Duane Johnson - Tech Instructor
Evolving Recreational Scuba Diving Courses: Mentoring and Coaching
What’s in a Title – Scuba Instructor Ratings
When I was going through my PADI IDC, our course director spoke with us at great detail about PADI’s levels of instructor ratings. He said that we should strive to achieve these ratings as it will make us more marketable. For the first two years I was an instructor, I bought into this. My focus wasn’t entirely on producing a great class, but rather collecting numbers so I could move up the ranks of the PADI instructor levels. To this day, those two years were the darkest of my instructing career. They say hindsight is always 20/20, and I wished I would have approached my classes better. [Read more...]
The Importance of the TDI Intro to Tech Course
When I became a tech instructor, my main focus was on teaching the Advanced Nitrox and Decompression Procedures courses. As time went on, I was finding myself rejecting more potential technical diving students than ones I held classes for. So I decided to find out why. Was it me? Are my standards too high? Do I have unrealistic goals for potential tech students? My curiosity was piqued. As part of my own personal standard, I do an assessment dive with every potential tech student and I video those dives. So I went back to the video of those people I did not accept into my classes. As I watched, one thing became blatantly obvious. These people did not have true mastery of the fundamental skills for diving (i.e. buoyancy & trim control, etc.) and they just did not look that comfortable in the water. Many were OK divers and didn’t kick up the muck or shoot to the surface. But I could just tell they weren’t in full control of their position in the water. [Read more...]
Technorati Tags: Advanced Nitrox, Decompression Procedures, technical diving, buoyancy
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