I'm a little confused. I start my Rescue Diver tomorrow, and there was no mention of Search and Recovery being a pre-requisite. IIRC, I did Deep and Nav (required), PP buoyancy (a waste of time as it turned out), Drift (in the St. Lawrence, required for those doing AOW there), and Wreck (we just dove one).
The Deep and Nav both had real activities to do, and in my case the drift as well, we had to practice deploying an SMB and keeping close to a wall and not drifting into a shipping lane. The w/e was well structured, with the drift being the last dive: after watching others do all the skills, another student and I did a wall dive in the river with the instructor observing at a distance, we had to execute the dive and do our safety stop using the SMB on our own.
PPB was a waste, I don't think fin pivots next to a wreck are helpful. I think that one is really up to the instructor, some might give you a lot of value.