Drift Diving scares me.

[darren_uk]

I agree with everything you said except what is in bold face... PPB class is a waste of money and those skills should be taught and mastered before a certification card is ever issued! If you hire a good instructor you will never need PPB class... Hine sight, we can see she didnt have one and now this or some other training maybe necessary to fix the problem.

Yes and no.


Under the PADI system, all a PADI Instructor is is a facilitator of the PADI Training System; it is actually the PADI Training System that is training the student. And therefore as long as the Performance Requirements are met then the student can move on. Rightly or wrongly, this is the PADI System and we know that the PADI System is criticised and praised by various schools of thought. The PPB course is for those divers that want more training; and from a PADI Business of Diving point of view, it's a speciality that will count towards the Advanced Open Water as well as be another certification / income for the instructor/school. If an instructor wants to go above and beyond the training during Open Water Diver then in my opinion that is OK (as long as no standards are breached) although I suspect there might be "scope" and interest levels of the student to consider.


Perhaps in other training systems buoyancy is covered differently before certifications are given, but I wouldn't know as I'm only training in the PADI system.

 

[Bubbletrubble]

If an instructor wants to go above and beyond the training during Open Water Diver then in my opinion that is OK (as long as no standards are breached) although I suspect there might be "scope" and interest levels of the student to consider.

Perhaps in other training systems buoyancy is covered differently before certifications are given, but I wouldn't know as I'm only training in the PADI system.

@darren_uk: I've spoken with a number of PADI instructors who are loathe to teach anything beyond the explicit PADI curriculum on account of liability concerns. I've pressed them on several occasions to teach gas management skills (beyond "be back on the surface with 500 psi") to basic OW students and even advanced OW students, but they are reluctant to do so. It's an unfortunate consequence of how PADI structures its classes, its philosophy of teaching, and the litigiousness of our society. Perhaps it also has something to do with the instructors' confusion about the extent to which PADI would support them in the event of a lawsuit.

If I ever chose to go down the dive pro route, this would be one of the reasons why I wouldn't want to affiliate myself with PADI. I would want more freedom to add specific elements to the curriculum and revise how certain concepts are presented. Moreover, I've had encounters with a few PADI instructors who were not good/safe divers. I'm not sure I would want to be part of their "club." Not only did those instructors seem downright ignorant about important dive safety issues but they also harbored a myopic, narrow-mindedness about how to teach in general. Those individuals seemed to have more ego than innate teaching ability. (In fact, if you review this thread, you might see more than one example of this). I realize that with a large, global instructor population there are going to be a few bad apples in the bunch. Perhaps I've just been unlucky. I don't know.

I hope the OP understands that just because she may hold a certification with a given agency (e.g., PADI or NAUI or SSI), she shouldn't restrict herself to seeking out dive training from only those instructors affiliated with that agency. Choose the best instructor regardless of agency affiliation. The quality of the learning experience is far more important than working towards an achievement like PADI's Master Scuba Diver rating.

 

[darren_uk]

Yeah I think I also share your point of view too Bubbletrouble.


I thought again about this and have another example that I think reflects what you've just said.


When I was a DSD Leader (for those that don't know: this is a PADI Divemaster who has done the bolt-on to allow them to give DSDs, PADI's trial dive) who then went to my local Course Director for the IDC, I explained that the way my previous school was teaching DSDs was Confined Water 1 from the Open Water Diver course. This allowed that school (the owner/instructor) to given financial credit if the trial diver got the bug and signed up for their Open Water Diver course on the back of the DSD.


According to the Standards, there is a difference between a DSD and Confined Water 1, albeit only one difference:
- Alternate Air

Putting it another way (so I can give this story some context/perspective) a DSD (in open water but we did this even though we were in a swimming pool) is:
- BCD operation
- partial mask flood
- regulator purge (blast method + purge button)
- regulator recovery from behind the shoulder (arm sweep)
Confined Water 1 adds:
- Alternate air: have student kneel facing with each other and take it in turns to signal out of air, secure their buddy's alternate air and when they're ready (they're still breathing from their own reg which is remaining in their mouth until they're ready to put the alternate air into their mouth) and so on. I mention this just to put it into context about how safe the skill was.


