Becoming an instructor without any real dives

[sdmaize]

I work with/for a dive shop here in the midwest and have similar complaints of my own regarding the training and certification of certain people as divecons, etc. I'm in the process of getting my divecon cert and find it disturbing that a few of the divecons who have already passed and are training new divers and conducting scuba reviews don't really have enough experience... some of them were just doing the bare minimum 20 feet at 20 mins to get their dive count up and this is in a lake with 5-15 foot vis (on a lucky day at that depth). In my mind, I think the diveshop owner/instructor should be watching this. They seem to be favoring her because she owes them money and the utilities companies arent going to be granting them more time to pay their bills...

I have less dives but have been diving in a variety of conditions as opposed to her with her 20 foot/ 20 mins dives. kinda irks me a bit

 

[jviehe]

If anything there is a quality assurance problem at the IDC level (and not recognized by PADI) as some people are becoming instructors who arent actually meeting the standards of the course (and possibly course leading up to). But consider that in AOW and specialities at least, and probably a lot of the certified assitant dives, a IDC candidate is getting a lot of experience. You dont exactly have your hand held during those dives. For the most part you are diving on your own, for fun. You just happen to do a skill now and then.

Regardless, yes it is possible to become an Instructor without ever doing an unsupervised dive. I also thinks its rare for this to happen.

 

[OldNSalty]

Thinking about this and really it isn't different from a lot of other teaching. I know some professors that have never left academia in their entire career. How many K-12 teachers have any real world experience?

My son's 2nd grade teacher has no real world outisde of teaching...The academics of 2nd grade really aren't that challenging...

 

[Thalassamania]

Clearly someone who has never taught second grade, I used to share your opinon, now that I've actually done it, just as a substitute, I think differently.

 

[cloudswinger]

But are you talking about the academics of 2nd grade, or the classroom management skills to teach a 2nd grade class? I would feel perfectly comfortable with teaching my child 2nd grade academics, but not necessarily a whole roomful of 2nd graders.

 

[OldNSalty]

OK, neither mine nor mikemil’s analogies were very good.
I am on the side that thinks an instructor needs to be an experienced diver, not a zero to hero result of a scuba factory. I understand that some people are good teachers with no training and I understand that some people are great divers right out of OW but I have a hard time believing that someone with no real dive experience should be teaching.
Rarely do great athletes make good coaches nor do great coaches come from great athletes. For me, I don’t want the guy that jumped in the pool on his first day and had perfect bouncy. I want the guy who tells me he had to work for a long time to get it down and can share with me what he did that worked and what didn’t.
I also don’t want the first time an instructor encounters an emergency to be with one of his students. I want the guy who tells me that he was a rescue diver and dive master for awhile before going instructor and that in that time he saw some people do some stupid stuff but he now knows how to handle it.
I know, unlike most professional organizations, scuba agencies make their money by turning out instructor and that’s where the incentive is (and the problem). I also know that the thought of living the Magnum PI life style as a scuba instructor is a bit overwhelming to new divers and so we are going to get people in leadership that shouldn’t be.
The argument that some (read few) people are naturally good is justification for establishing such low standards is pretty inane. Medical schools don’t look at the stats and say ‘1 in 1000 makes a good surgeon with almost no formal medical training therefore we will cut surgery internships down to 6 months.’ No, the 1 in 1000 still takes the full course and comes out a superstar among doctors but the other 999 are still good doctors.
For those of you too young to get the Magnum PI reference-sorry kids and ‘Stay off my lawn’

 

[knotical]

Going back to the OP:

Is this a possible scenario?

Highly unlikely.
If someone took all the specialties listed in the PADI instructor manual, one could become a DM (but not instructor) and never do any non-training dives.
Adding up all the dives associated with OW, AOW, Rescue, 22 specialties, and DM internship, I get a total of 74. That's 26 shy of the 100 minimum for instructor. Perhaps With enough distinctive specialties (instructor authored, but PADI approved) it might be remotely possible. Or perhaps it could be done by doing a lot more internship dives than required. Or perhaps by taking courses with another agency. Or ...

 

[Scott]

Clearly someone who has never taught second grade, I used to share your opinon, now that I've actually done it, just as a substitute, I think differently.

Why this strikes me as hilarious is beyond me. Can you imagine Thal battling it out with a second grade class?

In all sincerity my hats off to you Thal.

 

[Thalassamania]

I've taken a new job, I teach the Gifted and Talent program at our local elementary school and I also teach remedial math programs. Its an interesting a very rewarding job that I am enjoying alot. We had a very interesting discussion about how an underwater habitat works (pressure, partial pressure, oxygen effects, no-d limits for a new storage depth, etc.) in the G/T class.