In the past few months, I have been interested in teaching a couple new classes. So like a good student, I sat down and did my research and found a few instructor trainers. I called one of them up and started asking my questions about the class, how he teaches it, his philosophy, etc. As the conversation started to turn about how he teaches his class, I could tell that my questions were starting to make him uncomfortable. As we were discussing, he says that he routinely exceeds the training standards set by the agency. This was something that he seemed proud of and it piqued my interest. So I asked “How do you exceed standards?”. He kept saying how he has certified X amount of divers at this level, been doing it for X years, etc. So I keep asking how does he exceed the standards. Ultimately, he grew uncomfortable talking about it and eventually changed the subject.
As I pondered this discussion, I started to think about exceeding standards. Now, I’ve always tried to go above and beyond what is written in the course outlines. I consider myself a diving instructor that does exceed standards. So I asked myself that same question, “How do I exceed standards?”. So this article is about how a student can evaluate if their prospective instructor(s) exceed standards.
1) Get a copy of the course standards. In order to know what the minimums you will be doing for the class, you need to know what the agency requires it’s instructors to teach. You can then use this to compare what the perspective instructor will be teaching you. I put all current outlines for the TDI courses that I teach on my web site Precision Diving Forms. If you would like course outlines for classes not listed, you can contact me and I will send them to you.
2) Find out how often the perspective instructor makes modifications to his/her class. Just because someone has a lot of teaching experience doesn’t make them an effective instructor if they are not continually reviewing how they teach their courses and not trying to improve how they teach over the years. Ask to see a revision history for any slides, extra material, etc the instructor has created. Everytime I make a change to a course outline, slide(s), or skills on a dive I keep a running history to show how my course(s) evolved. Training agencies will tweak their course outlines, but an instructor who is striving to exceed training standards will do a post-class evaluation on how well they presented the material, course content, evaluation procedures, etc on every class they teach. They first thing I do after I teach a class is process the certification, assuming it was earned. Then I write up notes on how well the class went, my self-evaluation of my performance, etc. If I have a class that spans multiple days, I will do this at the end of each day. It is important for me to document everything that went on in my class so I can learn from it for the next class.
3) Ask why kind of training your perspective instructor has had in the area you are pursuing. Many training agencies allow instructors to simply apply to teach a specialty course. There are many instructors out there who have never done the dives in a specific area, but are able to teach it. For example, if you are looking for a dry suit class, you wouldn’t want an instructor who most dives in a wet suit. If you are looking for a tech instructor, you wouldn’t want someone who is diving single tank rigs most of the time. These are just some simple examples, but you get the point. Find out your perspective instructors experience in the course you are wanting to take. Do everything in you power to find out this information, many instructors may not be 100% honest with their diving experience.
4) Find instructors who are professional educators. Many instructors are not full-time instructors. Not even the ones who own dive stores. They have to divide their time between a day job (working in an office or running the dive store) and teaching. When an instructor cannot give 100% of their work time, then their courses will reflect that. If we look at dive store owners, they are extremely busy people. They have to manage the store in addition to running classes. This is related to #2 above. If someone doesn’t have much time to spend reviewing their classes, they can’t continually improve them and will teach the same thing over and over. When I am not teaching diving, I am diving. When I am not diving, I teach business and computer classes at a local college. Educating people is what I do. So I am continually searching for new ways to educate my students (diving and college). By spending quite a bit of time on this, I can focus my non-teaching time on how to be a better instructor.
5) Passion. Anybody who is seeking out continuing dive education is passionate about the sport. Instructors need to be equally passionate. Gauging an instructors passion for diving is very difficult. Some say that if an instructor is continuing their diving education, they are passionate about the sport. Others say if they are diving a lot, they are passionate. Both can be true, but determining the motives behind those two is where the tricky part comes in. If an instructor is always taking instructor level courses, then they may only be motivated by money from teaching this new class. If they are diving a lot, they may only be diving while teaching classes. Find out where the perspective instructor is diving. If an instructor is passionate about diving, he or she will dive almost anywhere and at anytime. In my area, we have this wonderful little quarry, (Haigh Quarry). It is used mostly for dive training, but it is a fun place to dive as well. Many people refuse to do many fun dives at the quarry. They feel there is not much to see, it’s boring, etc. I love diving every chance I get. Even though I’ve spent hundreds, if not thousands, of hours underwater at our quarry, it never gets old for me. I enjoy going there because I enjoy the activity of diving. For me, there is no bad dive site. Just varying degrees of good.
6) Check the references and the references of the references. Confused? Don’t be. Firstly, you should ask the perspective instructor for a list of references. This list shouldn’t be their best friends. It should be a list of people who can articulate the good and bad about the instructor. As a perspective student, you should be an informed consumer. You should know the best qualities of your perspective instructor as well as their short comings. Be wary of references who only rave about an instructor as they may not be fully educated/informed. If needed, find people that know that reference and ask about them. Regardless of what you choose to do, take references with a grain of salt.
All of these combined will give you an indication if your perspective instructor actually goes above and beyond minimum standards. It is easy for an instructor to add a dive or two and call that exceeding standards. But if there is no content or education behind those extra dives, it isn’t really exceeding standards in the true spirit. Keep in mind, in most dive classes, you will most likely do an extra dive or two anyway. Diving is meant to be fun and so should the classes. So make sure you are getting top level education and have as much fun along the way.
Dive Safe,
Duane
Precision Diving
