Unacceptable Instructor Behaviors...

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Let me reiterate something here. None of this is hard. You don't have to be a super instructor to teach great control, in a modicum of time and without ever having to raise your voice or otherwise demean your students. I got that crap when I first started talking about teaching without ever kneeling. If you're feeling that while reading this, then nothing could be further from the truth. Yes, it takes a decision and a commitment. As far as I can tell, this really isn't being taught at any agency level, so you do have to figure it out a bit on your own or read about it here but it's simply not that hard and will make your diving much easier. Here's the conundrum: you won't know just how easy this makes your job until you make that decision to go down this route. Nothing beats having instructors accuse you of teaching a cavern class when it's just an OW course. Oh hell, you'll feel like a super instructor until you remember how much easier this is than the old ways. Again, I'll make this offer. I'll be glad to show how I teach this to any instructor free of charge. Not sure of your trim and buoyancy? Well, this will get you dialed in and enable you to pass it on to your students. Message me in private and we'll figure out a date.
 
Let me reiterate something here. None of this is hard. You don't have to be a super instructor to teach great control, in a modicum of time and without ever having to raise your voice or otherwise demean your students. I got that crap when I first started talking about teaching without ever kneeling. If you're feeling that while reading this, then nothing could be further from the truth. Yes, it takes a decision and a commitment. As far as I can tell, this really isn't being taught at any agency level, so you do have to figure it out a bit on your own or read about it here but it's simply not that hard and will make your diving much easier. Here's the conundrum: you won't know just how easy this makes your job until you make that decision to go down this route. Nothing beats having instructors accuse you of teaching a cavern class when it's just an OW course. Oh hell, you'll feel like a super instructor until you remember how much easier this is than the old ways. Again, I'll make this offer. I'll be glad to show how I teach this to any instructor free of charge. Not sure of your trim and buoyancy? Well, this will get you dialed in and enable you to pass it on to your students. Message me in private and we'll figure out a date.

I was originally taught skills while kneeling on the bottom. I made it through PADI rescue diver thinking i was a great diver and had never been shown the reality of better bouyancy, trim and propulsion. When i began working on my dive supervisor under a different instructor and organization, i was amazed at his control in the water. He would teach an entire class and never come out of trim (even though he had students kneel). As I worked to achieve the same thing, my air consumtion and comfort improved exponentially.
Last fall after being persuaded by many of these forums on SB, I began teaching no kneeling from the start. I love seeing new students in my class performing skills, much better than i did all the way through rescue diver, and staying neutral the whole time (fins tips on bottom for stability is common, but hey... they're brand new to diving)! So thank you to those leading the way in this kind of teaching, and to those who arent yet, I think you'll enjoy the difference if you make the change!
 
So thank you to those leading the way in this kind of teaching, and to those who arent yet, I think you'll enjoy the difference if you make the change!

Those people have been a huge help to my teaching as well. I put a lot of effort in proper weighting and distribution. I try to teach the importance of being still. If it wasn't for social media, who knows where I'd be!
 
Pathetic? Rly? Calling a dive should never, ever be described as being "pathetic". Diving is always optional. There are lots of dives I would make where most would stay out of the water. There are a number others would make where I say "no way". If they are hesitant, ie scared of getting in the water under benign conditions, then you haven't done your job. I bet it's more a factor of the instructor being pathetic rather than the student.

When I get a minor student, their parents and I have a rather frank discussion. If little Jenny doesn't want to dive, they are not allowed to force her. If they can't agree to this, I won't teach their kid. Diving is a personal decision. You don't get to decide for me and I'm not going to pressure you into the water. That's just wrong. Make no doubt about it, my students decide if/when they are going to splash. I'll give them all the input I can, but ultimately it's their decision. I have had students decide not to dive easy dives and that usually means we're going back to the pool. Training is designed to eliminate fear through skills. If they aren't ready for OW and I have them there, then it's my fault and not theirs. I have put them into a situation where they weren't ready emotionally and that's my fault.

Here's another pet peeve of mine: Instructors blaming students for their own shortcomings. I have filled in for instructors on many classes. Often, I am shocked at how poorly the students are diving. In almost every instance the instructor blames the students. No. It's not the students' fault that you have way too many peeps in your class. It's not the students' fault you don't have the patience, insight or skill to teach basic skills. It's just not the students' fault that you don't have neutral buoyancy so you can't teach it. Stop blaming the student for your inability to teach. Figure out what you're doing wrong or get out of the business.

