So, our first five days of IDC (Instructor Development Course) we just did classroom stuff.
The IDC teaches you a lot about making presentations and how to explain the things you know to your students in the best way possible. There is also information regarding the business of diving, marketing, managing and administration.
It is a very complete course. We also had to review each PADI course and their standards a lot. PADI has strict standards regarding diving that are made so the student can feel safer and there are no problems after.
You also have to learn how to make presentations the PADI way so 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).
Our IDC was 14 days in a row! It was a lot of information in the classroom and then also for homework. So you have to get good sleep and a lot of good coffee! In Costa Rica that is easy because the coffee is great!
After the classroom time, we started the pool and open water sessions.
In the pool, we practiced showing how to do the 24 skills requested by PADI. You must show them by teaching, not by demonstration.
Also, they gave us each 4 skills that we needed to explain to our “students” that were our fellow classmates in the IDC and then see the mistakes they made. Each one makes a mistake or not and you have to make sure they did it the correct way. It is just like teaching a class.
Then we did the same thing in the Open Water so we had a lot of practice regarding how to present each skill and to see the most common mistakes that are made.
So these 14 days were done in the classroom, pool and open water and, of course, with an ocasional beer when we felt like it =)
It was a lot of fun, but a lot of stress, too. I’m not going to lie. But I think all this work was worth it to feel really comfortable for my IE.
In the next one, I will let you know about the IE…