Tricky student

[Beanbag1]

I usually get given students who experience difficulties mastering the basics or who are excessively nervous. Normally, I find, taking things at a slower pace and more repetition helps those chaps.

However, I suspect that I may have met my match.

My latest student is a lovely, if very quiet and self contained, man. He is a sixth dan black belt in karate so I assume does not lack self confidence. He was passed to me because his last instructor said he was 'useless'.

In the course of my three dives with him I have to say that if I were a fanciful person I would swear he had a death wish!

He agrees and repeats back the dive brief on the surface but has a seriously disconcerting habit of ignoring you underwater. We have not managed to progress beyond 6 metres so he isn't narced. However we can be just about to start a drill, or in one case still descending, and he will randomly swim off. Asked when back on the surface what he thought he was doing he is unable to say other than to insist he was following the brief. It is the most bizarre and worrying thing I have ever experienced as an instructor and I am thinking of recommending to our training officer he is invited to find another passtime.

Am I missing something?




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[antattack]

Try this- make him responsible for an outcome.
Descend to 30', and have him navigate around a rock and back to the beach. He has to lead you. If you get lost, you know he failed.

Or, he has to teach YOU how to clear a flooded mask.

I find that distracted learners suddenly gain focus when they are responsible for an outcome instead of simply responsible for following instructions. It's just a different way of learning.

Good luck!

 

[NorCalDM]

It may be a case of passive panic were he shuts down and not outwordly panics. We once had a student in a class that I was the DM for and she would just lay on the bottom and stare off in the distance and would not respond to any commands. She would have laid there and sucked down her cylinder and drowned if we wouldn't have pulled her to the surface. She actually had a genius IQ and blew through the bookwork and didn't miss one question on any quiz or test but once in the water no response! She also did not remember anything that happened underwater. She went through two full classes and we were finally able to get her through the skills but was never able to finish the ocean dives. Diving is not for everybody and she was doing it for her husband who was already certified not for herself so we recomended she finds another activity while he is diving!

 

[lv2dive]

If you guys are discussing the dive plan, why not take it to the next step and both write it down on a slate or wet notes? Does not seem like overkill in this case from a reinforcement perspective, and it may help during debrief.

 

[GrimSleeper]

It's no help to you, but often the self-confident are the hardest to teach. Because they're good at something else, they come into a course convinced that learning to dive will be simple, and it can be incredibly hard to make them engage with what they're doing. I like antattack's suggestion, though - try making your student responsible for the outcome of the dive. Or just go all drill sergeant on him, but that doesn't sound like your teaching style...

 

[Islandheart]

As instructors we believe we can teach all, but personally ....

There reaches a point when I've had to say, " I respect your desire to become a diver but I believe it's time to focus your efforts on another past-time".

 

[g1138]

Let's get some more background, perhaps?

A specific example.
- What is the brief
- What was his response underwater once you descended
- What was his reasoning that his actions were "following" the brief

In addition, is he a swimmer? Does he have any previous experience swimming in a pool, and not bathing swimming where you're vertical and wading in the water; I'm talking actual swimming.
Also for that matter, what is his experience with submerged swimming (believe it or not there's a big difference). How did he do on the underwater swim? Was he performing efficient strokes, or bruting his way through (constantly stroking and kicking or even flailing)

 

[scoobydrew]

From the limited information given, it sounds like he has an idea in his mind of how things are supposed to run and he is acting according to that as opposed to really absorbing what is going on with the briefing and the real plan.

To address the immediate point you have raised about him swimming off I would likely start with signals. E.g. with my students I tell them that once we have decended to the depth we are going to dive from I want everybody responding to me positively that they are OK with a clear signal and at that point I point the direction we are going to head off in. It is made clear in the briefing the formation that we will be using, if you are diving 1-2-1 with this guy then they way I would brief that would be to make him aware that I am leading the dive and I would like him to be side by side with me about arms length apart and to follow my directional signals. If he deviates from this then I feel that the issue is arrogance not passive panic. In some cases peoples minds just melt underwater and they lose the ability to think irrespective of depth but you can decide for yourself if this is the case after the dive if things did not go to plan.

I assume you have spelt out to him your version of the dive and where it went wrong?

 

[Hatul]

How about a leash so he can't wander too far.

 

[koozemani]

some people cannot learn certain things no matter how hard you try. It's not you, once in a blue moon, you run across someone who cannot pick up a certain skill set.