Do we need instructors?
- Thread starter gcbryan
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I would never even think of doing that.
I don't think $60,000 dollars a year qualifies as an excellent businessman!
No, I wouldn't be able to live with myself but anyhow that's just not the way I am, so it's a nonstarter.
The PADI "thang" bores me. All members of the RSTC are in the same boat. Most of us (Recreational Instructors who bother to spend time here on the board) would love to be teaching supercourses to future superdivers. Frankly, I'm happy with my agency. Would I like to be able to put more in to an OWD syllabus? Sure, but there are no customers for that in this neck of the woods. In fact if I wasn't a PADI Instructor I wouldn't get to teach a thang. Just a point in case, yesterday I was asked what I was going to do this weekend and before I could reply, the same guy who asked me the question said: " Now I remember, you're teaching THE PADI, right?".
I'm also looking for work in other places in the world because the market has crashed here, so again my agency is the best one to achieve that goal. I have never handed out an OW card to anyone whose skills I was not totally happy with.
hbhobby
Contributor
I do like the idea of having an option of being able to mentor/train/instruct people on my own terms then have some type of "final exam" by someone independant. I was intorduced to scuba by a big brothers friend who showed me some cool stuff in a pool. I then took it upon myself to do lots of research and with the help of a few garage sales and "stolen air" make lots of dives around 100 or so before I ever got certified. ( I was a poor student with no cash for the $200 (lots in my day) untill I got a college class and student loans paid for it) I felt that the class was just a step so I wouldn't have to steal air. I really learned nothing I didn't already know (from my own research/expirence) in my o/w class, or AOW class or even recsue diver class.
I am an avid rock climber and learned much the same way about climbing (no stolen air there) and have seen "professional" instruction of climbing and have been scared to be in the same vicinity as them. I have taught several people how to rock climb and teach them so that I am comfortable with them belaying me on a climb.
I have also mentored/trained/instructed a few people since those days how to dive and they have gone to certification classes and told me they learned very little if anything from the classes. so mentoring is a great way of producing good divers (I make sure everyone I mentor/train becomes someone I feel comfortable diving with them as a buddy). I would like the idea of having it be like driving, mom and pop teach then go to "an agency" whomever it be, and take a final exam or whatever you want to call it.
so are instructors necessary? No.
should they be available for people who don't have a friend or person to be mentored by? Absolutely.
just my humble yet correct opinion
I am an avid rock climber and learned much the same way about climbing (no stolen air there) and have seen "professional" instruction of climbing and have been scared to be in the same vicinity as them. I have taught several people how to rock climb and teach them so that I am comfortable with them belaying me on a climb.
I have also mentored/trained/instructed a few people since those days how to dive and they have gone to certification classes and told me they learned very little if anything from the classes. so mentoring is a great way of producing good divers (I make sure everyone I mentor/train becomes someone I feel comfortable diving with them as a buddy). I would like the idea of having it be like driving, mom and pop teach then go to "an agency" whomever it be, and take a final exam or whatever you want to call it.
so are instructors necessary? No.
should they be available for people who don't have a friend or person to be mentored by? Absolutely.
just my humble yet correct opinion
Since when?
Garth
Contributor
This is an interesting argument here. I'm a new diver and I was certified by PADI. I enjoyed my instructors with open water and advanced open water. I find it in myself to learn more and more each dive and try to pair myself up with more experienced divers to do so.
I agree with Leapfrog, I make well over 60,000 but don't consider myself a successful business man, in fact, I consider myself an accomplished trauma nurse. You get there if you put in the hours.
Same with diving I suppose, the more dives you do the more you experience. A good instructor there at the beginning can help you start good habbits such as predive checks. I found myself so excited in getting in the water I might forget something. Now I slow it down and do it right. Hopefully as I obtain more and more gear this will help me in the future.
I agree with Leapfrog, I make well over 60,000 but don't consider myself a successful business man, in fact, I consider myself an accomplished trauma nurse. You get there if you put in the hours.
Same with diving I suppose, the more dives you do the more you experience. A good instructor there at the beginning can help you start good habbits such as predive checks. I found myself so excited in getting in the water I might forget something. Now I slow it down and do it right. Hopefully as I obtain more and more gear this will help me in the future.
You don't have to have an instructor to learn how to dive. You can be mentored and in turn mentor other people. The differences are the following:
1. An instructor doesn't give you his or her personal view on diving. We use a syllbus or syllabae that covers a full range of knowledge development, skills and watermanship.
