Classroom and Pool Lessons

Low tide in front of El Galleon resort. Kids love to check out and collect the sea life from the low tide.

I woke up around 6 AM to work on my knowledge development and confined water teaching presentation. As with everything during my IDC, I was to be evaluated for each presentation. I managed to eat my free breakfast at El Galleon before class—during my IDC, I have free breakfast and lunch at the resort I’m taking my class at. Class was at 8:30 AM. I did my knowledge development presentation first which was on the Project AWARE Specialty course.

It’s very structured regarding how you’re supposed to teach a knowledge development presentation. For example, in the beginning, you’re supposed to think of a “contact/value” that may be a story or interesting thing that relates to what you’re going to talk about and gives value to that. Its purpose is to excite the students about what you’re going to talk about. Then you give some key points, tell the students to open their books, present your main lesson, tell how it relates to local environment and other components of the course, and then promote a continuing educational course and dive equipment.

I took too long with the presentation again and actually did worse than the previous presentation. I find it hard to fulfill all the required steps in a short amount of time. I took 30 minutes that my instructor said should have taken 10 minutes.

I ate my free lunch with Warren at El Galleon. It’s always nice to eat at El Galleon because they have a nice, relaxing view of the ocean. It’s a great break from the classroom. After lunch we took a short break and then got our gear setup for my confined water presentation in the pool.

Before going into the pool, I had to do a practice Discover Scuba workshop. I simply explained some basic scuba concepts with a flip chart. Warren got Ruben, a Divemaster, and Maziar to help out and be “students”. They also helped out in the confined water.

My confined water teaching presentation was on teaching students how to do the snorkel to regulator exchange with their face in the water. It involves giving a briefing, doing a slow and exaggerated “role-model” demonstration in the water, have the student try it, solve any problems, and then debrief the student on their performance. It sounds easy but there’s a lot of required steps to go over and you have to anticipate and solve any student’s problems. I was super nervous doing this.

After the pool and cleaning up, I went back into the classroom to learn about Conducting Open Water Training Dives. It went over briefing, organizing, executing and debriefing an Open Water Training dive. My assignment for the night was to plan out an Open Water Training dive on a Buoyancy Weight Check and a Free Descent with Reference.

Imminent storm just outside the Point.

I made my way to the Point bar for a much needed beer. From the bar I noticed a storm in the distance. After two beers, it began raining heavy. I wanted to go back to my room and cook and study but couldn’t go in the rain. I decided to wait it out at the bar with some food and beers.

- jason