Instructor Exam April 2002

In April of 2002 I took the Instructor Exam at Dutch Springs PA. Three of us had taken the Instructor Development Course to prepare for it, but I was the only one able to take it that month. I did the following write-up to let the others know what was in store for them. Its a bit dated now, but several people have said it had value for them when they were getting ready for it.

Dear Cathy & Judy -

I started to write you a quick note about the IE, and it took on a life of its own. So, I apologize for being so verbose, but perhaps you can glean something from it.

Well, to start with, I hope you sleep better than I did the night before, because I sure didn't need the alarm clock to wake me at 6 am. I got down to Rutgers around 7:30, and met up with the others in the group. George was also nice enough to stop by for moral support. There wound up being 6 of us, including one just there to make up the exams, plus another two who no-showed. Our evaluator was Jeff Myers, remember him? He was in the videos, most famously the risk management one where the girl dies (I asked him about that one, it was open water not confined but she did in fact die.)

Orientation was about an hour, and I was surprised we never went around the room introducing ourselves. I guess Jeff just wanted to keep things moving along. One thing I hadn't expected was that he would assign multiple problems to "students", so you really need to keep on your toes - and assign them he does, quite often in fact. It helped the stress level that the assignments are given out right off the bat, so you know just what to expect. I pulled:

Confined Water:
Mask Removal & Recovery
backup reg free flow

Prescriptive Teaching:
Self Rescue Skills
I forget the backup

Microteaching:
Teaching the Wheel
backup something else with the wheel

OW
Reg Recovery & Clear
Buddy Breathing Stationary

Skills: Mask Removal & Clear, Free Flow Regulator, Hover, CESA, and Regulator Recovery & Clear.

I was none too happy with teaching the Wheel, but the beautiful thing is that they've dropped Microteaching from the IE. Imagine my relief when he instructed us to all cross off the MLG portion!

First up was the exams at 90 minutes each. 50 questions on Standards & Procedures in 90 minutes, 5 minute break, then 12 questions x 5 for dive theory, no more than 3 misses per part. You can make up 1 of the 5 at Dutch the next day, 2 below 75 means redoing that part of the IE, or not passing the S&P with a 75. I thought these were much easier than the IDC exams, or at least no harder. There were a lot of softball questions, and very few that felt like trick questions. One thing I would have liked is if we had gone over the answers, but I guess that is not within the scope of the IE.

My final scores were 96 for S&P, 83 for Physics, 83 for Equipment, and 100’s on the others.

After that we broke for a little over an hour to prep the confined water skills. One nice thing is you only need to prep one - if you have a problem they will give you time to prep the other (at least that is how Jeff conducted it.) I got a little nervous during one of the other guy's skills, when a guy playing student wound up doing all sorts of things wrong he wasn't supposed to. My way to handle that was I picked him for my divemaster, that way I wouldn't have to worry about him (and in fact there didn't wind up being anything to worry about, it was a fluke on his part.)

We did our briefings pretty much all together, then got into the pool and did the skills. Rutgers has a 17' pool, which was really wild. Like we were told, the IE never put a tank on, just mask/fins/snorkel. By the time my turn came (mask removal and replacement) our group of five was pared down to four, since one guy had a hiccup and went off to prep his second skill. Thus we had one instructor, one divemaster, and only two students. One of my students dropped his mask and the other tried to put it on upside down, so that wasn't bad at all. Where I didn't get off easy was the debriefing: I hit all my points, but he dinged me for debriefing a student and my DM, when in fact they were both my students and the DM was off to my side. However, there's no use to arguing, especially when you passed: 4.4.

Where I made my life difficult was how, like a dummy, I kept positioning myself on the end of the line. Jeff would cut a skill when he had seen what he wanted, so you didn't always have to perform a skill. By being on the end though, I always did. Not a problem except for the freaking CESA. With a skill like this, you could probably do a perfect demo and would still have to repeat it, since people are so concerned about missing something. I was prepped to spit out the reg first, then after being corrected to let my arms drop halfway along. First try, spit the reg, he stops me, redo. Next try, he stops me, tells me to swim slower. Redo. 3rd try, I get to the end and he stops me, tells me to make an aaah. I was! Redo. Next try, same thing. It was a little maddening, since by this time I am aaahing like a freaking bassoon, but 15 feet away is a class of 15 divers and he couldn't hear it. I kept thinking "look at the bubbles - Jeff on the surface can't hear my aaah either." Unfortunately he got focused on that and missed that my arms were down and I had dropped the LPI, which I felt really bad about. He did pass though, Jeff dinged him for it but didn't make it a 1 for being unsafe.

The other confined water skills went pretty smoothly, except that the guy who had to do his makeup got the CESA, and guess who his first victim was? For this one I was supposed to swim too quickly the first time, then drop my arms. Same story - catches the too fast, keeps missing the arms, lots of I can't hear you. 8, count 'em 8 CESA's I did, plus another in the skill circuit for good luck. Oy.

After wrapping up all the confined water skills we went right into said skill circuit. The way Jeff handled it was that he would point to several people and signal what skill we were doing. This was nice since I was concerned we'd have to memorize which was #1, #2, etc. (NB other IE's may do it differently.) Those went well, I managed three 5's and two 4's for them. You get to make up one if need be, though I also think a couple of the guys did a few over.

