Coast Guard Auxiliary Instructors (ITs) have a two-fold mission: Effectively present boating safety education and principles to the public in order to reduce boating injuries, fatalities and property damage, and to train flotilla instructors and public-education officers with the training, resources, and materials they require to further the Auxiliary’s primary mission of promoting boating safety.
The first step that Auxiliarists seeking to become certified as Instructors must take is to ask a fellow IT-certified Auxiliary member to become their mentor, guiding them through coursework and evaluating both their Personnel Qualification System (PQS) tasks and their performance at instructional presentations. All materials necessary for training are available online, from a Student Study Guide and Student Couse Book to the PQS Student Workbook and Instructor Development Course (IDC) Mentor Guide.
After studying these materials and thoroughly familiarizing themselves with the material, Auxiliarists must take an open-book examination and score at least 90 percent or higher. This can be done online or using a traditional paper test, but in either case there is a three-hour time limit. Shorter but arguable more difficult is completion of the PQS task: All must nineteen tasks must be stated from memory, so there is no room for error.
Auxiliarists who complete those requirements are next asked to prove they can put the training techniques they’ve learned into actual practice by conducting two presentations with their mentor present to evaluate their effectiveness. The first event, designed to both help the Instructor become comfortable with presenting as well as test their learning, lasts between ten and thirty minutes; the second is a one- to two-hour training event based upon a chapter taken from any Auxiliary-approved Public Education or Member Training Course. If the mentor gives satisfactory evaluations of the presentations, the Trainee is considered to have completed IDC and will be recommended to the Flotilla Commander as an Instructor.
Instructors are required to teach at least two hours in the role of Instructor or serve as an Assistant Instructor for four hours each year to maintain certification (they can also teach one hour and work as an Assistant Instructor for two hours). Additionally, Instructors must attend workshops the Auxiliary deems mandatory.