The Team for PADI IDC Egypt Feb 2014

Here is the team for the PADI IDC Egypt Feb 2014. As you can see from the picture, all 6 people were successful! 4 new PADI Open Water Instructors – Martin, David, Nick and Radwan all passed their PADI Instructor Exam with flying colours. The 2 new PADI IDC Staff Instructors – PADI Course Director and Diane are looking forward to using new and exciting teaching techniques as they bring new PADI divers into this amazing world of ours. Everyone had a wonderful time, and they all learnt a lot about the psychology of learning how to dive.

At the end they were a strong team, but at the beginning, most of them were strangers!

Skills Circuit for PADI IDC Egypt Feb 2014

To get people relaxed right from the start of the PADI IDC, we headed for the pool to practice teaching some Skill Demonstrations. The team were amazed at how simple Skill Demonstrations need to be (especially the Staff Instructor candidates who were used to lengthy and confusing demonstrations)

New PADI Divers “tune out” very quickly to long boring briefings and complicated demonstrations.

All of the candidates had seen my Skill Circuit video so they had some idea, but it was good to put it into practice

More new ideas at the PADI IDC Egypt Feb 2014

Back in the classroom, we concentrated on Attitude. Being a great PADI Instructor is not about Skills or Knowledge, it’s all about how you treat your customers.

This is not a new concept, but most people are not sure how to apply themselves in the real world. They often just copy the practices of other Instructors, and that’s not always the best thing to do.

PADI Course Director (The PADI IDC Staff Instructor candidate) and future (PADI IDC candidate) will be a new instructor there. So together they will put these new ideas into practice.

We then went back in the pool taking a very calm approach to Rescuing unresponsive divers at the surface.

PADI IDC Egypt Feb 2014 Open Water

Teaching people to dive is all about… well NOT teaching people to dive! It’s more about ALLOWING people to learn. Allowing people to self correct, and allowing people to feel comfortable with their new skills.  So it’s no surprise that we spent many days diving in the shallow waters of the Red Sea concentrating on allowing students to learn by practicing new skills.
All of the candidates were very refreshed with the new learning approach.
The common feeling was that they did not do a PADI IDC! Instead they had a wonderful time diving and at the same time learnt lots about how to make their future courses fun exciting and successful.