After confined water Jeff just said to make our way back to the classroom at our leisure to prepare & present. I would suggest bringing food so you don't waste time going out to get any. We could bring lunch with us or not, it was very loose - present when ready, leave when done. Self Rescue Skills is an easy presentation, the only thing is to make sure and cite lots of applications. The question had to do with citing four examples, and the MLG had six, but some were similar. I got dinged for keeping a good application until the summary, which I had done deliberately since I need one for that. No worries, I was perfectly happy to take my 4.2 and head home for the day.

We were blessed on Sunday with some nice weather, which I appreciated – I was concerned about the distraction of 90 degree temps. We all got there a little bit early, and Jeff, not one to waste time, had us do our briefings in the parking lot. My skills, reg recovery & clear and buddy breathing/stationary, had me a little concerned, since both could involve breath holding, i.e. unsafe practices and thus failure. The Instructor Manual says that it is acceptable to fully rehash Buddy Breathing techniques in the briefing. I decided to avail myself of this, since I wanted to make sure they all knew how to do it the way I wanted it done. It did, however, turn my briefing into more of a longing. Another thing I added to my briefing was to warn them that I may have them repeat the skill without any correction: in this case, they were to repeat just as they had done, since it just meant I was unable to verify mastery, and not that they had done anything wrong. Overall it took about 4-5 minutes, which as we will see was too long.

By 9 we were in the water, down to the platform, and performing away. For open water Jeff put on a tank (and wetsuit!), and his procedure is to perch himself on the instructors shoulder and signal to the students what to do wrong. For reg recovery I had one guy hold his breath, and another fail to tilt for his sweep. Fairly easy stuff to pick up. For buddy breathing the same guy held his breath, which I corrected and had them repeat. Then they failed to hook up properly, which I corrected and had them repeat. After that I noticed the donor had the purge covered, so I corrected that, had them repeat, and when I was satisfied cut the skill. This did cost me though, I got a three on problem solving. Apparently it isn't enough to stop and correct the problems in turn, it's also important to correct them in priority - Jeff felt I had let the purge problem go too long, and should have corrected that earlier. Tough stuff! I think what probably happened was he assigned the breath-hold and purge-cover, and the other just happened and as such was a much lower priority. We were down on the platform for 45 minutes, and by the end the last instructor was visibly shivering in his dry suit. I was glad though, we moved right through each of the skills quickly. Jeff didn't waste any time, he often stopped people on the first student, so long as they had caught the mistakes he had assigned. Note to self and others: if you really want to freak out the instructor, and you would like to remove and replace your mask many many times in 46 degree water, make sure to use colored lenses in your mask! My victims commented on how they weren't 100% sure I had cleared the water, and anything less dead certain means you're going to be doing it over. I should have just left my hood on shore, it would have made my life much easier.

All that was then left was the Rescue Scenarios. Jeff gave us a nice briefing before hand on what he was looking for. If you don't get this I would ask in detail, since in Jeff's case he was looking for us to count to 4 and then ventilate, not the 5 count like we do at SC. We had one guy diving wet, so of course he was our good-natured victim du jour. One guy got dinged for failing to remove both masks for look/listen/feel, and then gave me heart failure on his repeat when he only removed the victim's mask, not his. Fortunately it didn't count against him. This is a pass/fail skill, and as such you need to do several things wrong simultaneously not to pass.

Onward to the debriefings. After getting dinged for ignoring someone in the confined water debrief I was like a day care supervisor when clients are in the room. I was really impressed with the way some of the guys handled talking to groups - very positive, engaging, witty even. As a matter of fact my two favorite speakers were both guys who had had to repeat things earlier, proof that everyone has their strengths and weaknesses. Jeff then went off to write up our scores, and we chewed our nails - at this point we all had our scores from day one, and knew we had passed rescue, but had no idea if we had blown Open Water. To make things worse, there is no makeup for OW skills. Your score is the average of both, and must meet a minimum 3.4 -get a 1 and you're dead. George and some of the other local course directors again came out to join us, which was nice of them. Jeff then called us over individually, and I appreciated how his first words were "Congratulations, you passed. Let's get that out of the way so now maybe you'll listen to what I have to say." WHEW! He felt the briefing shouldn't have been so long, and that the covered purge should have been caught sooner. I wound up with a 4.25 on the reg recovery and 3.75 on the buddy breathing, which averages to a 4. Woo-hoo! Success!

Overall, four out of the five of us passed. One guy stumbled on the exams, which is pretty straightforward to come back and redo. I give him credit too, it must have been REALLY hard to know by noon the first day that you weren't going to pass, but he kept a great attitude and did a fantastic job on all of the other parts. I don't know that I agree with Jason when he said you are a little sad when it's over, rather I was elated and relieved! It was fun though, and they do a good job of keeping the stress off of you.

Looking back I think the IDC was a whole lot harder than the IE. I am so pleased there will be an IE at Dutch in June - if I got those scores imagine how much better you two are going to do!