Instructor Professionalism

[cerich]

that instructor

This was on Koh Tao, Thailand. I had done several rec courses with other schools there. But this was the first time I had ever dived with this DS and the first time I ever tried a Tec course.

is there for his ego, not his students IMHO.

That they are also a douche seems the icing on the cake.

We all have different teaching styles, and I can be a little tough,(if you aren't where you need to be I will let you know, and we won't advance until you are ready and I can be a bit blunt, but also try and clearly articulate what and how we can get there) but what you describe is well outside a reasonable bell curve.

TDI#17 (Instr, Instr Trainer and Evual for a bunch of tech stuff)

 

[cerich]

I will say that my SDI/TDS Solo course that myself and a buddy took this past May was both strict and fair.

On the final dive of the course, the instructor asked us if it was OK for him to "ghost" us. We asked what that meant and he simply said..... " Are you OK if I "test" you with unexpected surprises on this dive". We said "sure".

Even though we knew what what was basically coming.....it was still "interesting" to have an instructor come up from behind and turn off my primary gas, pull off a fin and remove my mask at the same time......then once we recovered to signal for us to shoot our DSMB's. It was kinda like the "final exam" and was a great confidence builder.

That instructor should NOT be teaching.

You aren't in a military course, and harassment drills ("it was still "interesting" to have an instructor come up from behind and turn off my primary gas, pull off a fin and remove my mask at the same time") are NOT required to make you confident and prepared divers.

If I witness a tech instructor doing that not only would they hate my guts after I talked with them, they would further hate my guts after I QA'd them.

 

[cerich]

is this "Realistic" training? How often have divers suffered three failures like this at the same time?

Can you imagine the field day an ambulance chasing tort lawyer would have with this should these forced failures cause a fatality or an uncontrolled escape to the surface resulting in DCS or AGE?

I think that behavior is irresponsible.

agree, and darn if we even agree that much.. LOL (love ya brother)

 

[Capt Jim Wyatt]

agree, and darn if we even agree that much.. LOL (love ya brother)

Hah!! Love U 2!!

 

[rongoodman]

Geez guys, get a room!

 

[NW Dive Dawg]

I will say that my SDI/TDS Solo course that myself and a buddy took this past May was both strict and fair. On the final dive of the course, the instructor asked us if it was OK for him to "ghost" us. We asked what that meant and he simply said..... " Are you OK if I "test" you with unexpected surprises on this dive". We said "sure".

That instructor should NOT be teaching.

You aren't in a military course, and harassment drills

Jeez.... lighten up dude. There was no military angle or harassment involved and all was completely agreed to upfront. Our instructor was one of the most layed back and nicest guys you'd ever meet.

 

[Waterwulf]

Yes, Stress Drills are an important part of any training for any activity that can easily cost you your life or somebody else's. It teaches the student to think while things are going wrong instead of just screaming. I took my first underwater breath in about 1968 and have dove in oceans, lakes, rivers, canals, sewer pipes and other assorted crap holes. Things went wrong on occasion and the training is what made the difference in walking away or not.

Bad stuff happens. Sometimes it happens really fast and if you don't react quickly and correctly, somebody gets hurt. Very rarely does anybody have time to research how to stop a bleeder or do CPR. People sometimes react strangely in bad situations. Stress Drills train students to cope with stressful situations. Claiming that it's superfluous is ignoring rational common sense. Crap happens! You can not train for every single possibility but you can train to be able to cope with the stress.

Some sports activities have so much stress training that it seems like it's all nothing but Stress Drills. I took up Parachuting in 1982. I took the Solo course, not the tandem jumping. That was nothing but Stress Drills for a week. It all paid off on my very first jump. It was not a jump though. It was a fall. I fell off the friggin' door ledge and fell out of the aircraft at four thousand feet and went into a violent tumble. A tumble is a death sentence. The Instructors had trained us for that with hours of Stress Drills hanging from the "rack" so I was able to get it under control and safely deploy my canopy before I ran out of air space. Stress Drills properly traught save lives.

 

[rjack321]

But what I found even stranger was the response of my classmates. Although, this behavior met the textbook definition of bullying, they normalized it. One even said to me "I have seen other technical instructors act this way, it's normal in Technical Diving".

Unfortunately it has been all too common for decades.

Should I be looking for another tech instructor

Yes absolutely, interview them beforehand. Also check references with past students, especially people outside of the 20s to 40yo male macho bracket: women, people of color, overweight, 50yo+ students, etc.

 

[boulderjohn]

I had a tech instructor such as described, and I easily figured out from conversations that he had learned from his own instructors, some of whom are well known.

Here is a description of his tactics. I was diving with a buddy, both of us using doubles. As was typical, the instructor shut my buddy's air off, so my buddy signaled OOA, and I donated. When I inhaled from my alternate, I got nothing. I instantly realized my instructor had shut off my left post to simulate a left post roll off. We had never even been briefed on a left post roll off--I had read about it on my own. (That was his way of having us learn about potentially fatal problems--by experiencing one before we knew what they were.) I reached back and turned on the left post. No problem.

I later learned that he did the same thing with another buddy pair, and it turned out differently. The one with the left post roll off panicked and started to ascend rapidly to the surface, ripping the donated regular out of the other diver's mouth. I guess it was a real mess that almost resulted in a double drowning. The instructor really lucked out, because he would have had no defense in the ensuing lawsuit. No agency supports this sort of behavior.

In their History of NAUI, Al Tilman (et. al.) described the 1960 Houston gathering of independent instructors that led to the creation of NAUI. They were shocked to see that some of those instructors were harassing students by pulling off masks, shutting off the air, etc. They decided that the students did not get much benefit from it. The people who benefitted with the instructors, who seemed to be having a lot of fun doing it.

 

[johndiver999]

Swearing underwater! That is intolerable, I would report it.