The Worse Class In The World!!!!!

[double125's]

Its not just a insurance liability issue, Instructers are responsible for the lives of these individuals. If you fail to train these folks and they get injured or killed you are to blame. They may not have taken the classes seriously but you still gave them a card which allows them to get air fills and dive unsupervied.

 

[MikeFerrara]

I had two students (husband and wife) show up to their first classroom session unprepared last week. Well, it was the first night and I executed plan B which is to catch them up reinforece the need to take some resposibility in your own training process. If they show up unprepared tinight I will execute plan C and that is to send them home so the other students can spend their class time the way it's intended.

I have, in the past made all the mistakes other instructors make. That's the way I was tought. What could have happened has since scared the hell out of me. The things I've seen since I was trained as a DM and instructor have led me to believe that due to not knowing what I didn't know I was (as our students) set up for failure and potentially a very painfull one at that.

I'm certain that the instructors of the students who have recently been injured feel bad. I believe some of these instructors are products of the same system failures that the students are. I'm certain that they are very confused as to what went wrong. I'm sure they believe they did things exactly as they were tought and things should have turned out ok.

Just like the DM who started this thread. He didn't have a clue.

 

[hargettdds]

The unforunate thing here is that this kind of thing goes on all the time. I think this one is a troll however because he has not even come back to stand up for himself. But it is a good topic anyway. It sounds like a resort course only WITH a C card. This guy is a DM and he doesn't know how to spell the name of comon equipment. RIGHT!

ANALOGY:
Someone doesnt know how to use their hands and in one week, I certify them to be an expert grenade thrower.

 

[diverbrian]

Kiwi may be a DM, but the English spoken in NZ is a little different than that spoken in the States, Canada, or Great Britain for that matter. I don't judge foreign posters by their spelling skills. I am also known to make typos and misprints once in a while myself.

Yes, I noticed that the writing skills weren't the best in the world. But that didn't change the basic attitude of the class and staff. This is a situation that happens world over right now and it should be addressed. If I get stuck buddied up with somebody trained like this, my vacation could get to be a little too "interesting" for my taste and more importantly "no fun.

See the "Buddy from Hell" thread and anyone will understand why divers follow these threads, troll or not!

 

[neil]

Standards do not allow the instructor to move on to another confined water dive without finishing a prior one.

If you are talking about a PADI course, IMHO,this is one of the failings of the system. If I'm teaching a NAUI course and a student has a problem with any skill, I can move ahead and let them practice the skill to mastery through the other sessions, without beating them up on a skill that will just take them a little longer than some.

You also cannot proceed to open water without successfully completing the watermanship tests (float & 200' swim). to progress beyond their ability.

It SHOULD be that way but it's not. "At some point prior to certification the inst. must document that OW and JR ow diver candidates complete (waterskill assessment). All students must demonstrate that they can maintain themselves in water too deep to stand up in prior to Dive 2."

Neil

 

[Walter]

""At some point prior to certification the inst. must document that OW and JR ow diver candidates complete (waterskill assessment). All students must demonstrate that they can maintain themselves in water too deep to stand up in prior to Dive 2.""

WOW! That's crazy!

Y standards won't allow me to start in water teaching (including pool) of SCUBA until the student has passed an entry test which includes a 200 yd swim. The exit requirement is 300 yds.

 

[Groundhog246]

This is a really excellent example of why the owner of the LDS I support, no longer does PADI certifications. He strongly objects to the allowing of weekend courses. In his shop, it's 5 classes/pool sessions over 5 weeks. Extra classes/pool sessions if you're having trouble with a skill(s) often 1 on 1 with the instructor. Max of 6 students in a class. If you showed up the first class without having completed the required reading, you will be informed that you must complete it all and the next assigned section by the 2nd class or you will be bumped to another class (and start at class 1 again). I attended the last OW session as my wife was doing AOW and our son OW. Of 17 OW students, 14 got cards. 1 student was asked to spend some more time in the pool plus more OW dives and 2 (including our son) have to make one more OW dive. The biggest problem was COLD. Water temps were 42F. In my sons case he was chilled and called dive 4 after about 3 minutes. His instructor actually offered a positive opinion of his calling as being the "responisble" thing to do (the LDS owner was not so thrilled). I was not privy to the details of the other 2 students. In what I thouhgt was a nice gesture, so as not to single out those who have more work to do, ALL were handed out their certificates, but for those needing more work, they aren't signed off. And off course they don't get a card issued until it's all done and signed.
The original poster's class sounds like complete farce. I'd suspect one of those guaranteed or your money back places.

