DIR Gear - Teaching PADI courses

[Brian of Aquanauts]

My stack of Halcyon equipment arrived on friday, twas quickly distributed to a few excited peeps including myself and little pete and a couple of others - I felt like a drug dealer in brixton at 11pm on a friday night, and WOW! Since i first put that single tank eclipse on my back, I now love it sooooo much... can't face wearing my ol BC or reconfiguring all my hoses again.

But for the last two days this has caused some interesting problems... yesterday my PADI drysuit student was frog kicking along beside me, with his arms out in front. Today on an open water course all 3 students and 1 DM were all trying to stay perfectly horizontal at their safety stop without much success. Didn't want to tell them it was the wings fault and this isn't their normal way of doing stops, but hey it can't do any of them any harm trying to copy.

But it made me think, how am I going to teach Alternate air source use properly with a long hose, without teaching them to always grab a reg from their buddies mouth. How about BCD or weight removal and replacement? What about using a drysuit for buoyancy, or wreck penetration on a single tank? What about PADI AOW Deep dives to 21-30m on air? How about rule no.1 - surely every Open Water student is unsafe?

Will I now be teaching spool use instead of DSMB deployment from a reel?

Is it going to confuse my students? Or is it good?

What d'ya reckon? Has anyone encountered any of this before or should i dive one way and teach another - thereby not practicing what i preach.

One Confused PADI Staff Instructor

[divingniknaks]

Hmmmm,

Some fabulous questions there

If I'm honest I would say it's time for a call to either Rich W or Andy K, they must have gone through something similar in the past.

Personal view is those questions are why I find myself falling out with other agencies methods, or at least questioning them. I have no answers yet, but know which way I'm going. But....... I don't have the teaching conflict, one decision made already.

All the best

[Al_Star]

Hi Brian,

At the risk of restarting an old thread there was some discussion about similar in:

http://www.yorkshire-divers.co.uk/fo...0&page=3&pp=10

Might be worth asking John Kendall or David Martin as they teach BSAC courses while using DIR gear.

HTH
Al

[Clare Gledhill]

I'm giving a view on this as a student rather than an instructor - as you have posted on the DIR forum and not the instructor's forum.

If you feel that teaching anything other than DIR practice will force you to go against your principles then take the GUE intsructors course to teach the new open water qualification. IMO it would be wrong for you to try to change the PADI syllabus to suit you - and could lead to your students being confused.

Just out of interest - what GUE courses have you done?

[Brian of Aquanauts]

Gledders, am booked on the DIR-F course running in Plymouth in July can't wait - should teach me a new thing or two. Have dived enough in the new kit to be comfortable teaching normal PADI courses with it (first dive was a 3m check out on Plymouth seafront). Not looking at teaching DIR principles (quite yet) , but am working on applying them to myself and getting very practiced with my rig before the course. I think it would good to know where every clip or D-ring is instictively, and be able to do everything neutral and horizontal.

Was wondering if any instructors or DIR divers had practicle suggestions on how to dive one way and teach a PADI course at the same time. The mesh probably doesn't work too well. Maybe I should carry a couple of hose clips and stick the long hose on one of those for some of the drills, or perhaps bungee the extra length to my tank

Spoke to Rich W about what to do for the course he said only work on buoyancy unless i know any DIR divers who've passed Fundi's... .

[Brian of Aquanauts]

Suddenly wondering if this is like running into a health farm and asking how to buy a Big Mac.

Have I posted in the wrong forum?

B

[simonn]

Brian, not wishing to, but inevitably sounding like an ass...

You are a PADI staff instructor i.e. one step down from the cream of the PADI crop, surely you should be able to figure out if something fits within PADI standards?

[StokieRIch]

Pretty sure you will need to use a "teaching kit" that fits with PADI standards.

If for no other reason than you have already stated, students will copy anything you do. It is fine with experience to make a decision and move to DIR but i am pretty sure that PADI OW students dont need to be confused.

Just my thoughts as a lowly DM Trainee feel free to discard.

[chrisch]

This crops up a lot on the BSAC forum where instructors have primary donation arguments. PADI is more proscriptive than BSAC.

The solution for most seems to be have one set of gear for teaching and use the BP/W long hose etc. for your own diving.

For myself I do not believe any instructor (agency unimportant) can teach a new trainee if equiped differently (eg using an RB to teach OC students - which BSAC allows).

You must come to terms with this OR, stop teaching PADI or be less DIR than you would wish.....

Happy snorkelling.

Chris

[tonhil]

I have been through this several times over the years. I have not yet found anything in the PADI OW guide that cannot be seemlessly handled using a DIR rig and, dare I say it, principles. (I have never claimed the converse) The most essential bit of student kit is an occy holder around the neck - pretty cheap to home make. Do not get confused over how some PADI instructors teach and what it actually says in the instructor guide - there can be significant differences in emphasis.