditing while my wife took a 2 week PADI course was that there were 10 people in the class, 1 instructor, and 1 DM in the water. The DM did nothing but watch, he never assisted in teaching anything.
Water skills were a rapid fire round of "watch me do this, then each of you do it" & God help the student who had trouble with a skill, such as my wife. rather than figure out why she had a problem, solve it & teach her the skill, her instructor simply kept saying "some people aren't meant to be divers & I think you're one of them", ie, he didn't teach her.
She stuck with it, went back several times with other groups, eventually got a different instructor & was certified. The reality was that with skills she had problems with, I -and I'm not an instructor- had to figure out what was wrong, teach her what was wrong & how to do it right, so that she could go back & be OK until the next skill that she stumbled on & we had to do it all over again.
Their rate of graduating students on schedule was roughly 50%, about half of each class had to come back into another class & repeat it until they got it.
I came away singularly unimpressed with this type of course. What was supposed to be a 2 week course & certified turned out to take several months & when she finally graduated, there were still people from her original class that had not yet become ready for their checkout dives.
Now, I don't want anyone to get all defensive for PADI over this. At least half the problem was the instructor. In the water, he simply did not teach. But I did walk away not impressed with the speed course approach as a whole. Each skill was done once correctly in the pool, & not repeated until the checkout dives. There just wasn't any repetition to drill them in, build any muscle memory, perfection, etc.
Contrast this with the older style of teaching, taking 6 weeks or more, with skills being used each time in the water, so by the end you had been doing them all many times, I think the faster courses lose out for the student.
But, it's a reflection of our world. we live in a fast food society, we want it now, now now, RIGHT NOW! damn it, don't be taking 10 minutes to get my food. This has worked it's way through our society. we want our wars to be over before we get bored with them, any problem fixed while we wait & we're not waiting long before we're mad bc we're waiting, etc. and now we want to learn life-dependent skills fast so we can get in the water & start having fun. The agencies that are doing it fast are giving us what we want, right or not.
Water skills were a rapid fire round of "watch me do this, then each of you do it" & God help the student who had trouble with a skill, such as my wife. rather than figure out why she had a problem, solve it & teach her the skill, her instructor simply kept saying "some people aren't meant to be divers & I think you're one of them", ie, he didn't teach her.
She stuck with it, went back several times with other groups, eventually got a different instructor & was certified. The reality was that with skills she had problems with, I -and I'm not an instructor- had to figure out what was wrong, teach her what was wrong & how to do it right, so that she could go back & be OK until the next skill that she stumbled on & we had to do it all over again.
Their rate of graduating students on schedule was roughly 50%, about half of each class had to come back into another class & repeat it until they got it.
I came away singularly unimpressed with this type of course. What was supposed to be a 2 week course & certified turned out to take several months & when she finally graduated, there were still people from her original class that had not yet become ready for their checkout dives.
Now, I don't want anyone to get all defensive for PADI over this. At least half the problem was the instructor. In the water, he simply did not teach. But I did walk away not impressed with the speed course approach as a whole. Each skill was done once correctly in the pool, & not repeated until the checkout dives. There just wasn't any repetition to drill them in, build any muscle memory, perfection, etc.
Contrast this with the older style of teaching, taking 6 weeks or more, with skills being used each time in the water, so by the end you had been doing them all many times, I think the faster courses lose out for the student.
But, it's a reflection of our world. we live in a fast food society, we want it now, now now, RIGHT NOW! damn it, don't be taking 10 minutes to get my food. This has worked it's way through our society. we want our wars to be over before we get bored with them, any problem fixed while we wait & we're not waiting long before we're mad bc we're waiting, etc. and now we want to learn life-dependent skills fast so we can get in the water & start having fun. The agencies that are doing it fast are giving us what we want, right or not.
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