IFC Experiences - Helen Butcher
To IFC or not to IFC that is the question?Within our branch everyone who is interested is given the chance to get involved with teaching/try dives and I felt that having passed my Sports Diver the next step for me was to tackle the IFC. I was particularly looking forward to it as I’d heard lots of good things about the IFC being good both for your own diving and being an excellent first step on the instructor ladder. However, I was also quite nervous. I’m a vet and I’ve spent my whole life doing exams. People who know me and what I do are always surprised that I get nervous about being watched doing practical skills, but I do, and I knew the IFC would take this one step further and involve me being watched not only doing practical skills, but teaching practical skills. The only real pressure on the IFC is the pressure you put on yourself as "it's a course, not an exam" (this became my mantra!) and you’re really there to be taught how to teach, but unfortunately I’m quite good at self-pressure! Thankfully I was one of a group of 3 from my club all doing the IFC together so I had lots of moral support.
The first day was all about teaching you how to teach, and was all about presentation, visual aids, audience interaction, and progressive steps, in both classroom and pool sessions. There’s a lot of information to take in over only 1 day, but its presented in easy steps. You’re then given topics to prepare for the following day - a 10 minute theory lesson and a 20 minute practical pool lesson. All the topics are relatively simple - what they’re after is how you go about teaching it. I had wreck diving (well if you can’t talk for 10 minutes about wreck diving when you’re from Cornwall!) and RB in full kit on the surface.
We went out for the meal with the instructors in the evening which helped my nerves by making me realise they were just people, and divers, and meant I got to discuss my fears informally! It did mean we didn’t start preparing our lectures till about 11pm, but hey - who needs sleep! It did mean I didn't spend too many hours trying to prepare and got it in proportion.
The following day involves presenting both your theory and practical lessons, in small groups. The theory lesson didn’t bother me too much - I have to work on my timing as I had to leave some of my visual aids out, though I managed to only go 1 minute over. One of my clubmates managed a 17 minute, 10 minute theory lesson! Everyone is really supportive, especially the other students because they’re nervous too - though most of them were nervous about the theory rather than the practical lesson. I got through my practical lesson, from SEEDS brief to REAP debrief, and even got positive feedback from my instructor trainer and the other students, and only ran 5 minutes over my lesson time (hmm – might need to invest in a watch as well as a computer - so I can judge time in the pool!).
I gained a great deal of confidence from the IFC, and can’t wait to start putting what I learned into practice - so I’m lucky that our club is keen for us to do so. It was everything everyone said it would be - fun, intense, tiring, useful, interesting, relevant, thought-provoking - and I'd thoroughly recommend it!
Helen Butcher
Peninsula SAC
Page last modified: 13th May 2008 - 15:52:17