Tough Love
It’s easy to empathize with students. When students have struggled with a particular skill over a protracted period of time, there is a tendency to want to reward effort, rather than performance.
In other words, after ten failed attempts at mask clearing, a student finally manages to get most of the water out of his mask, without bolting for the surface (despite the fact he clearly wanted to). Human nature being what it is, it is very tempting to say, “That’s good enough.” It’s not.
Although it may be time to take a breather before continuing to work on the skill in question, your job is nowhere near finished. The bottom line is, if you care about your students, you need to demand nothing less than acceptable performance from them.
One thing you need to accept — and which you need to make your students aware of as well — is that, even though your beginning scuba course is four, five or six lessons long, not every student will be able to achieve mastery of the required skills within that time frame. Some students will need to repeat sessions. Other students may need to repeat the entire course. If you are consistently passing all your students within the minimum time allowed, you are most likely not doing your job.
Accept nothing less than mastery from all of your students. It’s the right thing to do. And it’s the only thing that’s defensible.
::: TOP ::: SUBSCRIBE ::: CONTACT US ::: ABOUT US :::