Instructor Foundation Course

For all those divers who are thinking about instructing, and even non divers who may possibly consider diving in the future I present to you an entry from another blog I had back in 2007, after I took the plunge and took the IFC, the first step towards becoming a scuba diving instructor. I fully recommend it!

April 1st 2007

Moving Up by Going Down

I have passed my IFC instructor course with BSAC scuba diving and am now an instructor!
Matt and I drove to a grotty public school in Pimlico in the middle of London at 7am Saturday (it had stalactites  and sat through a series of lectures before throwing ourselves in the drink and being taught to teach by national instructors.

In my group were Steve, Dan and Simon; or as I thought, Future John Gane, Eric Clapton and Victor Meldrew. We had a few laughs, planned a load of lessons and then were each assigned a topic to complete for the next day. I was to give a theory lesson on BCD's and a practical session on mask clearing.

Got home at about 9pm and spent an hour making a powerpoint presentation and 10 lesson plan for a 10 minute theory lesson, and wrote up a dive slate for the practical.

On the second day we all did our theory lessons. I got the group involved in trying on the BC, cylinder and regs along with demonstrating how it was used, which Pete (our instructor) was impressed by. My mask clear demo was good as well, along with teaching novices to kits up, enter and exit the pool safely. Eric Clapton had to teach buoyancy control, but overnight his cylinder emptied to 90bar, and he wore a wet suit without a weightbelt. So it was ironic that he was floating like a cork and unable to teach!

I'm now a qualified A.D.I. instructor!

And now I'm so tired!