The question always starts the same way. Someone finishes their Divemaster, takes a week to decompress, and then sends a message: "So what do I need to do to become an instructor?"
The answer is not complicated. But it is longer than most people expect. Here is the full path, from your first certification to the moment you teach your first student on your own.
Step one: become a diver
You need an Open Water certification to start. Then Advanced Open Water. Then a handful of specialties. Then Stress & Rescue. Then Divemaster. Each step builds skills and logs dives. You can start Divemaster with 40 logged dives (SSI requirement) and need 60 by the time you finish. Most candidates who do well in the ITC show up with 80 to 150.
This path takes most people one to three years. Some do it faster by dedicating a few months to intensive training in one location. Others build it up over holiday trips and weekend diving. Both routes work. What matters is the dive count and the experience behind it, not how quickly you collected the cards.
Step two: Divemaster
Divemaster is where you cross from recreational diver to dive professional. You learn to lead dives, assist instructors, manage groups, handle equipment logistics, and respond to emergencies. It is the first certification where other people's safety is explicitly your responsibility.
At Wanderlust, the Divemaster program runs as an internship. You do not sit in a classroom for two weeks and leave with a card. You work alongside us with real students and real guests. You brief dives, assist Open Water courses, manage gear, and debrief what happened. The program takes four to six weeks depending on your starting level and how quickly you meet the requirements.
By the end, you know whether you want to teach. Not everyone does. Some Divemasters are happy leading dives and working the operations side. That is a valid career. But if you feel the pull toward teaching, the next step is the ITC.
Step three: the gap between Divemaster and ITC
This is where most people stall. You have your Divemaster card. You know you want to teach. But the ITC feels like a big step, and you are not sure if you are ready.
Here is what you need before you can enroll in an SSI ITC:
- Divemaster certification (active status, current membership)
- Minimum 75 logged dives to start, 100 by the time you finish
- Current first aid and CPR certification (within the last two years)
- Medical clearance for diving
- SSI Dive Professional insurance
The dive requirement trips people up. If you finished your Divemaster at 60 dives, you need at least 15 more before you can start the ITC, and 40 more before you finish. That gap is not wasted time. Those 40 dives are where you develop the water comfort and situational awareness that separate a nervous new instructor from a confident one.
Use that time. Dive different sites. Dive in different conditions. Assist more courses. Log everything. When you walk into the ITC with 120 or 150 dives in your logbook, you will feel the difference.
Step four: the Instructor Training Course (ITC)
The ITC is a ten-day intensive program that teaches you how to teach. Not how to dive. You already know that. How to teach someone else to dive safely, clearly, and confidently.
You will learn how to structure a course, deliver academic presentations, run confined water skill sessions, conduct open water training dives, and manage the paperwork and standards that come with certifying students. You will practice teaching presentations in the water, receive detailed feedback, and do it again until it is clean.
The ITC is demanding. Ten days, full time, with evening study. It is the most concentrated learning experience in the dive industry. By the end of it, you will know the SSI standards inside out, you will have demonstrated every skill in the Open Water curriculum, and you will have taught multiple presentations to the examiner standard.
At Wanderlust, the ITC runs with a maximum of four candidates. I am the Course Director for every session. The shore diving format means more water time per day than boat-based programs, and the flexibility to repeat presentations the same afternoon if needed. More detail on what those ten days look like in this post.
Step five: the Instructor Evaluation (IE)
The IE is a two-day exam conducted by an independent SSI Examiner. It is not run by your Course Director. The examiner comes from outside and evaluates you fresh.
Day one: academic presentations and dive theory exams. You present a topic from the Open Water curriculum to the examiner as if they were a student. You answer theory questions covering physics, physiology, decompression, equipment, and environment. The pass mark is 80%.
Day two: confined water and open water teaching presentations. You demonstrate skills and run a teaching segment with real or simulated students. The examiner evaluates your demonstration quality, your ability to identify and correct student errors, your safety awareness, and your overall teaching presence.
Pass both days and you are an SSI Open Water Instructor. You can teach independently, certify students, and work at any SSI dive center worldwide.
The pass rate for well-prepared candidates is high. The ITC exists to prepare you. If your Course Director lets you sit the IE, it is because they believe you are ready. At Wanderlust, I do not send candidates to the IE unless I am confident they will pass. That is not a guarantee. It is a standard.
What it costs
The total investment from Open Water to Instructor varies by location and pace. A rough breakdown:
- Open Water through Divemaster certifications: around $3,000 (depending on location and whether you do internship-style or course-only)
- Equipment (own gear vs. rental during training): $1,500 to $5,000
- ITC course fee: $500 to $600
- IE fee: $550 (paid directly to SSI)
- SSI Professional membership: approximately $100 per year
- Travel, accommodation, living costs during ITC: highly variable
I break this down in much more detail, including a comparison between training in Asia versus the Caribbean, in the cost post.
The point here: becoming an instructor is an investment of $7,000 to $9,000 spread over one to three years. It is not cheap. But it is a professional qualification that lets you work anywhere in the world where there is warm water and a reef.
How long does the whole path take?
Minimum timeline if you go fast: about twelve months from Open Water Diver to Open Water Instructor. That assumes you train intensively in one location, reach Divemaster in three to four months, log your remaining dives over the next few months, and do the ITC.
Typical timeline: two to three years. Most people build their certifications around holidays and available time. They do Open Water on one trip, Advanced and a specialty on the next, Rescue and more specialties the year after, and Divemaster when they are ready for a longer commitment.
There is no rush. The candidates who arrive at the ITC with two years of varied experience are consistently stronger than the ones who sprinted through in six months. Dive experience is not just a number in your logbook. It is how you respond when a student panics at 15 meters.
Is it worth it?
I left a corporate job to do this. That is my answer.
But yours might be different. Teaching diving is physically demanding, seasonally dependent, and will not make you rich. You will work holidays, weekends, and early mornings. You will carry tanks in the heat. You will explain mask clearing for the four hundredth time and still need to make it sound like it matters, because to the student in front of you, it does.
What you get in return: a skill set that works on every coastline. The ability to live in places most people only visit. The daily reminder that the ocean is bigger than whatever you were stressed about yesterday.
If that trade-off makes sense to you, the path starts with a Divemaster card and 100 logged dives. Everything else is execution.
Dates, requirements, and details on the Pro page. For why Bonaire specifically, read this.