Family dive instruction - stressful!
It’s been quite a while since I have talked about diving, so it’s about time I got back to it. It’s been a busy weekend of dive instruction, which has been fun, challenging and at times, stressful. But it has been a learning experience for all concerned, and hopefully I can use my experiences to become a better instructor. It was my first experience of teaching children, and I can see why some instructors are turned off it so much. I’ve also got my Kansai trip from last week to talk about, but before that we have all things underwater to discuss.
Saturday was the first of about 5 consecutive weekends of dive instruction, which also includes Golden Week in the first week of May (9 days and around 30 dives!). There is certainly no rest for the wicked. My classes this weekend were all Open Water, which I haven’t taught for a few months, but was eager to start up again. I met the students and we headed to a beach for them to do the swim test and float test. Must try to get some laminated reading material for students doing the 10 minute float! They had no problems at all with that, being in excellent shape due to running marathons etc. So we then headed off to the pool and confined water dives. Neither of the students had any major problems during the sessions, and conducted all the skills with relative ease. To be perfectly honest, after all the teaching I’ve done since then, I can’t really remember much of the confined water dives from Saturday morning and early afternoon! Mr Alzheimer certainly has a lot to answer for… They completed the confined water work having mastered the skills they need to know, and I am confident they will have no problems in open water next weekend. But time was ticking on and I had things to do. I had to quickly drop off the rental dive equipment and then fly down to a Starbucks (seemingly my third home, behind my apartment and the ocean) to meet a student to go over dive theory. This was arranged at the last minute (in fact, during the morning’s confined water session), but I’d promised her a course for quite a while and so wanted to accommodate her into my schedule. She went through the knowledge reviews, the quick quizzes and the final exam with the minimum of problems, and was looking forward to scheduling a confined water session. As soon as she’d finished the exam and we’d got her paperwork signed, I had to scoot off to my next appointment: a theory session with a family I am going to teach the Open Water course to.
The family consists of parents in their 40s, and 2 girls, aged 10 and 12. I did my explanation about diving to the 10-year old and then proceeded onto the theory. There were a few issues with the RDP, but once I’d explained it a couple of times they managed to get things sorted out just about. Their quiz and exam scores were pretty high so I was pleased with how they were going. Quite weary, and 16 hours after getting up and starting my day, I arrived home at around 10pm. Grabbed a shower and a bite to eat, before heading to bed to catch some sleep. My confined water sessions started with the family on Sunday.
We met up at around 9 and got them some rental gear. The kids tried on wetsuits and found ones that fitted, but I wish the parents had also. Once we got to the pool and kitted up, there was a complaint that the neck seal was too restrictive. I offered to take it back and get a bigger size, but the student said they would cope and so we continued. Well within 10 minutes of getting into the water the youngest girl was shivering and crying. I wasn’t too surprised seeing as she’d refused to wear the 2nd wetsuit that the shop and I said she’d need to keep her warm in the pool. So she got out and her mother followed, so I elected to call a 5-10 minute break, even though we hadn’t actually done any skills yet. After the break, the youngest girl put her 2nd wetsuit on and got in the water. Unfortunately, that initial incident set the scene for the whole session, with us getting through less than a quarter of what I had wanted to do. I wasn’t intending to teach as much as if there were only adults there, but was hoping to get through more than I did. By far the most confident and able person of the family was the oldest daughter, who was swimming down to the bottom of the pool with me, and who had no problems at all doing any of the skills we went over. She seems to be a natural and will have no problems doing the rest of the confined water work, or the open water work.
So I’ve scheduled at least one more confined water session, and possibly 2 more will be needed. What I’d like to do is split the class up so we have adults in one class and kids in the other. That way the family pressure will be out of the way and there will be no playing up to parents by the children and no over-fussing by parents over the children. The logistics of that might be a bit tough to sort out, but I think it’s going to be the best bet if they are going to get the class finished. To be honest, it wouldn’t surprise me at all to find the youngest daughter doesn’t want to dive, and is only doing it because the rest of the family is.
I got home late yesterday afternoon after a very busy weekend, and collapsed in front of the TV. Tuned into some wildlife show where they’d trapped an octopus in a jar, to show how amazing it was that it can unscrew the lid of the jar and escape. The Japanese really are not kind to animals sometimes (see here and here). But this week is going to give me time to regroup and work out my strategy for teaching this family. And next weekend I’ve got the 2 Open Water Students from Saturday heading to the ocean. I’m looking forward to that as it’s always good to see and hear their reactions when they experience the underwater world for the first time. A review of my Kansai trip will come in the next blog entry, so until then take care and dive safely.
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Could be worse hon, you could be teaching me and the folks…! Now that would be an interesting dive session…
Bim x