Many years ago, fresh out of my "kneeling phase", I was asked to teach a class of eight in Devil's Den. First, I would never agree to teach a class in there. Too many areas students shouldn't go. Second, eight is too many for efficient teaching. The bigger the class, the more you become a baby sitter and less an instructor. I limit class size to four. However, this was not my class, I'm doing a favor for a buddy, so I'll endure without comment. He tells me that he has this one horrible, horrible student who's too stupid to clear her mask and it's OK if I fail her. Rly? How on earth does an ethical instructor allow a student out of confined water without mastering all their skills. Again, he's only asking me to do two dives with these students, not to critique his teaching prowess. We get there, do a walk through, gear up and splash. The instructor has given me four skills they need to do to be finished and one is mask clearing. We descend to a platform where, without being asked, they all form a kneeling circle. I'm trying to get them off their knees, but kneeling is what they know, so it's not happening. It's obvious who the "horrible student" was as soon as we do the mask clearing. I stop her as she's so stinking anxious that it looks like she's blowing through half of her tank in a minute or two. So we finished the dive and as the students are heading up the steps, I keep her back. I ask her if I can help her with her mask skills and we sit in waist deep water. It's been a while, but I remember that her mask was on impossibly tight. We get it right and within a couple of minutes she's clearing her mask like a pro. On the second dive she clears her mask better than anyone else. What a turnaround. After the dives are done, we're putting up gear and she comes over in tears. According to her, the other instructor never spent a minute working through her issues with mask clearing. He yelled at her and told her if she couldn't do it, she was going to die. Yeah, yeah. He really told her that. He even admitted to telling her that when I told him that she had got it down. He never asked me how I did it.She went from zero to hero not because I'm an amazing instructor. No, I merely spent a few minutes analyzing and correcting her issues on one skill. No magic. No god-like powers. I simply gave a flying flip. No more and certainly no less.

Instructors: If a student looks like crap then it's your fault and not theirs. If a student can't learn a skill, then you're doing it wrong. Stop blaming the student for your own inadequacies. Reinvent yourself. Use the grey matter God gave you. Try a different method. Don't just think outside the box, stop living in one. We have an I2I forum: ask questions. The onus is on you to produce divers that are in control of their dive and free from fear without ever yelling at them or telling them how bad they are.

Sry for the longish posts. I feel very passionate about this.

You didn’t address my point. Actually YOU are deciding for them. You are prepared to veto on the one hand and seem never to get people who needlessly call a dive because you instill such confidence, apparently.

Maybe you don’t have quite the jump from pool to open water we do.

Btw, you ought to take tips from Boulderjohn about interference.
 
You are prepared to veto
I'm the professional. It's my butt on the line if I let them dive in an unsafe (for them) situation. I bet it would only take a bit more input, but I've never had to do that. I feel incredibly comfortable with every decision my students have made. Even the ones you call pathetic.

I get it. You don't want to lose the point for whatever reason. You haven't been on any of my classes and yet you're quite prepared to go down fighting telling me what I do with my students. I'm underwhelmed with the process.

Maybe you don’t have quite the jump from pool to open water we do.
I have no idea what this means. My students have to have mastered their skills to my satisfaction and that includes trim, buoyancy and propulsion before I take them to OW. You can do what you want, but I would feel like I violated my code of ethics allowing a student to graduate confined water if they couldn't do that. You may have a different code of ethics in that regard.

"Never make a decision your student should make" is an axiom I teach by. Don't use it if you don't like it. But please, don't tell me how I teach until you see me in action. That's just not nice.

Last fall after being persuaded by many of these forums on SB, I began teaching no kneeling from the start. I love seeing new students in my class performing skills, much better than i did all the way through rescue diver, and staying neutral the whole time
I wish I could hit "like" a bazillion times on this post. Be like Nike and just do it. You'll be absolutely amazed at how little time it takes after you figure it out.
 
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You didn’t address my point. Actually YOU are deciding for them. You are prepared to veto on the one hand and seem never to get people who needlessly call a dive because you instill such confidence, apparently.

Maybe you don’t have quite the jump from pool to open water we do.

Btw, you ought to take tips from Boulderjohn about interference.
You know Ken, I’ve never had a student speak up, and that’s because I was the instructor, the shop insisted on getting people through it.

This thread has been an eye opener and if I get a student in the future who calls it, then hopefully I’ve changed my approach. However, given that I’ll be using a lake with pool like conditions in terms of depth, viz, and calmness (if the wind is kicking, I’ll reschedule), I won’t have a drastic difference with the open water being Puget Sound. My students will be in dry suits, so the main change is worse viz, and water that is colder by 5 to 10 degrees.
 
