At the end of the instructor development course, there is an exam: the dreaded PADI instructor exam! It’s human nature to focus on passing this exam, but it’s not the real test at all! The real test is the first class you’ll teach a PADI Instructor.
This is why it is so important to choose the right IDC. You want to learn from a course director who teaches you how to be a good instructor, NOT how to pass IE. Course directors who focus on getting a perfect score on IE often do so as the cost of preparing you for the real-life problems the IDC should be preparing you for. The experience that the course director has will play an important role in this. When I started teaching the instructor development course as a new course director (ten years ago), I fell into this trap myself. I was more concerned with my candidates passing the IE than taking the time to focus on more real training.
As time went on and my confidence grew, I began to focus on the problems I knew my instructor candidates would face in their daily work after they passed IE. My newfound confidence allowed me to do this because I now knew that bypassing IE would be a natural result of this approach. He had taught a few IDCs and no one had failed. My fear that one of my candidates would fail diminished. My focus on the Instructor Exam during my training narrowed. Therefore, my training approach was altered. I wanted my instructor candidates up and running. Teaching safe, fun and well organized PADI courses. It’s one thing to pass IE, but once you get your first job, if you mess up the first few courses you take, you’re going to lose that job. I realized that it was my job to make sure that didn’t happen. The moral of the story – Find a course director with years of experience. They will train you to be a successful dive instructor, not just to pass the exam.
Train in conditions similar to the ones you plan to work out. The IDC is certainly not easy, the cold water and poor visibility make it much more difficult. So choosing to take on the IDC in such conditions certainly adds an amount of task load. However, if you are going to teach in those conditions after passing the IE, it may be worth training in those same conditions. However, there is another option. You may decide to take the IDC in nice, warm tropical waters and get the OWSI qualification under your belt, and then take the MSDT training in harsher conditions, similar to those in which you plan to teach.
In PART 2, I’ll look more at the things you can do once you’ve passed the test to get paid employment.