So that's a bit of back story. I wanted to check this with PADI as my new Course Director had mentioned something similar to what you just said. So I called PADI EMEA up in Bristol (I'm in the UK) and got put through to Training and happened to speak with a lovely guy who happened to be head of quality management of training (who happened to be on my IE too - really lovely chap). He explained the following:


He was confident that I was handling the skill very safely, however should that rare occasion occur and just if the student wants to pop to the surface, and just in case they breath-hold (despite the briefing) and in the unlikely event they suffer from a Lung Over Expansion (despite it being just below the surface in the swimming pool) and should it go to court, I need to be aware that a good lawyer will always try to find ways why it was my fault - and they will immediately pick up on the fact that a DSD doesn't cover alternate air. I'd then be in a world of poo.



Another quick story:

On one of the DVDs that came with my IDC Crew Pak was a re-enactment of a lawsuit where a diver died. The instructor had taken the students to 32m as opposed to the 30m. The lawyers commenting on the legal position of the instructor said that if an incident was to occur, it's better to be inside other standards rather than be marginally outside them. Your opponent's good lawyer would use this against you.



So I'd say you're right. And despite me saying it'd be OK to go above and beyond as long as standards aren't breached, I'd have to add that serious caution and discern needs to be exercised as one will always have to work out in their heads how they'd handle a situation in court should an incident occur. Personally, I want to remain solidly inside standards and curriculum not only to be a good role model, and also to give the student what they've paid for (a PADI Open Water Course or whatever course I'm teaching) but also to keep myself safe in the courtroom in the unlikely event an incident should occur.



An example of where it would be OK to go beyond the curriculum is that example (in this thread? it's been another thread that I've commented on) where the whole "looking up" in mask flooding catches the new student out and often causes some discomfort where water trickles into their nose; in fact I've changed this to "lifting your chin up" rather than "looking up" because I remember when I was a student, I couldn't work out why I'd want to be watching the surface when mask clearing And then in that particular thread it was explained that divers don't dive on their knees ordinarily and the whole raising the chin would actually be causing the diver to look ahead from a looking down position (because the diver swims horizontally); a contributor to that thread explained that he gets divers to do a mask clear from a fin-pivot and even had an article published in Q2 2011 of the Undersea Journal (PADI's professional membership magazine for those that don't know). These days I explain on the surface that the lifting of the chin is to empty the mask of that little bit of water that's left in the lens and nose pockets, and I demonstrate by holding my mask in my hand and tipping water from it, showing the orientation that the mask needs to be in to get rid of that last cm / half-inch of water.



This is in comparison to teaching additional skills during Open Water which I wouldn't want to do.


And on the subject of PPB, the student's paying for a block of time (instructor time and pool time) during all courses so during Open Water Diver, why give additional free teaching when that doesn't make sense from a business perspective. In a similar way that one wouldn't do the entire Confined Water 1-5 during a DSD "afternoon".



I've waffled on long enough

 

[dbulmer]

"why give additional free teaching when that doesn't make sense from a business perspective."

From a UK perspective, it's quite simple.

You want to encourage your students to associate the instructor with a committment to their individual needs as students.

Any student wishing to learn to dive in the UK is a brave soul and should be cherished by the educator - it's often easier to keep in touch with ex students than to seek new people.

If a student feels the instructor is not prepared to adapt to their needs they will find someone who does. It's right to comply with the standards of the agency you represent but at the same time you also have to keep the interests of the individual student in mind.

 

[FF93USAFA]

A lot of good advice on here. FWIW, you could also walk the 10 feet over to my cube when I'm in town and tell me you want to hit the pool at the shop or Clear Springs to just have a slow, lazy day going over skills and just enjoy making bubbles.