This course is for certified instructors who want to learn how to teach Diveheart courses. Upon earning this certification, Diveheart Adaptive Scuba Instructors will have the ability to teach and certify Diveheart Adaptive Divers, Adaptive Dive Buddies, and Advanced Adaptive Dive Buddies.
Diveheart works with certified scuba divers and Adaptive Divers (individuals with a disability) to create Adaptive Dive Teams that allow everyone to experience zero gravity underwater. A Diveheart Adaptive Dive Team consists of the Adaptive Diver, and two Adaptive Dive Buddies. For certified scuba divers, taking a Diveheart Buddy Course is the first step to becoming part of a Diveheart Adaptive Dive Team.
Diveheart has several Adaptive Dive Buddy certifications, each building on the other in terms of the experience and responsibility needed by the buddy candidate. Diveheart prides itself on offering total immersion training for all of its Buddy Courses.
Diveheart believes in a duty to the adaptive diver, so all Diveheart courses are designed to provide buddies with the best knowledge base, training, and experience possible. This allows buddy candidates to create the safest Adaptive Dive Teams.
To accomplish this, the buddy candidate cannot simply enroll in a Diveheart course and receive a card, they will have to earn the certification. In the case of Diveheart’s Advanced Adaptive Dive Buddy and Adaptive Scuba Instructor courses, the candidates will also need to complete a required 30 experiences diving with adaptive divers, prior to earning a certification.
Based on this logic, Diveheart does not consider the required “30 diving experiences with adaptive divers” a pre-requisite to the Advanced Adaptive Dive Buddy or Adaptive Scuba Instructor (AADB/ASI) courses, but rather a *Pre-Requisite to the certification. A buddy candidate that meets all the hard pre-requisites (age, certs, etc), can enroll in these advanced Buddy Courses without having any experiences diving with adaptive divers.
When a candidate with no experiences diving with adaptive divers finishes the Advanced Adaptive Dive Buddy or Adaptive Scuba Instructor course they will have earned a Diveheart Adaptive Dive Buddy certification. But, they will have the knowledge and training of an Advanced Adaptive Buddy or Adaptive Scuba Instructor. This allows the candidate to function as a more qualified and safer team member on Adaptive Dive Teams as they complete their 30 experiences diving with adaptive divers.
Diveheart has provided a way for these Advanced Adaptive Dive Buddy and Adaptive Scuba Instructor candidates to log experiences diving with adaptive divers via the Diveheart Experience Log Page. Once the candidate acquires all 30 experiences, they submit the logs to their instructor or directly to Diveheart Headquarters, who then requests an upgrade for that candidate to receiver their Advanced Adaptive Dive Buddy or Adaptive Scuba Instructor certification card at no extra cost whatsoever. They earned it, so Diveheart covers the cost of the physical card!