To those considering an OW class...

[Thalassamania]

Ok, then what is true and what is not?

Are PADI Instructors outside of standards if they teach "above" the standards? Are they outside of standards if they include skills or exercises that are not listed in the standards for that course?

Are they outside of standards if they teach skills during pool sessions or open water dives other than the ones that are specified for those skills in the standards?

What is the real story?

 

[Dive-aholic]

I was taught in my IDC to teach to the standards. Anything not in the standards is outside of the standards. Maybe the CD misinterpreted things. Maybe teaching above the standards is okay. My CD was pretty good about clarifying things with PADI that she wasn't clear on. And I'm pretty sure this was something that had been discussed because it was discussed several times in the IDC.

But who's to say what's above the standards and what's not? I teach what I teach and the way I teach for a reason. I really don't care to find out if my CD was right or wrong. It won't change the way I do things, so it doesn't matter.

 

[MikeFerrara]

Ok, then what is true and what is not?

Are PADI Instructors outside of standards if they teach "above" the standards? Are they outside of standards if they include skills or exercises that are not listed in the standards for that course?

Are they outside of standards if they teach skills during pool sessions or open water dives other than the ones that are specified for those skills in the standards?

What is the real story?

The real story is outlined in the standards themselves pretty clearly (in a muddy sort of way). The instructor training in the IDC helps know how to interpret those standards.

It is a standards vilolation to introduce skills outside of the module they are included in. However, it is not a violation to spend more time practicing them after they have been introduced. It is also not a violation of standards to combine skills in practice, such as doing skills midwater...that's just diving.

PDI does discourage the addition of skills that aren't in the course outline. they claim that it's because then the instructor becomes the course designer and would be on their own if the design of the coursed had to be defended in court.

I would not teach SMB deployment at depth in a PADI OW course. In fact it's not in any PADI course until you get to the DSAT tech courses.

I would however, teach a frog kick in the OW course even though the only kick that's required is a flutter kick. Why would I chance such a redisign of the course? Because finning is part of the class and I can't see how being better at it exposes either me or the student to increased risk.

What about the buddy skills we've discussed so much? They aren't listed in the performance requirements but I included them and felt I could have defended myself if I needed to. The same with practicing skills midwater. Of course, I'm not a lawyer and I never had to defend any of it in court. What I do know is that I felt more at ease certifying divers who could dive than I did when I certified divers who couldn't back when I taught exactly by the book.

In the end, I realized that I had changed the class so much from any other PADI course that I'd seen or anything that was required by standards that I was no longer willing to use their standards or name at all. I certainly won't pay them for it.

BTW, there's a thread on the board now that a diver posted about their recent AOW class. Diving in a pack...meeting up at the bottom rather than descending together, getting seperated, losing people on night dives. Talk about a total, clueless monstricity of a CF! Oh well, I have no use for any agency that writes standards that permit such practices. They all do though, don't they? That poster described what I see as the typical AOW course.

What is it that the agencies are really doing for us?

 

[scubatn]

The worst "standard" I have heard (I believe this is SSI) "It is not required to be able to swim to be a scuba diver, but it will enhance your enjoyment." There was a swim test, but I don't think passing it was required, just not panicing. (Can an SSI instructor confirm that?)

SSI does have a swim and float test, and yes you are required to pass it

 

[MikeFerrara]

Swim requirements only add the the exclusiveness of the sport so some agencies are replacing them with mask, snorkel and fin options.

I don't know that being able to swim is actually required in order to dive but personally, I wouldn't go anywhere near the water if I couldn't swim. I would go for a boat ride, a picnic by the shore or a walk down a pier. You just don't know when you might fall in.

When I had a dive shop, I actually had people come in for classes who couldn't swim or sustain themselves in the water at all. I can't imagine what they were thinking yet some agencies will still try to conduct a class such that they can dive.

 

[jbichsel]

Ok, then what is true and what is not?

Are PADI Instructors outside of standards if they teach "above" the standards? Are they outside of standards if they include skills or exercises that are not listed in the standards for that course?

Are they outside of standards if they teach skills during pool sessions or open water dives other than the ones that are specified for those skills in the standards?

What is the real story?

Vague clouded in mystery, cloaked in innuendo.

I recently, within the last two weeks, spoke to a PADI official in the training department regading this. I had some specific questions, complaints as to requirements and how I think they should be ordered and performed.

Needless to say, PADI knows best. (major gag at this point)

However, this official did say that you can teach beyond the required skills as long as you don't bring specific skills that are required in future dives ahead.

For example, one of my issues is that in CWD1, PADI requirements are that we teach how to inflate & deflate the BC using the power inflator AT THE SURFACE. Then a future requirement in CWD1, is that we have student divers swim underwater while maintaining control of direction AND DEPTH. Yet we have taught them nothing of buoyancy control, if we teach to the "standards".

I'm sure that any of us that give a crap have seen any number of instructors that just let the student divers bounce and crawl along the bottom.

It is not until half way through CWD3 that buoyancy is finally addressed (in PADI's meager way) with the Fin Pivot.

My suggestion was that the Fin Pivot be moved from CWD3, to CWD1, immediately following the inflate/deflate at the surface drill, in order that we start teaching good habits of understanding neutral buoyancy FROM THE START!

However, in typical PADI wisdom, this is not acceptable.

He did say that neutral buoyancy can be taught in CWD1 by other means as long as they are not skills that are directly required in future Confined Water Dives.

One suggestion was that the instructor add/release air from the BC for the student to get them neutral.

Yeah, that makes sense. Kind of like playing Russian Roulette with an automatic. Maybe the instructor should breathe and kick for them also.

I need to stop fighting with them. I get to pis&*^*^& off!

 

[MikeFerrara]

Vague clouded in mystery, cloaked in innuendo.

