The PADI IDC is intensive, and rightly so.
You basically go from being a dive guide with a bit of teaching and assisting responsibility to an Instructor who has the right to go out there and start selling, organising and delivering their own courses. All of this in a course that typically lasts ten days, sometimes less.
So how can you prepare optimally, to minimise stress and really get the best out of your Instructor Development Course?
Here are a few tips:
1. Dive, dive, dive. More time in the water, more comfortable you will be.
2. Watch the PADI DM video and get all of the 20 skill demonstrations sorted (no pun intended) in your head, and practice them in the water if you have the opportunity. This should be in the bag as a competence before you arrive at the IDC, if you have an IDC prep, it should be for fine honing the demos, not relearning the skills, for example.
3. Get your theory down. Revise, go through the Dive Theory online via PADI eLearning, get out the Diving Knowledge Workbook and work the problems. Arrive at the IDC already with a list of what your weak points are on the theory.
4. Familiarise yourself with the Instructor Manual and the Guide to Teaching. The Instructor Manual is a very logical and well laid out document, and the art of getting a good score in standards exams is knowing how to find stuff QUICKLY. Read it, highlight it, figure out what sorts of information you find where. A little bit of time investment doing this is going to make your life a huge amount easier during the course itself.
5. Revisit your Open Water, Adventures in Diving, Rescue Diver and DiveMaster manuals and try and understand how they are structured, why they are structured like that, and again, how to find relevant information quickly.
If you follow these five basic steps and invest a bit of time before you get to the IDC you’ll get alot more out of your IDC at lower stress levels and come out of the IE as a better prepared entry level PADI Open Water Scuba Instructor.
We hope to see you soon in the South of France for some excellent fun and the start of a path to living out your dreams. Any questions please visit http://www.diamonddiving.net
