At the end of the instructor development course, there is a test – the feared PADI Instructor Exam! It’s human nature to focus on passing this exam, nonetheless it isn’t the real test at all! The actual test is the first class you will teach a PADI instructor.
This is the reason it’s so important to find the right IDC. You intend to study on a class director who teaches you to become a good instructor, NOT how to pass the IE. Course directors that concentrate on getting the perfect score in the IE often do this as the expense of preparing you for the real-life problems that the IDC must be preparing you for. The knowledge your course director has will play a large part in this. When I first started teaching the Instructor development course as a brand new course director (coming up on a decade ago) I fell into this trap myself. I was more concerned about my candidates passing the IE than taking the time to focus on more real-world training.
As time passed and my confidence built I started to focus on the difficulties I knew my instructor candidates would face in their day-to-day work after they had passed the IE. My new-found confidence allowed me to get this done because I now knew that passing the IE will be a natural consequence of this approach. I had taught a couple of IDCs and no-one had failed gili trawangan. My anxiety about among my candidates failing diminished. My concentrate on the Instructor Exam inside my training reduced. Therefore my training focus altered. I wanted my instructor candidates to hit the ground running. Teaching safe fun and well-organized PADI courses. It’s something to pass the IE, but after you land your first job, if you create a mess of the first few courses you teach, you are going to lose that job. I realized it absolutely was my job to make sure that didn’t happen. The moral of the story – Find a class director with years of experience. They’ll train you to become a successful scuba instructor, not merely to pass the exam.
Train in conditions similar to those you want to work. The IDC certainly isn’t easy, it’s made much harder by cold water and low visibility. So choosing to take the IDC such conditions certainly, adds an level of task loading. However, if you are going to teach in those conditions after passing the IE it might well be worth training in those same conditions. There is another option, though. You could choose to take the IDC in nice warm tropical waters and have the OWSI rating under your belt, and then take MSDT training in tougher conditions, similar to those in that you want to teach.