It was a slightly sleepy but excited group gathered outside the dive centre at 8am on Sunday morning for the second day of our Instructor Development Course (IDC). Before we could start though, Tim had to go on an urgent mission for milk, as we’d almost cleaned out the Divecrew fridge on Saturday.
With our hands wrapped around warm mugs of welcome caffeine-filled drinks, we settled down for the first session – an introduction to teaching the PADI way. This would take most of the morning, punctuated by coffee breaks and chocolate biscuits. In his trademark energetic style, Collin took us through the theory that underpins the PADI course materials.
Theory, I hear you ask? Don’t instructors need to be good divers?
Learning to be a PADI instructor isn’t about learning to be a good diver, that’s what the Divemaster course is there for. You don’t get through that course with Divecrew without doing a lot of diving in really challenging conditions, diving with and learning from a lot of very different and amazing people, and meeting stringently high standards for skills and assessments.
Now, it’s about tidying up our skills to reach perfect demonstration quality – but more importantly, it’s about how to teach a PADI course, to PADI standards, in such a way that my students want to come back and keep doing more. When I learned to dive several years ago, I chose to learn with PADI, and since then, I’ve chosen them to continue to develop my skills and career. So hopefully, one day, my future students will choose to sit where I am now.
For that to happen, I think it’s vital that as an instructor, I use and promote a system that I have complete confidence in, and instill that same confidence in my students. After all, if I didn’t, what might happen? If I was simply given a pile of materials and told to teach them according to the standards, I might wonder whether I could do better myself. I might scoff at some of the standards and decide they aren’t really necessary.
Q: So how do PADI convince us to teach the course their way?
A: By explaining WHY it’s a better way.
So, the IDC starts with lots of background on how the materials have been developed (over many years, with the aim to get students having fun and diving) and why the courses are taught they way they are (based on sound educational theory and refined over the years).
I’ve gone off on a bit of a tangent here, but what I wanted to get across is just a little bit of the strength of the impact that the IDC has already had on me. I’m not one to blindly drink the kool aid, in fact I’m generally pretty skeptical and prone to questioning. And sure, I’ve heard criticisms of PADI – I’m sure there aren’t many experienced dives who would say they hadn’t.
Sharing the background, the experience, the explanation, of the PADI system right at the start of the IDC, provides a clear justification of why things are done this way. Criticisms aren’t overtly acknowledged, but the ‘why?’s are answered.
So I found myself nodding along while reading the pre-course materials, and as the first day progressed, the jigsaw pieces of information already floating around in my mind were slotted neatly into place. Now, as I read the recommendations in the course guides, the philosophy starts to make more sense, and I see better how all the programs fit neatly together.
So I guess this is what I learned in the pre-reading was ‘Affective Learning’. Now I’m in the right frame of mind to start learning how to teach a specific course. I now believe that following the PADI guidelines and standards for that course is the right way to do it, and better than that, I understand WHY.
So yeah, like I said yesterday – this time, I did drink the kool aid (in the good sense, that is!) I’m lucky that I get a buzz from learning anyway, but when I believe in what I’m doing, it’s just that extra bit of motivation. I won’t stop asking ‘why’ though. 
What also struck me during the classroom sessions – and in fact the pre-reading as well – is that the IDC course is run in exactly the same way that we are being taught to teach. In case you’re not familiar with it, PADI ask you to present the knowledge development with an introduction (tell them what you’re going to tell them), a body (tell them) and a summary (tell them what you’ve told them).
Sounds obvious, perhaps, especially if you regularly present as part of your job … until you really dissect one of your presentations (which I suddenly found myself doing on Monday morning … and I definitely came up wanting).
The IDC provides a clear, detailed structure for each section in the presentation. This follows through to the IE – the evaluation criteria are completely transparent, we all know already exactly what we have to do to score a perfect 5 – just teach it exactly the way PADI want.
I think all instructor candidates get stressed about the IE, but the early transparency of the evaluation criteria really helped me to ditch some of my fears, simply because it’s not an unknown anymore.
