Newsgroups: rec.scuba
Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1992 17:21:06 -0500 
From: "Peter A. Simon" <ps3p+@andrew.cmu.edu>
Subject: Re: Instructor Entertainment

Here goes from a sometime instructor:

For the final pool check-out in my basic scuba course, the instructor
had us put tin foil in our masks and told that first we'd do a
ditch/surface/don, and then be harrassed.  He told us exactly what the
harrasement might consist of (air turned off, mask removed, tank
shoulder strap released, etc.), and gave us plenty of time to discuss
with our buddy what we'd do if...  My buddy panicked and, since she was
sleeping with the instructor, was allowed to sit the exercises out. 
Since I couldn't do the stuff buddyless, I got to sit out, too.  That's
how I got my basic certification and went to the ITC without ever having
done a final pool checkout or having been harrassed.

At the ITC, however, we were harassed with tin foil in our masks, and
buddyless.  This wasn't an endorsement of harrassement as much as making
damn sure that we, as instructors, could handle anything that came
along, and that we'd understand how divers felt when they went to take a
breath of air and there wasn't any, or what it felt like to suddenly
have your mask disappear.  Fair enough, I thought.

As part of the final ocean check out there was a competition to find
(using supplied compass directions) a "gold" brick.  My team included a
lt. and sgt. from a SEAL team who took such competitions VERY seriously.
 We got to the brick just after another team and these two guys went to
work on them, turning the game into something akin to rugby, *ripping*
masks off, *tearing* regulators out of mouths, body-checking, the whole
nine yards (to mix metaphors).  The other team responded in the same
spirit and it turned into a free-for-all which, I confess, not being a
SEAL, freaked me out--but I didn't panic. We won, and I left feeling
that if I could deal with s**t like that I really could deal with
anything!

In my classes I used harrassment both in the pool and ocean check-outs
as a means of satisfying myself that my students really could handle
whatever came up. I told them exactly what I would do which included
nothing that they hadn't been trained to deal with during the course. 
They'd practiced clearing masks as well as swimming without them,
turning on their own air, buddy breathing, swimming with one fin and
none, ditch and don (including a free ascent)  and so forth.  So they'd
*better* be prepared for the harrassement, or I would have failed
miserably, maybe even criminally, in instructing them.  And, as a part
of my responsibility, I also *well* knew which of my students I had to
watch carefully in case I had to "undo" any part of the harrassement.

If I and, more importantly, they, hadn't gone through the experience how
did I know that I wasn't sending them to their deaths by issuing them
C-cards?  Although there was always a certaIn amount of trepidation, I
never met with any resistance or resentment on the part of the students
to or as a result of the harrassement, either .  The reaction afterwards
was relief and pride that they had passed a test that they weren't at
all sure that they could handle.

Maybe the positive aspects of harrasement were apparent to me because I
*did* do it in the spirit of it "being for their own good* and they
agreed that that's what it was.

Calling it "instructor entertainment" is a sure way of getting what I
consider a valuable teaching tool and confidence builder condemned, and
we probably should come up with a better name for it than "harrasement,"
too.

Peter Simon
NAUI I #1434
Newsgroups: rec.scuba