I recently, within the last two weeks, spoke to a PADI official in the training department regading this. I had some specific questions, complaints as to requirements and how I think they should be ordered and performed.

Needless to say, PADI knows best. (major gag at this point)

However, this official did say that you can teach beyond the required skills as long as you don't bring specific skills that are required in future dives ahead.

For example, one of my issues is that in CWD1, PADI requirements are that we teach how to inflate & deflate the BC using the power inflator AT THE SURFACE. Then a future requirement in CWD1, is that we have student divers swim underwater while maintaining control of direction AND DEPTH. Yet we have taught them nothing of buoyancy control, if we teach to the "standards".

I'm sure that any of us that give a crap have seen any number of instructors that just let the student divers bounce and crawl along the bottom.

It is not until half way through CWD3 that buoyancy is finally addressed (in PADI's meager way) with the Fin Pivot.

My suggestion was that the Fin Pivot be moved from CWD3, to CWD1, immediately following the inflate/deflate at the surface drill, in order that we start teaching good habits of understanding neutral buoyancy FROM THE START!

However, in typical PADI wisdom, this is not acceptable.

He did say that neutral buoyancy can be taught in CWD1 by other means as long as they are not skills that are directly required in future Confined Water Dives.

One suggestion was that the instructor add/release air from the BC for the student to get them neutral.

Yeah, that makes sense. Kind of like playing Russian Roulette with an automatic. Maybe the instructor should breathe and kick for them also.

I need to stop fighting with them. I get to pis&*^*^& off!

I have had MANY similar conversations with PADI training consultants. Those conversations lead me to the conclusion they are totally clueless and their standards are no help at all to me. Don't they have any idea how to integrate BC into mod one? I came up with a way but PADI was no help. It also took time to realize that requireing student to perform underwater swimming without getting them neutral was folly but PADI doesn't say so. Do you know why? Because of the discover Scuba Diving program and the need to give credit for it in an OW class! To the Devil with PADI!

I spent a lot of time and effort going over the standards to see what they actually say, dispite what I had seen and assumed to be true. I spent a lot of time and effort developing a class that I was happy with. I certainly didn't invent everything and barrowed extensively from other instructors. In the end, though I did have a class that I enjoyed teaching and gave results that I was satisfied with.

When I first started teaching my wife would do almost anything to get out of DMing. In the end she enjoyed assisting because the students could really dive and her heart wasn't in her stomach the whole time.

For several years she has been urging me to write a book or do something to put what we've learned out there in a more accessible and more organized format than just ranting on scubaboard. I don't know, I'm not a writer and even if I was, I don't know who would read it or care. I don't even know if the intended audience should be potential students, instructors or both. I'm not a JJ and I've only trained a few hundred divers. I haven't been teaching for 30 years although we got results and, as you can see from my posts, I have plenty to say on the subject. I don't know if I could write a book at all but if I could, I have enough to say on the subject of dive instruction and the mechanics of it within the dive industry to easily make it a series of books. Again who would read them or care and what would I be trying to accomplish? The dive community as a whole seems satisfied with what they have even if it is out of total ignorance and you know what they say about the bearer of bad news? LOL additionally, if I wrote it as I've seen it, some one would almost certainly take legal action. In fact, I'm surprised that my scubaboard posts, alone, haven't already landed me in court.

 

[Thalassamania]

This subject is Kafkaesque, I quite frankly have never heard of such lunacy outside of the government or military. I, for one, can not understand why (or how) any thinking individual, not to mention skilled diving instructor, would tolerate it.

 

[DrSteve]

Many, okay, most PADI instructors think this is true and it's not. At least not absolutely.
Liable for what? Injury? If you injure a student in a class setting, you most likely have problems other than teaching them an extra fin kick.

Unfortunately I believe it would go something like this:
How do you do night dives?
Oh you have 2 lights, a tank marker, know the area blah blah

2 weeks later diver gets injured during a night dive and claims you taught them as it was an instructional setting. *ouch*

 

[MikeFerrara]

Two weeks ago something happened that has repeated itself many times over the last few years.

I was sitting around at a dive site talking with some instructors and DMs. Some, although fairly new instructional staff are pretty accomplished divers and definately know how...though I've had similar conversations with instructors who don't know how.

Anyway, this instructor related a story of an AOW deep dive where a student blew to the surface. The instructor also related that they knew the student would have trouble because of their trim and overall technique and warned the students about it.

I had to ask...why did you take this diver on the deep dive then? I had to ask, what's the sense of diving deep if one can't dive well shallow? I had to ask, how was the student to do anything about their technique issues when the solution isn't a required part of any class? I wish I had gotten the looks they gave me on film. I had to explain that I wouldn't do any dive with any student without a skill assessment and if you can't dive, there isn't any sense in leaving the pool. I honestly don't know if they thought I had two heads or if a light went on for them. I've discussed it with my wife and she couldn't tell either. It sounds silly but, you have to understand that what we were doing in our classes when we quit was so different from anything that mosty divers or instructor have seen that they couldn't possibly understand without seeing it. In most cases there is literally not the common frame of reference from which to even bas a discussion.

It's so easy to assume that the agency must know, that they must be the experts, and that renders common sense in the matter so uncommon. It's outside of my field but it might qualify as a clasic case of brain washing. If you're told that the sky is purple by enough people over a long enough period of time, from the beginning, you just may assume that it's true even if you understand what blue looks like.

Again, so as not to come accross like an egotistical maniac I have to stress that I didn't invent anything. Once I got to the point where I was asking questions the answers were readily available. Once I asked the questions it was all handed to me on a silver platter. I don't even think of my self as a good instructor let alone a gifted instructor but when we discuss the commonly available dive instruction you may as well do all your shopping and base all your consumer decisions on late night infomercials.