Tricky student

[Altamira]

Perhaps this is an off the wall question, but is the student a native English speaker? Having spent time as a karate instructor in my distant past, I know many of the very high ranking black belt intstructors in my day were not native speakers in English, and quite a few were very far from fluent in English. If he is not fluent in English, is quiet and unassuming, he may not understand all you are telling him, and to make the problem worse, his culture may make it difficult for him to admit he does not understand. You know what I mean if you have ever spoken to someone who is not fluent in our language, only to find out later that they smiled a lot, nodded their head, but had no clue as to what you just said. He may also speak just enough English to get by in most circumstances, but may not fully grasp what you want him to do underwater, especially when he gets underwater in a very foreign environment for him. Just a thought!

 

[boulderjohn]

Because you are new to ScubaBoard, you might not be aware of all its features. One of them is the Instructor to Instructor forum, an area only dive professionals can access. Use your User CP to request access. Once there, you will be in a realm where a host of instructors will be able to give you the benefit of their experience. Although some may have helped you here, many more will have missed your question because they do not frequent this specific forum.

 

[simple1]

Not uncommon in the NE is a buddy line. This would at least keep him connected to you, like a leash. He sounds like the type of person who overanylizes things. Keep him busy with dexterity drills, along with the regular open water skills.

 

[Quero]

I just had a discover scuba student who would simply zone out while underwater. His problem was a deep-seated fear of the water. I was having to remind him to fin throughout the dives as he'd just freeze and I'd end up towing him, and sometimes he'd get himself into a near fetal position and I'd be towing a human bowling ball. He never held his breath, but he'd forget to breathe deeply, and he'd start to float up until I would gesture for him to breathe out completely. It took at least 2.5 hours in the water before I could let go of him during the dive. And my whole arm and side hurt for two whole days afterwards from the effort of towing while trying to get him to propel himself and preventing him from dragging me to the surface. I didn't tell him this, but I suspect he would not make an ideal candidate for a scuba diver, though I think that with time and patience we could get there, if he wanted it badly enough.

 

[dbulmer]

I should mention this only worked when the student wrote down the steps, not me.

I understand - what I was suggesting was giving the student a framework of reference to which he could relate from past experience. Monkey see, monkey do to get the attention. Spot the mistake to ensure the student understands the exercise.

 

[Diver0001]

He agrees and repeats back the dive brief on the surface but has a seriously disconcerting habit of ignoring you underwater.

Is he really ignoring you or is it more a case of becoming "air headed" due to being distracted?

In my experience is usually the latter. If he's really ignoring you then you have a bigger issue and should disregard what I'm about to say:

In all cases of "air headedness" I've seen to date there have been a limited number of causes. My advice to you to start out with would be to seek the "reason" and not respond too much to the behaviour until you're clear on why it's happening. Just like 'debugging' a computer, once you know why something isn't working right, you can usually solve the problem. Knowing why is the key.

The reasons I've seen are the following (very short list):

- distracted by excessive thinking
- limited intelligence
- social discomfort (and/or other types of anxiety)
- young in age

I'll handle them one at a time:

1) Excessive thinking: This burns free attention. That should be obvious. We all engage in excessive thinking... and if you don't believe me then try to sit still and just listen to your breathing for 2 minutes and not think about anything. Most people won't go 15 seconds. It takes training to "calm" the mind and free up that attention for other things. Some people have more difficulty calming the mind than others and especially (in my experience) people who are more intelligent can fall into the trap of letting their mind go into overdrive when they're experiencing new things for the first time.

If your student had been a Kung Fu master instead of a Karate master then he would already be familiar with meditation. As far as I know it's not a well ingrained practice in some Karate schools but in others it is. Ask him if he knows "chi gung" (it also has other spellings but this way is easy to see how it's pronounced). Even if it's called something else in his Karate form he should recognise the word as a series of exercises that can be used to focus the mind/body through breathing. Ask him to meditate and/or do some kind of chi gung breathing before going under water and see if that helps.

There are other ways to improve ones attention span too but in my opinion nothing works nearly as well as meditation. The second thing that could work is to "invent" a task chain (which is kind of the way training works anyway). If his attention is drifting then increase the tempo. Also, if he's highly intelligent, try adding items to the task chain. Tell him that you want to see eye-contact every minute, that you expect him to follow (or lead) and define those roles in terms of tasks (task chains) like stopping and communicating changes in depth, tempo or direction every time he makes a turn.

He's a Karate guy so you might consider using Karate level consequences that he can understand. 10 push-ups for air-headedness, 50 for dangerous loss of communication. Also, remind him (on no uncertain terms) then when he's teaching karate that he expects out of respect that students pay attention and that you expect that from him too! Make him focus on that. This might sound hard but it just puts it in a familiar context for him. I did something similar once with a guy I had who was a soldier and had this problem. Connecting it to a known learning context by, in my case, deliberately sounding irritated and short when he wasn't paying attention, actually helped him focus. I was also very direct and "unsalted" in my feedback which is something he was accustomed to and it helped him learn faster. Maybe this could work for your guy too.