 

[Phish-phood]

Sounds like the way my course was run. Four classroom sessions and four + pool sessions with the OW being a weekend away whenever you/instructor felt you were ready to do it.

On my pool sessions there was eight starting out, one didn't make it through the first pool session as she really hated it, three were a mother and her son and daughter, the daughter was the one who did all the work and explained everything to her mother who hadn't read the book but just filled in the knowledge reviews.

By the time we were ready to go on our OW there were only three of us from the original eight and two other guys from a previous course who hadn't been ready at the time. One of the girls completed the first day with no problems, all the skills and dealt with the cold water 4 degrees but on the second day just couldn't handle the cold and called it, leaving me and three lads. On the fourth dive I stuck it out for twenty minutes before calling it and my reasons for calling it were gloves and hood too big, mask flooding too much because it kept slipping off with the hood, and drysuit flooded badly after doing the hover at the start of the dive because I had been given a suit that was too big for me. My instructor signed me off though because I had done all the required skills to a required level but also cause I had had the sense to call a dive I wasn't happy with he felt I showed all the signs of being a responsible diver.

First thing after my OW before diving again - I bought my own hood, mask, fins, gloves and I rent a drysuit that fits and don't just take what I am given. Makes all the difference.

 

[scubaroyster]

neil once bubbled...

If you are talking about a PADI course, IMHO,this is one of the failings of the system. If I'm teaching a NAUI course and a student has a problem with any skill, I can move ahead and let them practice the skill to mastery through the other sessions, without beating them up on a skill that will just take them a little longer than some.

It SHOULD be that way but it's not. "At some point prior to certification the inst. must document that OW and JR ow diver candidates complete (waterskill assessment). All students must demonstrate that they can maintain themselves in water too deep to stand up in prior to Dive 2."

Neil

Neil,
PADI lets an instructor rearrange skills within a CW dive to give some flexability to the instructor, but you cannot go onto the next CW dive until you have completed all the skills in a prior CW dive. No reason to go to past CW 1 if student can't recover or clear a mask in CW 1. We don't teach regulator recovery before teaching the skill to remove, replace, and clear a regulator. The skill sets build on each other and mastery of the skills are necessary as the training becomes more complex. What happens if you let them in water too deep to stand up and they accidently flood their mask or spit out the regulator, never having mastered those skills? Sounds like you're the one who is in a rush to pass a student through the skills to get them into the OW dives.

With PADI, it is that way with the swim test. You cannot go to open water until you verify that the student can swim. Even the resort course to allow guided tours down to 30 feet require the instructor to verify watermanship skill along with the basic CW 1 skills before open water.

And for Groundhog, PADI doesn't make LDS teach short weekend courses. They don't prevent it, but they don't require anyone to rush a course through. If there is any rushing people through a course, that's the choice of the LDS and/or instructor. The only thing PADI does is specify four options on sequencing, and allows self study and perscriptive teaching/review. All options require testing of knowledge. All skills will be verifyed by an instructor. Only surface skills in open water and skin diver skills in confined water can be evaluated by the AI. DM's are not allowed to introduce a skill nor evaluate the skill.

 

[Walter]

"PADI lets an instructor rearrange skills within a CW dive to give some flexability to the instructor"

Very little flexibility.

"The skill sets build on each other and mastery of the skills are necessary as the training becomes more complex."

A great concept! That's why I don't introduce SCUBA until the third pool session. Students are not ready for SCUBA until they have the basics mastered. I believe you should be comfortable with no mask breathing, mask clearing, 5 different kicking techniques (flutter, frog, dolphin, scissor and sculling) and skin diving before you ever touch a tank and regulator.