Is there a local club which you could borrow/ rent kit from?
If there is you might be able to presuade them to lend you some kit in exchange for using your sessions as a feeder club.
Peter, either the Turing test now involves lying (in which case you pass) or you didn't read the orginal post closely. This is definately NOT the way to go, though your suggestion for using piping has merit.
Upon rereading, I see that I did indeed read the TS sloppily. My bad If it would still have been enabled, some negative rep would have been warranted.
I'm fairly new to teaching fencing and I'll be starting a beginning fencing class through our community college's extended education program soon and won't have any gear to loan my students. The class is only four weeks long (one session per week) so I was thinking that I would start with the basics: history, footwork, rules of right-of-way, extension, and lunge. Then the last couple of weeks introduce the lines of the body, lateral and circle parries in 4 and 6 using foam swords. An intermediate class is scheduled to begin the week after the beginning class ends. I thought at that point, if students are returning, that they could then purchase a basic set of gear.
Let me know if this sounds like a good course of action. Thanks.
What's the goal of the class? Are you trying to produce competitive fencers? If so, I have to say that once a week practices isn't enough. Are you trying to start on the way to become a coach? If so, spend a little money and buy four masks, four jackets and underarms, four gloves and four epees or foils. They're yours, not the colleges, so if/when the college cancels the class you can take the stuff to a rec center and start over.
It's hard to ask someone to buy stuff when they can't see actual fencing in the gym, and they can't try it first. I think if you want to be a coach you should have some stuff to let them try some fencing out.
I have a club that operates through a CE class at a college. I mostly teach kids, ideally they start at 11 or 12. The college offers a 12 week class in the Fall, one in the Spring, and a 6 week class in the summer. Nominally it meets twice a week, but in reality we meet three times a week for two hours. I think this is the minimum you could meet and actually teach someone to fence and have them have a chance to be competitive. I provide a big bag of cheap epees, a bag of cheap body cords, and as many homemade epee only boxes and bungee reels as I need to have enough fencing to keep everyone busy; that's four strips right now, for about fifteen kids. I have some loaner jackets that kids have donated after they bought second uniforms and some loaner masks I've bought, but for the most part new kids have to buy a mask and uniform, which is about $140 from BG. That's worked pretty well, if you can't afford $140 for a uniform you probably can't afford to go to tournaments or to join the USFA.
If you want to coach dry, half a dozen foils, masks and jackets seems like a reasonable investment.
If you want to coach electric, half a dozen body cords and epees, a VSM box and a set of bungee reels would set you back less than $1000. You'd have a setup you could take with you wherever you go to coach.
I understand how extended ed classes work, what I'm curious about is why an administration would offer a class without the means to actually teach it. Imagine a class taught on cooking without stoves, pots, pans, or food, or a class in baseball without a field, bat, gloves, or a ball.
Someone didn't think this through very well.
At least at my college, the girl who runs the CE classes found out I was a fencer and that I had flirted with re-starting a college fencing club, called me and asked if I could teach a fencing class. I said, "I don't have the equipment for a bunch of people." She said, "Make them buy their own." I said, "We'd need club equipment too, boxes and reels and so on, or we'd have to fence dry, which is painfully lame." She said, "Well, nevermind then."
Then I thought about it and did a bit of research and decided I could come up with some homemade boxes and bungee reels, and I called her back and said I'd do it. The point is, the onus was on me as the instructor to say I either did or did not have the equipment for an oddball sport. They have since then pitched in a few hundred bucks a semester for parts and labor and so on for the equipment, but it's my stuff, they didn't buy it, I did, if I leave it goes with me. And it was up to me to tell her that I did or did not have the equipment for the class, she had no idea.
Exactly right...and this conversation between you and the admin (and the decisions made by you) were conducted before the class was offered. The admin didn't think this class offering through very well, so you did that thinking for her.
I can see where you're coming from. At least they're letting us use space in their gym or else we wouldn't even have a venue.
There are a couple of things about this arrangement that you might want to consider carefully. What is the community college ultimately providing you with in order to carry out your task as an instructor and what are you giving in return? The community college is simply not providing you with the resources you need to teach. So long as you seek creative solutions to the problem that has been passed on to you the college will likely remain content to limit your resources and 'pass the buck'.
As an instructor you need to ask if this is a situation in which you wish to remain. So far your posts indicate that the college stands to gain far more from the arrangement than you or your students.
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Here's something we're going to try doing. Not sure how it would work for you.
We rent a room at a community center and do not have any storage for our equipment. In the past, we've had to haul in many bags of masks, jackets, weapons, etc. A lot of equipment to move twice a week from our storage lockers! We're opening another site now, so that's not going to work as well.
Starting with our next class, we've decided we cannot provide equipment like had been. We're going to start charging a $100 equipment fee along with our class fees for the beginners. When we collect that, we collect their size information, too. We use the money to buy a starter set from Absolute. We then issue the jacket, mask and glove to the student to use. If they decide to quit the class and return the gear, we refund $75 and wash up the gear for the next person who will fit into it. If they decide they love the sport and want to continue on, we then issue the foil and bag to them and they're set for equipment.
Not sure how this would work for you, but I wanted to throw it out.
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If it would still have been enabled, some negative rep would have been warranted.
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