Exam situations, particularly presenting within them, will always give me butterflies (and I suspect that’s true of most people) but by the end of this course I hope that’s the only reason I’ll have butterflies. I’ll know what’s expected, and I’ll know that I can do it, I just have to slow down and focus on doing it. Repetition, repetition, repetition … that’s what it’s going to be about. Just like all the PADI courses. And the butterflies should just serve as a reminder to focus, not to be complacent, because that’s when mistakes will happen.
But back to "tell them what you’re going to tell them …"
As we sat in the classroom watching Collin, I could have ticked off each of the boxes on my evaluation form. There’s the contac
t*, the key points we’re about to learn, the conduct, the training aids. It’s like a reinforcement each time you see it … "ah yes, I like that contact, this is working for me…" or, "Oh, now he’s summarising it, so that’s how it’s done, I can appreciate how that helps to reinforce it …"
With our minds boggling from the classroom sessions, it was time to adjourn to the pool for our skills circuit. For the three of us taking our AI, this would form part of our assessment, as well as providing Collin with an idea of areas we would need to work on for both the IE, and future teaching. While a score of 3 is a pass at the IE, our future students will benefit far more if our demonstrations are good enough to get a score of 5 – so that’s what we’re all encouraged to aim for.
We all scored around 94%, which was pretty incredible – but then again, we’re a pretty incredible bunch of candidates! (hey – if I can’t blow my own trumpet on my blog from time to time, when can I?) Collin did pick up a number of things, promising us workshops on key skills such as CESA to ensure that we’re all perfect on the day and when we teach. Geoff – a contact lens wearer – provided the afternoon’s comedy moment on his no-mask swim, when he lost his direction with his eyes shut, and didn’t quite end up where he had meant to.
We finished off with more rescue practice, this time with pocket masks – much more pleasant for the victim, far less splashing! I was rescuing Marky Mark, who sinks in a wetsuit – even without a weight belt – making finishing the skill slightly more challenging!
The final session of the day was confined water training, which was largely a reinforcement of the afternoon’s learning. We split into groups and were tasked with sequencing the skills for a confined water dive – Tim, Duncan and I had different opinions on the best way to conduct Confined Water Dive 2 in Farnborough pool, especially as Collin had reminded us that Fun and Practice is not optional!
It was a good reminder that the course can be adapted and there’s no one right way – even slightly different pools can call for a different plan. And the best bit? Collin made us all tea while we were debating (yes, you did read that right!)
So now for a little teaching and feedback practice …
I particularly liked that he put plenty of milk in it, however I did notice that it was a little pale, therefore may I suggest leaving the bag in longer next time?
Now as divers we can all enjoy better tea from our Course Director, and the value to us is that we will be more awake for the rest of his afternoon lessons …
By 8:15, the wine gums were all gone, and Collin was winding up the last slide. I think it’s fair to say we were all pretty tired – even I had run out of questions – and it was about time to go home and reflect.
And so Day 2 concluded. In case you couldn’t tell, I’m absolutely loving it and I can’t remember the last time I was so motivated to learn something new. I like the intensity, it’s driving me on!
I’m a little bit sad that there is a break of nearly two weeks, and I almost wish that I was going on to Day 3 instead of back to work. I really hope I can sustain that energy for the next two weeks, use the break to continue with the reading and revision, and start back on Good Friday with the same enthusiasm. Bring it on!
* A contact is a story that the student can relate to that is relevant to what is being taught. For example, discussing the attributes of a good teacher from school is a good contact that Collin has used to help us understand the importance of instructor attitude (and, according to Tim – good legs).
The first stage is a ScubaPro MK25, set to output 9 bar, which is about the right setting for the cold water I was diving in. The freeflow came from the second stage, an S600, which has a setting to control the air flow. This was turned right up, so the air would be flowing as fast as it would allow. This is the main thing that Collin and Terry attributed the freeflow to when they checked the regs the day after. 
