If that is what has been arranged. Here Intro to Tech is a two day course typically run over a weekend. Travel is likely involved. You want to split it over a day to do kit education, a few weeks off to order and buy the kit, and another day in the water? All to avoid keeping an extra twinset or two and some regs to hand?
Insurance? Don’t dive centres in the US rent out kit to recreation divers? Do OW instructors expect a new students to turn up with a full set of kit? Intro to Tech is mostly shallow skills and really no different. How do people offering CCR try dives manage?
You said:
A good TDI instructor will lend you kit for this course.
If that were true and exploiting the rules of logic, your statement specifically implies that an instructor who can't or won't loan you kit is not a good instructor.
In my opinion that is false.
Short version: I think you can be a good Intro to Tech instructor, even if you don't have kit to rent or loan your students.
Long version:
In my opinion, Intro to Tech should yield a student that is adequately prepared to go on to AN/DP and be successful* without spending an inordinate amount of time in the class. I.e. Ideally, the student should come out of ItT knowing how to dive doubles, able to do things like a valve shutdown drill and an S-drill while maintaining some semblance of good trim and buoyancy. They might need to IMPROVE their skills before starting AN/DP (by practicing on their own). They might need to improve them some more while in AN/DP, in order to complete AN/DP. But the only new diving skills they should really have to learn are deco bottle handling and gas switches. And if they already have the basic skills for diving doubles, adding those are a piece of cake.
To that end, yes, I think it is perfectly reasonable to offer ItT where the student may have to have some classroom to learn about equipment and then go away and acquire what they need. It's also reasonable for a shop to have the equipment available for rent. The point is that I don't see it as a requirement to have the equipment for rent (or loan) in order for the instructor to qualify as "good".
Also, in reality, how many instructors have gear for rent or loan where they have a broad range of different pieces of kit for the student to try? It seems to me that most are likely to just have 1 or 2 specific configurations and that's it. Which means the student isn't really going to get much benefit of "finding out what works for them" by borrowing or renting. If you only have one or two options to rent/loan, you may as well just pick one and tell the student to acquire that (whether they borrow or rent) and bring it to class.
I prefer to give the students a thorough briefing on all their options and then help them pick what I think will work well for them. But, short of trying a LOT of different plates and wings and twinsets and so forth, there is no way to be certain of what will actually be BEST for a given student. There is no one-size-fits-all or silver bullet. Different people - different bodies - need different things.
I taught an Intro To Tech course about 3 months ago to 2 students. One already had all the required equipment before even contacting me or the shop. The other had none of the required equipment, apart from a single tank diving kit. The shop rented him a BP/W and twinset and he borrowed an extra reg to use from a buddy of his.
I think I taught a pretty good class. My students gave me very positive reviews. People (other instructors) who observed some parts of my class said I did a good job. We spent about 8 hours in the classroom and 2 full weekends in the water. One of my students came in only having about 35 dives logged. By the end, I think both my students were pretty well prepared to go on to an AN/DP class and complete it with no major problems, if they want to. One of them would still be expected to improve more during the AN/DP class. But, it is within his reach (in my opinion). He has the basic skills down. He just needs to practice some more and smooth things out.
Since then, I have ended my affiliation with that shop. I can still teach ItT, but I no longer have a shop behind me to rent or loan kit. Does that mean that I was a good ItT instructor, but now I'm not? Or was I just not a good instructor in the first place?
* Note that the standards for TDI Intro to Tech do not specifically require this. The standards would allow you to do the full class and complete it in 2 days. A student could meet all the course minimum standards yet not be at ALL prepared to start AN/DP. It all comes down to the instructor and the instructor's interpretation of the phrase "adequate buoyancy control and trim" (or whatever the exact words are in the TDI course standards). So, my statements above are based on MY opinions and MY interpretation of that part of the course standard. The standards allow students to complete the course in sidemount or single tank and a pony bottle. However, I personally will not teach that class to any student other than in backmount doubles. I'm not qualified to teach it in sidemount and I'm just not interested in teaching it to someone in single tank and a pony bottle.
Does not offering it as a 2 day course make me a bad Intro to Tech instructor?