2) Limited intelligence: Some people just don't have the mental horse power to keep up with a continually advancing task chain. They often find even a moderate tempo during training overwhelming and it can (from what i've seen) cause them to sort of "shut down". In this case, the idea would be more to slow down than to speed up (see why it's so important to know WHY it's happening first?).

3) Social discomfort: I've seen some people who were difficult to communicate with; both above water but especially under water because they had a kind of social discomfort about making eye contact. Eye contact is very important for communication under water and some people can start to *avoid* communication (look away, or even swim away) when faced with the prospect of having to make and hold eye contact with another person. This may not be the only anxiety level issue that can result in this behaviour but it's an obvious one.

4) Youngsters: I'll admit, I hate training kids under the age of about 14, because on top of all the above they can also have trouble evaluating and responding adequately to risks. I think this has something to do with a still-developing ability for lateral thinking but regardless of the reason I've seen more kids go bimbling off on their own under water than adults. Somehow the point that staying together and keeping in communication is important doesn't seem to always take seat. What works in this case is, alas, "follow me" and to present yourself as being completely in charge so they are completely focused on you. That works with kids but won't work as well with most adults. It's also not something I would recommend as a long term solution because it is somewhat contrary to the point of the course (to create an independently capable diver) but regardless of stupidity of it, some parents still take kids that aren't ready for scuba training so making yourself their main focus can be an effective stop-gap measure to get them through the initial stages.

I don't know if this will work with your guy but I bet it will. As a martial artist he has years of training that involved mirroring on a strong leader so taking a more prominent position as the leader may help him to follow better. For example, you could introduce skills while swimming and say "follow me, watch me do exactly as I do". You might find his focus improves as long as you keep playing monkey-see-monkey do with him. Take frequent breaks to the surface, give him concise and brutally accurate feedback in 30 seconds and them make him try it again and again. In other words, he's good at Karate and he's spent years learning it so it might help to model your approach to the scuba training somewhat to mirror the "follow the strong leader" approach.

Finally, I'd like to urge you not to give up on this guy. He's as good for your development as a teacher as you are for his development as a diver. This could be good for both of you.

Good luck.

R..

 

[shoredivr]

Diver0001, that last paragraph was gold.

 

[TSandM]

Wow, Rob, another ball hit out of the park . . .

 

[Beanbag1]

I met with my student yesterday and I asked him what he wanted to get from learning to dive.

He said he wanted to be able to dive when he goes abroad on holiday. I asked him if he had any plans to dive in the UK (drysuit diving) and he said no. I asked him what part he planned to take in our club once qualified (we are a BSAC club who trains students for free in order that they become members of our dive club and contribute to planning dive trips, improving their skills and helping other new divers to further theri training). He said he had no intention of diving in the UK, would not consider staying in the sort of accommodation we use on club trips (liveaboards, caravans or hostel type usually), and did not want to improve his skills beyond getting a certification which would allow him to dive on holiday.

I then explained that I was concerned that our training sessions to date had not gone well because I felt that he was either not concentrating on the drills, or because there was some other problem with the way in which he was being trained. I asked him if there was anything I could do which might help him to focus and comply with my instructions. He said 'I feel uncomfortable taking instructions from a woman'. I am not joking.

Once the others had helped to clean the blood from his shirt I suggested that he might like to find a PADI school, of which there are many fine ones locally, where he could pay for his instruction and thereby be released from the expectation that he would put back into our club what he had taken out (none of the instructors get even as much as expenses for training, so fuel to get to the site and entry fees for the quarries come out of our own pockets). I also suggested that he might like to join the 21st century.

One important learning point did come out of this.

Not one person, from the one who signed him up as a member, to any of the instructors (me included initially), sat down and established his motivation or what he wanted to get out of the training. In retrospect this was a huge error on our part. As it happens this man was a berk in as much as he was willing to exploit us under false pretences. However, it brought home to me that by the club making assumptions about trainees we fail to understand where they are approaching their training from. He could equally have had a genuine reason for the dificulties I encountered with his training. However, that was never established so we all wasted a lot of time and money.

I am going to propose we have an application form with pertinent questions on it and a sheet that instructors can refer to which lists issues which should be addressed with new trainees before they even get near the water. It struck me today that other than the medical questions and fitness to dive certificates we insist on, we have no idea who we are taking underwater. That's quite scarey and potentially dangerous (for them as much as anything else).

 

[Diver0001]

I am going to propose we have an application form with pertinent questions on it and a sheet that instructors can refer to which lists issues which should be addressed with new trainees before they even get near the water. It struck me today that other than the medical questions and fitness to dive certificates we insist on, we have no idea who we are taking underwater. That's quite scarey and potentially dangerous (for them as much as anything else).

Well done indeed!

Ever since I started giving lessons it's been a standard part of my "intro" to ask people what motivated them to take lessons at that particular moment in time and what they want to get out of the course. I'm a project manager in the real-world so it's in my DNA to set objectives and expectations at the beginning. It never occurred to me that someone would take on a student and never ask them why they came

I assume you tossed him but it was an excellent learning experience for you so either way any costs you have to absorb was "money well spent".

R..