In Bristol

There are times when I love working in Bristol but one thing is for sure it is tough being in the office when the weather outside is so inviting. It is a scorching day here in the West Country and it really does make me want to go off diving somewhere; anywhere.

Hopefully I will get my wish both on Wednesday and at the weekend and why not I say, when it looks so inviting. The gear is in the car and it is simply a case of finding a crew to team up with. I am rapidly discovering that there are a several possibilities in Bristol so life is looking good.

I also can't complain too much about sitting in the sunshine in the park at lunchtime watching the world go by with colleagues.

I had a chat with an old mate of mine named Ernie, not the milkman, before heading off to work and I was explaining to him about the Rescue course and what makes it so special. So I thought I would try and capture it before it slipped into the longer term memory and got lost. Of course responses on this subject will be welcomed because I obviously now look at this from the more recent perspective of being an Instructor. The reality is that on the way through to becoming an Instructor the Rescue course still stands out.

A number of people have made similar comments about their own rescue courses but I have noticed that quite a few people have commented upon what Orca delivers in comparison with others. Such comments range from; "we never had any of that" to things like; "I didn't know there was an exam?" and "I was never taught how to do a lift".

What I recall so well about my own Rescue course way back in the mists of time and in fact on the older format, was the sense of team and challenge that was involved. The group that I was with made a difference and to be fair I had an Instructor who at the time was on form and added some fun to the proceedings. In terms of challenge I will always remember searching for a lost diver who had inflated his dry suit so that he was stuck on the ceiling of a submerged building. To make things apparently more difficult he had removed both his inflators, to his shock I decided the only way to get him off the ceiling was to break his neck seal and he hadn't expected that one.

I believe that I have modelled a lot of my own approach on this experience because I felt it was instructed well. But I won't be repeating the last scenario anytime soon.

On all Orca courses our aim is always to add extra value in terms of both content and application. I often talk in of mastery as a key ingredient when learning skills and what I feel is vital is that not only do students have the ability to repeat a skill but that they can do this under stress and automatically revert to the key attributes of the skill that make it work.

As a personal preference I will try and encourage students to conduct the Open Water part of the course over two days even though the four scenarios involved can be covered quite comfortably in a day. This is because it is quite difficult to get the sense of team evolving in a single day. Where a team has already evolved this is not as imperative as the team dynamic will already be present.

I think another reason that I like the course is because it does pack in a lot in a very short space of time coupled with the fact that you are dealing with already qualified divers. The later fact means that whilst you can stimulate discussions in debriefs you do not have to tell people what they did right or wrong, these students do that for you. A point that I always try and make clear is that there is no right way to effect a rescue, though there may be considerations for improving and learning.

A good debrief of anything always starts with highlighting what has gone well and while I like to point out specific things it does make it easy if the students have successfully recovered a victim because straight away they have a positive. Nick reminded me of this over the weekend as he debriefed on one of the scenarios and he was right to do it.

So far then we have team work, challenge and a good instructor trying to add value to get students to mastery.

I also hold a personal belief that whenever you learn anything it should be fun. We all tend to learn better when what we are learning is of specific interest to us and we engage as many of our senses as possible as we learn. Engaging senses generally means that you are fully involved and that you are having fun. If you are ever asked to memorise a piece of prose one sure fire thing that will help is to add movements into the learning process and say things aloud. Memory specialists use picturing techniques so throughout a course I will try and find chances to do just the same. This past weekend we managed to get Nick and James singing M_I_C_K_E_Y M_O_U_S_E when undertaking the tired diver push, I know they will never now forget that technique. It is also why I have everyone talk aloud through the non-responsive diver on the surface drill.

I trust that doing some of these wacky things not only increases the involvement of all senses to help learning but it also increases the fun.

Adding to the list of teamwork, challenge, a good instructor trying to add value to get students to mastery we must therefore have fun mixed in. How could you not love that list.

Now all you have to do is make sure that you work with people you love being around and trust and you are away.

Of course it would be remiss of me to note that for Instructors and AI's alike the chance to play mischief is great fun too.

As you may expect I always consider how to make things even better and there is something from the weekend........ When you learn a new skills the process is to describe it, show it to the student and then get them to copy. For all the new skills we do just this and it works very well because the student gets to do the skill right first time which starts to set up a habit. What has occurred, is that we did not demonstrate a full rescue scenario and maybe if there is a next time I will do just that.

Just need to make sure I come back and read my own notes in the future.

Now don't forget to add comments if you have any folks.

Dive to live, live to dive and have fun.