Other then the American rubbing their Independence Day celebrations in the face of the Brits, the day went very well. As with every morning, it was breakfast in La Cuna (the main eatery where we breakfast and lunch daily) followed by a 8am start. The first topic of the day was Instructor Development Standards followed by the Prescriptive Teaching Workshop. Standards are what guide every class a PADI instructor teaches. These are the “how, where and how many” questions that we answer every time we hit the classroom or pool. As Course Directors, we are looked at as experts when questions arise regarding interpreting standards. We don’t need to know all the standards but we do need to know where to look to find them. Our second seminar covered Prescriptive Teaching. This is a technique we use when teaching almost all of our classes. With so much of the classroom knowledge the student needs being delivered via their books and videos, we don’t need to get up and teach EVERY little detail. Prescriptive teaching covers the little details that students may have missed or need further clarification on. We teamed up with other candidates and worked on our own presentations that we will give later in the course.

Our lunch break is usually 1 1/2 hours. This gives you time to prepare gear or materials for pool or class presentations that afternoon. James Morgan began the last conference session of the day with Marketing. Obviously, we need students if we want to teach. He also unveiled a challenge to each team. We need to prepare a marketing plan to sell a fictitious Divemaster (James Morgan) on taking his IDC with our team. More on this after we present (you never know what other group is reading this!!) Enough to say that this blog is part of it!

That afternoon we jumped in the pool. It was time for our first confined water presentation. We had been assigned a skill for the Open Water Class. Yohan had alternate air source use, Barbara had the CESA, Sascha had mask remove and replace, Alex had reg clearing, Thierry had full mask clear, Milo had partial mask clear and Dave had neutral buoyancy-oral inflation. We also had the pleasure of evaluating each other during our presentations. Needless to say, we rocked it!!