A compassionate instructor

[Thalassamania]

As a DM, you should know better than this.

You don't pick and choose which standards you think are relevant -- if you want to set your own standards, then create your own agency. There are ways in which the instructor could have handled this without breaking any standards, and I would encourage the OP to pursue them.

"Standards" only apply to the conduct of sanctioned programs that are designed to meet the certification requirements of an agency.

 

[hydropunk]

that's one awesome instructor!

People here can get a little too serious sometimes. Everyone has said what I feel, but gee guys, it was in confined water...

 

[ZenDiver.3D]

Paladin954, I don't think there is anything wrong with what you or the instructor did. You took junior in for a dive in the pool (if it were out in the OW that would be a different issue) with professionals around him and not to mention the years of diving experience you have; I also think it's great junior was able to sit the written exam and prove his knowledge.

Sounds like it's only a matter of time before junior can build up stamina for the swim test.

Good luck,
Starlet

You are wrong. Either a professional acts like one or they don't. It's hard to tell people to obey their training and the standards when they don't model it themselves.

agreed.

the instructor could have stood beside him watching the kid and charged them a couple of hundred dollars and given him a shiny new plastic card saying "PADI seal" or something along those lines. that way the kid has fun and PADI makes more money from the professionals following "the standards". yay everybody wins!

i agree with a lot of the standards, not all of them. some just dont make sense to me. 50 year old fat unfit smokers are allowed to dive but lets say a physically well developed and intelligent 9 year old is not because he is a couple of months shy of his birthday. yes yes i know that standards, like laws, are based on a majority of the populace. unlike in the rest of daily life, there is no scuba police and no scuba courts to decide where to draw the line in the big gray area on a case by case basis. 90% is self regulation and the instructor made a decision to allow the kid to dive at a depth of 4' in a pool where he could keep an eye on him and made sure that there was an experienced diver beside him to guide.

i'm sorry but i dont follow "the standards" just because they exist. call me unprofessional or an idiot, i dont think i'm doing anything particularly wrong just because i disagree with some of the things PADI says. i have a brain and i choose to use it rather than to trust my life to a few lines in a book. PADI says its ok to ascend at 18m a minute, i say not ok, go slower, be safer. PADI says not ok to let a OW diver go below 18m, i might make an exception to bring one to 20m to see this awesome moray that hangs around in that spot.

a lot of things are left up to personal judgement. in the case above if i were there i might think that hey the kid doesnt look too comfortable in the water even though he passed his tests, no go for a quick taste for scuba. the instructor felt it was ok, maybe he was right, maybe he was wrong, i dont know.

but i'm not going to go all STANDARDS STANDARDS STANDARDS on him just because they exist. different people, different standards. who is to say i'm wrong and they're right?

shrug.

If you are going to pick and choose which rules you follow of the agency you chose to represent as a DM, a professional rating, then you shouldn't be one. Do I agree with all the standards of my agency? No. But I am professional enough and I like my reputation enough, not to break them.

that's one awesome instructor!

People here can get a little too serious sometimes. Everyone has said what I feel, but gee guys, it was in confined water...

No he's not. An awesome instructor would have waited until the pool session was through with his students, and then taken the kid himself. Standards not breached, kid has a phenomenal time, and instructor is a rock star. No charge, no card, just a try-dive within standards and showing proper safety training.

There's another thread right now about a 12 year old newly certed diver whose mom took him on his first dive to 120ft, took on a night dive, where newly OW certed dad lost him, he had to be assisted by a dm because of in-water exhaustion, and Mom thought it was great. If someone doesn't model obeying training and rules, then it just continues.

 

[ZenDiver.3D]

I hope the instructor was the shop owner. As an owner, I would not let my instructors play with my liability like that.
I appreciate the instructors sentiment, but he should not have let a layperson take an untrained person underwater like that.

 

[I Dive]

its a 5' pool for crying out loud.

a tad difficult to drown in one even if you are a 11 year old. you're strapped to a device that can keep you afloat, you have gear that allows you to breathe underwater and you're right beside an experienced diver, who knows at the very least how to inflate your BC to get you floating.

What about taking a breath at 5 feet, holding it, and surfacing?
there is an instructor and DM in the pool all trained to handle a rescue scenario if one should arise.

Hopefully they don't pick and choose which aspects of their rescue training they follow like they apparently do their other training.

diving in the sea with 10 yr old JOW divers is many times more dangerous and yet "the standards" allow this.

I never said this kid shouldn't do SCUBA, my point was how the Instructor went about introducing the kid to it.

diving in the sea with 50 year old unhealthy smokers is dangerous and "the standards" allow this.

What does this have to do with the discussion?

6 year old kids swimming in backyard pools without floatation devices and breathing equipment is dangerous and yet nobody thinks about it twice.

Are those kids breathing compressed air underwater?

why insist that the standards apply to every scenario when in this case, it might be ridiculous to apply them?

Contact your certifying agency and get their thoughts on this. Better yet, request a list from them of when it is ridicilous to follow standards and when it's not...

the legal system may find fault with the instructor because of "the standards" in which case, i think the american legal system is terribly flawed. but lets not get started on that.

I'm not going to bother commenting on this one...

I cannot believe anyone is actually defending this Instructor's decision. His intentions were awesome, but the approach he took is seriously incorrect.

 

[I Dive]

that's one awesome instructor!

People here can get a little too serious sometimes. Everyone has said what I feel, but gee guys, it was in confined water...

