So, our first five days of IDC (Instructor Development Course) we just did classroom staff.
The IDC teaches you a lot about making presentations, and how to explain your students the things you now in the best way possible. There is also information regarding the business of diving, marketing, managing and administration.
So it is a very complete course. We also had to review a lot each PADI course and their standards. PADI has strict standards regarding diving that are made so the student can feel safer and there is no problems after.
You also have to learn how to make presentations in the PADI way, that it doesn´t differ too much from any other presentation you probably could have done in school or college.
All this information is very useful for your IE (Instructor Exam).
Then during the next days, our IDC lasted 14 days in a row! So it was a lot of information during classroom and then also homework. So you have to get a good sleep and very good coffee! That in Costa Rica is easy because coffee is great!
After the classroom we started going for pool and open water sessions.
In the pool we practice showing how to make the 24 skills request by PADI. But you must show them in a teaching way, not demonstration.
Also they give us each 4 skills that we needed to explain to our «students» that where our classmates in the IDC, and then see the mistakes they made. Each one gets a mistake or not, and you have to check if they did it the correct way. It is just like doing a class.
Then we did this same practice in Open Water, so we had a lot of practice regarding on how to present each skills and to see the most common mistakes in them.
So this 14 days where between classroom, pool and open water. and of course an ocasional beer when we felt for it =)
it was a lot of fun, and a lot of stress too, I can´t lie about it. But I think all this work perfect to fell really comfortable in my IE.
In the next one I will let you know about the IE…