Not saying that there is. I was just responding to the premise that JC was engaged in "heavy marketing", since it seemed to be meant as a pejorative.
Video from a Training Dive with John Chatterton
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Not saying that there is. I was just responding to the premise that JC was engaged in "heavy marketing", since it seemed to be meant as a pejorative.
Ah, I see. Yes, same point I'm trying to make. Sort of.
This isn't about if there was heavy marketing or not, that isn't the issue for me at all. The issue is if reality is proportional to the claims and marketing and is the reputation, as an instructor not as a diver/explorer/pioneer, deserved.
Well, not sure if this answers your question, but most of the people who have taken the classes (including me and the OP) seem to have enjoyed them and gotten something out of them. And they would be the only ones who could really answer your question accurately, right?
I mean, I haven't read a lot of posts from his students speaking negatively about the class, although of course there must be a few, as there would be for any instructor.
OK, that sounds good. FYI, I never said that JC is a bad instructor or not. I don't think that I participated in the dissection of how JC runs his class in this thread or in the claims that he was violating standards. I the impression that I get from this thread is that JC is your typical NY/NJ "gorilla diver" as we used to call them way back then. There appears to be very good parts of the way he trains people but there are also parts that aren't. We can debate it all month long but it is what it is.
Makes sense. Don't mean to pick on your post either, I take it that "propaganda" has a different connotation than what you were trying to imply.
johndiver999
Contributor
A claim of weak English is just silly, he writes perfectly well.
He knows EXACTLY what kind of tone he initiated the thread with. As he posts more about his knowledge of "gorilla divers", a term from way back, it seems obvious he has an ax to grind with the instructor, and the OP (and his video) were little more than tools to that end.
I don't have any ax or shovel or anything against JC. I never interacted with him directly or personally at all. I was genuinely asking for confirmation/feedback on the quality of JC's training program.
CptTightPants21
Contributor
Looking back through the pages, I didn't say anything for a while. My first post wasn't until page 7 and even then it was just to praise the quality of the narration. I legitimately watched 60 minutes of that video straight and then the last 20 the next morning before I went to work.
The comments got off to a shaky start with the 'propaganda' comment, but really people shouldn't have jumped on that word as hard as they did. I mean there are a couple of classes in scuba that are just well known --either through marketing or reputation. I mean it is THE John Chatterton's advanced wreck diver. Edd Sorenson's Cave DPV, Mel Clark CCR, a Photo workshop by Becky, a Cave 2 class by Jarrod Jablonski. There are just some instructor and class combinations that have a reputation all their own. The responses to the comment didn't help anything and just fed the fire--I know of one or two people that got involved because of the way people took the propaganda comment. I myself got more involved when poster after poster stated that 'buoyancy wasn't John Chatterton's problem to fix'. I was shocked at the level that people would go to ignore any critique of the buoyancy shown in that video. Buoyancy is something that should be touched on and refined in EVERY scuba class a person takes or an instructor teaches. John didn't create their initial buoyancy issues, but he failed in his responsibility to help improve their buoyancy.---and before someone says how do I know that or that statement is too much; If John was attempting to improve their buoyancy he would have motioned for them to get off their knees or rise up a little at LEAST once. Maybe they would have flailed a little, their trim would have been off, they might have moved up and down a couple feet, but we would have seen the attempt. Struggling and attempting to improve doesn't get mocked; not attempting to improve poor skill and telling everyone it's all good, does.
It is times like these that I wish that GUE didn't have such a strong policy against releasing class videos. The transformation between Day 1 to Day 4/5 of a fundies class is something truly remarkable. The student doesn't even need to have the skill to pass the class just yet and you can already see the improvement. GUE instructors are not Scuba Gods. They take a small amount of time to make minor adjustments and create good habits that help the student to succeed for the rest of their diving lives. Pete (The Chariman) says that when he does an OW class they do no drills the first day of class. He spends the entire day adjusting their rig and getting them ready for neutral buoyancy and that even though he is technically a 'day behind' the students are able to speed through all the remaining skill requirements because they were given a strong starting point with buoyancy.
I almost wish we could go back to arguing about right and left side deco bottles or which side the emergency pocket should be on. These were sometimes fun, sometimes enlightening, sometimes annoying conversations, but you could always tune out some of the white noise or know when a person was just a little too over the top. I thought that the industry was finally making the turn around the corner--RAID, GUE, UTD, a lot of classes, instructors and agencies who had seen the errors and were focusing on being neutral in the water.The fact that there are some DMs and instructors on this thread that are dismissing buoyancy to this degree in an advanced technical scuba class makes me a little depressed.
The comments got off to a shaky start with the 'propaganda' comment, but really people shouldn't have jumped on that word as hard as they did. I mean there are a couple of classes in scuba that are just well known --either through marketing or reputation. I mean it is THE John Chatterton's advanced wreck diver. Edd Sorenson's Cave DPV, Mel Clark CCR, a Photo workshop by Becky, a Cave 2 class by Jarrod Jablonski. There are just some instructor and class combinations that have a reputation all their own. The responses to the comment didn't help anything and just fed the fire--I know of one or two people that got involved because of the way people took the propaganda comment. I myself got more involved when poster after poster stated that 'buoyancy wasn't John Chatterton's problem to fix'. I was shocked at the level that people would go to ignore any critique of the buoyancy shown in that video. Buoyancy is something that should be touched on and refined in EVERY scuba class a person takes or an instructor teaches. John didn't create their initial buoyancy issues, but he failed in his responsibility to help improve their buoyancy.---and before someone says how do I know that or that statement is too much; If John was attempting to improve their buoyancy he would have motioned for them to get off their knees or rise up a little at LEAST once. Maybe they would have flailed a little, their trim would have been off, they might have moved up and down a couple feet, but we would have seen the attempt. Struggling and attempting to improve doesn't get mocked; not attempting to improve poor skill and telling everyone it's all good, does.
It is times like these that I wish that GUE didn't have such a strong policy against releasing class videos. The transformation between Day 1 to Day 4/5 of a fundies class is something truly remarkable. The student doesn't even need to have the skill to pass the class just yet and you can already see the improvement. GUE instructors are not Scuba Gods. They take a small amount of time to make minor adjustments and create good habits that help the student to succeed for the rest of their diving lives. Pete (The Chariman) says that when he does an OW class they do no drills the first day of class. He spends the entire day adjusting their rig and getting them ready for neutral buoyancy and that even though he is technically a 'day behind' the students are able to speed through all the remaining skill requirements because they were given a strong starting point with buoyancy.
I almost wish we could go back to arguing about right and left side deco bottles or which side the emergency pocket should be on. These were sometimes fun, sometimes enlightening, sometimes annoying conversations, but you could always tune out some of the white noise or know when a person was just a little too over the top. I thought that the industry was finally making the turn around the corner--RAID, GUE, UTD, a lot of classes, instructors and agencies who had seen the errors and were focusing on being neutral in the water.The fact that there are some DMs and instructors on this thread that are dismissing buoyancy to this degree in an advanced technical scuba class makes me a little depressed.
CT-Rich
Contributor
You know what was missing from the video? John Chatterton doing any instruction. I watched most of the video (I fast forwarded some of the predive). I never heard chatterton say a word. I did not see any post dive debriefing. I saw students doing skills. Did Chatterton discuss their mistakes post dive? I have no idea. The OP did not discuss the predive briefing or the post dive discussion. There was a commentary by the student from his perspective, other than that, no Chatterton. So the criticism seems to be, “I heard he was like this and now I have proof.” You can pretty much read anything you want into the video you choose to. Lacking any context or defense, label the instructor any way you want.
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