(if the wind is kicking, I’ll reschedule),
No. Let them reschedule it. Let them call the dive. Use this as a teaching moment and praise them for making such a bold decision. Every student has to "call" a dive, even if it's a hypothetical dive. I wish I had a real situation where each and every student had to call a dive. Don't waste a valuable learning experience like this.

One of the best lessons was a day when the captain said "If you guys weren't going, I'd certainly not go out in this crap!" He actually said it twice and just as I was about to point it out, one of my students came up to me and asked if his comments were normal. That got us started in a "What do you think?" conversation. They weren't the only students on the boat, and it was basically decided that they would go ask the captain what he meant. After they decided to try again the next day and we were on the dock waving the other class bon voyage, I made the point that if the captain ever suggests that diving wasn't a good idea that day, that just maybe he knew more than we did.

Instructors: Teach your students critical thinking. Make them question the crew and especially the captain. You're not always going to be diving with them, so help them figure out how to keep things fun.

Caveat: the other class had an injury getting off the boat. No one got a dive in that day off of that boat.
 
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I'm the professional. It's my butt on the line if I let them dive in an unsafe (for them) situation. I bet it would only take a bit more input, but I've never had to do that. I feel incredibly comfortable with every decision my students have made. Even the ones you call pathetic.

I get it. You don't want to lose the point for whatever reason. You haven't been on any of my classes and yet you're quite prepared to go down fighting telling me what I do with my students. I'm underwhelmed with the process.


I have no idea what this means. My students have to have mastered their skills to my satisfaction and that includes trim, buoyancy and propulsion before I take them to OW. You can do what you want, but I would feel like I violated my code of ethics allowing a student to graduate confined water if they couldn't do that. You may have a different code of ethics in that regard.

"Never make a decision your student should make" is an axiom I teach by. Don't use it if you don't like it. But please, don't tell me how I teach until you see me in action. That's just not nice.


I wish I could hit "like" a bazillion times on this post. Be like Nike and just do it. You'll be absolutely amazed at how little time it takes after you figure it out.


You appear to be wilfully ignoring the point I and several other have made which is that a student cannot make an informed choice. You seem to say that if the instructor feels the conditions are good but the student, on their first dive, doesn’t then the answer is to let them give up. Personally I try to reassure them that it will be ok and take them in in the gentlest possible way.

The difference we have between the pool and the lake is not about the skills you obsess on but about the water. Vis, temperature and exposure protection are all very challenging for a first time diver in the UK. They are quite challenging for those who already trained in warm water places.

And by the way, you think you Have your ‘butt’ on the line? They think (rightly) that their life is on the line. Sometimes that can make them overly apprehensive.

And I was really asking how you deal with that situation. You know, in a spirit of learning something. Your answer appears to come down to anyone that has this situation is obviously rubbish.
 
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The argument that the student should be trained to thumb a dive if they feel it is too dangerous only works if the student understands enough about the coming dive to feel it is too dangerous.It is more likely that the student is thinking, "OK, here we go! The instructor has chosen this dive site, so it must be fine for me. Let's do it!"
 
I can see where both sides of this discussion are coming from and believe it or not I think you are more in agreement than not.

What Pete is saying is that he gives the students as much information as he can to allow them to think about what constitutes a safe dive, then asks them what their opinion is of a prospective dive. Should they decide to dive or not, it becomes a teaching point where they can discuss how and why they made the decision. If he feels they are making a dangerous decision he will call the dive himself but extend the discussion to take that into account (so they have the knowledge and confidence going forward). He, I think, is trying to make divers who can think the issue through for themselves.

What Ken & Jon seem to be saying is that the student might not have the knowledge to make that call. In a lot of training situations I might tend to agree with you as the instructors often put them selves up as infallible and that their judgement must be trusted. Rather than involve the student in such a decision the decision is made for them. Does that create a diver that can think through it in the future? I suspect not. Would that instructor not be better presenting the information such as vis, currents etc and allowing a conversation about it where the student puts their concerns forward and they make comments regarding those .

Something along the lines of:
Student - the vis seems pretty low at 1-3m.
Instructor - I agree it is not ideal but with good buddy positioning I don't think it will be a problem especially given how well you have been doing so far. (He then reminds the students what he wants in respect of positioning etc as well as reminding them about lost buddy procedure)
Student - Ah I see what you are saying, I'm still a bit nervous about it though.
Instructor - Lets talk through what is making you nervous and how we are working that problem. (Cue a conversation where it is discussed)

Compare that with:
Instructor - Right gear up, lets get on with it.
Student - Looks like the vis is pretty poor.
Instructor - I know best so we are diving - gear up and get in.
Student - Ok. (is nervous about it and doesn't enjoy the dive or slips in to panic as they were on the edge).
 

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