It was a busy weekend, thats for sure. Between SCUBA tune-up and discovery dive sessions, I feel like I’ve been rode hard and put away wet.
I taught my first SCUBA tune-up class this weekend. It was only two people – thank God – but I was still pretty nervous. See, I’ve never taught anything really, so I wasn’t sure how I was going to go about this.
The class started on Saturday. Glancing at my cheat-sheet from time to time, I was able to get though the classroom portion of the course pretty well. We went over dive tables, which everyone just loves to work with. After that we talked some about the dangers of diving, and went into some of the physics. I’d say the classroom portion took about 45 minutes, and then we were headed to the pool. However, there was a power outage at the pool so we ended up postponing the pool session until today.
Looking back, I’d say there was some things I could have done better. I have a tendency to rush things, and that really doesn’t work well when you are working with others. I don’t know if my two students noticed it, but I definitely caught myself rushing several times. Also, I think I could have done a better job of making one of the more nervous divers more comfortable. I guess I need to work on my “people skills.”
Once we got into the water, things went smoother. I probably could have done a better job of explaining the basic skill drills that we were doing, but they seemed to pick it up really well. At the end of the day, all were happy and had a good time. It seemed like they possessed the confidence in themselves that they lacked before the class, so I’d call that a success.