2. When you are certified you get a card from an agency but also with the certifying instructor's name on it. That's an incentive for instructors to do our best. We are subject to fairly rigorous Quality Control, which is "the stick" to make sure we teach the syllabus and you cover everything on the course.
3. We actually have a creed as well as very important professional standards that we are held to as regards our dealings with other people.
4. We tend to be more on the cutting edge of where scuba is going, simply because we have access to more material such as training bulletins and many of us get to see "new developments" in equipment and training materials before non-pro level divers do.
5. Instructors do an Instructor's course and in many cases a completely independent exam (depends on the agency). Many non instructors and instructors from the old days think that course is pretty useless. Some of us would like to see a more difficult exam. Whatever, it's a training and examination process that sets an instructor apart from other divers with regards to teaching diving.
6. Although I won't get any applause for this statement, YOU DON'T HAVE TO BE THE BEST DIVER IN THE WORLD TO BE A GOOD INSTRUCTOR. Read what I said carfeully., please. I am NOT saying that a bad diver can be a good instructor. What I am saying is that there are divers out there whom admire but many of them make or would make lousy instructors.
7. In many walks of life there are people that think they know it better than the pros. I don't know one single guy who isn't a better football (or whatever sport you are into) coach than the guy on the field. So my take is that if someone really thinks that, why don't they train as a coach and start coaching high school footbll or the Little Leagues or whatever? That's more intellectually honest. Can your Dad take you to the park? Sure. Is he going to turn you into an NFL quaterback if you don't move on and get the right training and education?
8. By interacting with a greater number of students in different conditions, an instructor has a wider foundation with which to work than a friend who is a mentor.
9. If diving hasn't become federally or state regulated it's because it's self regulating. If people start learning without going through a Teaching Status instructor, be sure the government will intervene and start controlling scuba. A key reason for this is that while you are training with me, my mandatory insurance policy covers both of us.
10. The idea of "your family member or friend teaches you" and then you do an independent exam is self defeating because the Examiner would have to take you through all the required skills and do the checkout dives with you. t the end of the day, what you gained on the apples, you lost on the bananas. If I was such an Examiner, I would expect to make a lot more than do on teching you the course.
1. An instructor doesn't give you his or her personal view on diving. We use a syllbus or syllabae that covers a full range of knowledge development, skills and watermanship.
2. When you are certified you get a card from an agency but also with the certifying instructor's name on it. That's an incentive for instructors to do our best. We are subject to fairly rigorous Quality Control, which is "the stick" to make sure we teach the syllabus and you cover everything on the course.
3. We actually have a creed as well as very important professional standards that we are held to as regards our dealings with other people.
4. We tend to be more on the cutting edge of where scuba is going, simply because we have access to more material such as training bulletins and many of us get to see "new developments" in equipment and training materials before non-pro level divers do.
5. Instructors do an Instructor's course and in many cases a completely independent exam (depends on the agency). Many non instructors and instructors from the old days think that course is pretty useless. Some of us would like to see a more difficult exam. Whatever, it's a training and examination process that sets an instructor apart from other divers with regards to teaching diving.
6. Although I won't get any applause for this statement, YOU DON'T HAVE TO BE THE BEST DIVER IN THE WORLD TO BE A GOOD INSTRUCTOR. Read what I said carfeully., please. I am NOT saying that a bad diver can be a good instructor. What I am saying is that there are divers out there whom admire but many of them make or would make lousy instructors.
7. In many walks of life there are people that think they know it better than the pros. I don't know one single guy who isn't a better football (or whatever sport you are into) coach than the guy on the field. So my take is that if someone really thinks that, why don't they train as a coach and start coaching high school footbll or the Little Leagues or whatever? That's more intellectually honest. Can your Dad take you to the park? Sure. Is he going to turn you into an NFL quaterback if you don't move on and get the right training and education?
8. By interacting with a greater number of students in different conditions, an instructor has a wider foundation with which to work than a friend who is a mentor.
9. If diving hasn't become federally or state regulated it's because it's self regulating. If people start learning without going through a Teaching Status instructor, be sure the government will intervene and start controlling scuba. A key reason for this is that while you are training with me, my mandatory insurance policy covers both of us.
10. The idea of "your family member or friend teaches you" and then you do an independent exam is self defeating because the Examiner would have to take you through all the required skills and do the checkout dives with you. t the end of the day, what you gained on the apples, you lost on the bananas. If I was such an Examiner, I would expect to make a lot more than do on teching you the course.
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