There is something about spending a significant amount of time underwater doing complicated skills without a regulator in your mouth that really gives you an appreciation for being able to breathe whenever you want to. We all know the number one rule in scuba is never hold your breath, and I never have, but in the past few months there have been multiple times when I have thought to myself, “whelp, I’m out of breath, I hope I get that reg in my mouth pretty quick here.” Whether I was doing an equipment exchange, which involves swimming the length of the pool with your buddy, except your buddy is only wearing their wetsuit and weight belt, which means you are dragging their blind butt the length of the pool buddy-breathing the whole way; when you get to the deep end you must take all of your equipment off (mask, fins, BC, etc.) and give it to your buddy (all while buddy-breathing) and then they have to drag your blind butt back to the shallow end. Or, if I was doing a skin ditch and recovery, which involves swimming down to 8 feet in your skin gear, taking off your mask and fins, weighting them down on one breath, then coming up and momentarily catching your breath. Then, swimming back down, putting your fins and mask back on, clearing your mask and coming to the surface, while clearing your snorkel on one breath. To say the least, I really came to see the value of air.
It would make sense for me to say my instructor certification was harder than I thought it was going to be but, to be honest, I never really thought about it. There is nothing I enjoy more than scuba diving. I think it is a thrill, and I knew I wanted to become a scuba instructor so I could show other people this amazing sport. When the opportunity to go through an instructor training program presented itself, I jumped. The course was a blast but it was difficult, and it should be. Scuba diving has risks and thus not just anyone should be able to be a scuba diving instructor.
In order to be a quality instructor you must be able to teach but not just teach. A quality instructor must be able to engage the students in the information, make them laugh, make them oooh and awe, and make them want to know more. A quality instructor must be able to break down a skill into a simple and explicit description. She must be able to clearly demonstrate the skill, but she must also have an arsenal of alternate ways to guide the students through the skill because one way of explaining will not work for everyone. A quality instructor must have an acute awareness of everything going on around him. He must be able to run one student through a skill without removing his eyes from the other students for more than a moment. In addition to these skills, a quality instructor must be prompt and organized. She must have an understanding of the environment in which her students will be learning. She must engrain a deep respect for the water into her students and make sure they understand the risks they are taking. He must be approachable, kind, and able to coach his students through issues they may encounter during the course. Being a quality instructor requires a lot and that is why becoming one should not be easy.
My cohorts and myself, throughout our instructor course, learned these necessary skills and many more (including how to blow bubbles even when you are totally and completely out of air), but we are not done. We will always be learning and improving and we will always strive to know more. Scuba diving is a dynamic sport, and there will always be more skills to learn and new equipment to understand. So, in order to be quality instructors, we must be dynamic as well. As scuba divers we of course hope to eventually evolve gills and thus no longer have to teach scuba diving skills or run out of air while doing equipment exchanges and skin ditch and recoveries, but, until then, we scuba diving instructors are ready to instruct!
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