He may or may not be an awesome Instructor, but he certainly wasn't awesome in this case. He made a seriously bad decision.

 

[I Dive]

Kudoo's to the instructor for letting the kid play.

This is becoming an on going trend, ecspecially with newbie instructors who paid alot of money, for alot of c- cards that dont mean squat. One little hiccup the person is disqualied. I have seen and heard this repeatedly.

One of the most common is Medical Issues. I get people That tell me that Bob in florida or Randy in maui said " I can't Scuba Dive because I have allergy asthma" Or " I am on Blood Pressure Medication". "They said the doctor wont sign off on me"

It doesn't mean they cant dive. It means they need clearence from thier doctor, And it isnt that freakin hard either.

Another is practicing, " It was really weird so the instructor said I cant do it" Some instructors are becomeing super lazy with thier job.

Do you guys have a clue on how many people I take diving in the above situations, Because I take the time to get Med clearence or take the time to teach them/ Practice with them/ Let them play in the pool. With 0 accidents.

Instructors are DQ'ing people too easily? Congratulations on being the first person I have ever seen or heard with this opinion. Most people feel the opposite, that many instructors are certifying people who have no business being certified...

In this case, I wasnt there and it sounds like like all the critics were'nt either.

I don't need to be there to read what was posted and form an opinion from that. Granted, my opinion can only be as informed as the post was inclusive/accurate, but then again this is also just an Internet forum.

Have you all heard of the " Discover Scuba Experience". Becuase That is what this was. No it wasn't. A DSD is where a certified DM or an Instructor is actually WITH the student, not when they hand a student some gear and walk to other side of the pool while someone else takes the student underwater.

A dm or owsi can teach this in Confined (I'll make that big for you) Water. It is Basically Module 1 of the OW book. From what paldin said he did pretty good on his academics.

It also sounds like Confined water was happening. Since they are at all Pool. There is no Standard That says " the student must do the swim before he enters CW" He Must however do it before they graduate it.

Also what freakin standard was broken? The one about being under supervision of a certified DM or Instructor. Supervison is not being in the same body of water.

He tried the swim and couldn't do it. so now he cant touch SCUBA Equipment under the supervision of professionals with his Father and mother Present. Do you really think a Father/ Mother would Put their child in a position that he had an inkiling would kill his son?

Paladin Did you sign any waivers for your child/ children?? And you Pros with an opinion Read exclusion 11 or 13 of your insurance and educate yourself a little bit.

You Guys Need to go look at yourself in a mirror and remember What got you into Scuba Diving, And remember that.

I don't need to look into the mirror to remember why I got into diving. But, I am curious. How would remembering why you got into diving change a person's opinion on this situation?

I do it everyday, Literally.
So do I. I find it very difficult to shave if I don't.

Paladin bring your son to me Ill help get him thru that swim all on his own for free.
( I am not Paying for the tickets though ;0) )

 

[knotical]

We don't know the agency, nor do we know whether any kind of release was signed on behalf of the younger child. We also do not know how much supervision / direction the instructor gave the child during the course of the experience.
Without such information, we cannot know whether standards were violated.
Paladin954 lists his agency as PADI, but that is not necessarily the instructor's.
If we knew the agency, someone who teaches for that agency might be able to address things like the relevant agency's rules wrt ratios, supervision, and mixing experiences with classes.

And if standards were violated, the instructor either knowingly took a calculated risk, or was not aware. It might be useful for Paladin to have a chat along the lines of this thread with the instructor, or make him aware of the thread.

 

[knotical]

If a liability release were signed (e.g. for Discover Scuba), and the agency is PADI, there might not be a standards violation. The instructor might have been keeping a watchful eye on Junior, even while conducting the OW class.
PADI appears silent about mixing Discover Scuba with Open Water pool sessions.
A combined ratio of 5:1 (four Open Water and one Discover scuba) is acceptable in a pool, <but would not have been if it were in confined open water>.
As long as proper direction and supervision were provided to the 11-year-old, the situation described might be acceptable.

Alternatively, can some tell me specifically what standard was violated?

 

[Paladin]

The instructor involved has known me for about twenty years and we used to dive together until 1993, when I stopped diving. He is the one who, in 1992, upgraded me from my old Basic SCUBA Diver certification of the '70s to my current OW certification. He was teaching SCUBA when the parents of many of this board's members were still in diapers and has never lost a student. Not one, not a single one, of the hundreds of people he has taught has ever been involved in an accident. On any given day, his shop is full of past and current students sitting around sharing stories and doing the SCUBA equivalent of "Hangar Flying."

At one point during the Sunday's class, he had Junior get out of the pool for a few minutes so that I could help him demonstrate old style (no octopus) buddy breathing techniques to the rest of the class.

Junior then got back into the pool and we continued our fun.

Let me clarify something here: Junior snorkels. He is familiar (and comfortable with) fins, mask and snorkel. He has snorkeled places like Twin Quarries and dives down to about twenty feet. He can swim without gear, just not very far. He can easily float and swim on his back for as long as he wants and I have been trying to get him to use this technique for his swim test, which would be perfectly acceptable. But he says this would be cheating and he wants to pass the test, as he says, "Like a man." This is his decision and I respect it.

I did, indeed, sign a liability waiver.

The pool we were in measures 40 feet by 20 feet with depths going from 2 feet to 9 feet. At no time were we more than a few feet from the instructor or DM.

When I first posted this thread, I had no idea that I would have to write a novel, containing all the minute little details of the event, to satisfy the shysters and the bureaucrats.