How many students do you want in class as an instructor?? As a student??

[skribs]

If you have too few students in class, then people don't have as much opportunity to work with different partners and round out their skill sets. Also, one or two people not showing up can have a huge impact on the class.

On the other hand, if you have too many students, then classes can get cramped, and each student gets less attention from the Master or Instructors.

If I am working one-on-one with a student, they will get the most feedback on their technique, but also won't get much chance to try the technique on different people. And if I have a class of 50 students, then I can barely give a few seconds at a time to each student without holding up the other 49.

For me, both as a student and as a teacher, I like when there's 6-8 people in a class of similar levels, or 8-12 people in a class of mixed levels. 6-8 people is about the right number to run group drills and still get a lot of individual attention, and 8-12 means there's probably a couple in my belt range that we can work with, and then you can learn from those more advanced and help out those that are less advanced.

What about you guys? How many students do you find to be the sweet spot as an instructor? As a student? Or do you only prefer to work 1-on-1, or only prefer as large a class as possible?

 

[Gerry Seymour]

Taking space out of the equation (that matters a lot with sparring or grappling), if it's just me teaching, I prefer nothing smaller than 6 people (3 groups of 2) an up to maybe 14, or a bit higher (maybe as many as 20) if many of them are at the same level.

With too few students, I tend to over-teach, giving them too little time to actually work on things. If I have too many, as you pointed out, I can't get around to each group to give them some attention. The upper limit (20) assumes I have a senior student or two in the class, who I can depend upon to "run" their group (them and one or two other people), and to ask questions when needed, rather than waiting for me to stop by.

I think my sweet spot is somewhere around 5-6 groups. Usually groups are 2 people, but if the class gets larger, I can put them in 3's. This reduces active practice time for each person, but gives each a chance to observe. The more I can group folks by level, the more I can handle. So, if I have 1 white, 3 yellow, 2 blue, 3 green, 2 purple, 2 brown, that's a lot of different levels. I can more easily teach to 6 blue and 7 green. But I can also lump levels together. I could have 4 white/yellow, 5 blue/green, and 4 purple/brown. That's sort of only 3 different levels I'm teaching to at that point. If I assign work by level (rather than to individual pairs), then I can reach more people at once when I discuss what that level-group is working on.

 

[Monkey Turned Wolf]

For me, the ideal is 4 students plus a teacher. But the teacher has to know how to step back and let the students drill together. You can do a lot with four people that i dont see any significant extra stuff from more people, and it gives the instructor more time to look at everyone.

That said, it cant be the same 4 all the time, otherwiae after a few months the sparring becomes a bit less realistic (you all know each others tricks)

 

[Headhunter]

0 easy class so you can go home...lol

 

[JP3]

For me, a really good judo class size is 16-24, students (if you've got the mat space for it), as that's 8 to 10 pairings, so when you're going round-robin on the drills, you do get all that body-switching practice in. Same thing for my punch-kick stuff when I was teaching it (TKD & Muay Thai, and to a lesser degree HKD).

For the HKD and aiki-styles, smaller seems to work better, with the sweet spot being about 10-12 students. I regularly ran with about 8 showing up regularly, and always wanted a couple more as the timing of the switching-up in class seemed like it would work better.

 

[Danny T]

It really depends on the age group and the level of the students.

 

[KenpoMaster805]

We have 15 instructor active and we have 12 swat members active and theres like 3 assistant instructor so ya

I help the instructors on tuesday thurdays and we have 4 instructors that teach on tuesday and of course my Sfu the head gm is there too

Depense on the head who he orshe wanna be a instructor

 

[Martial D]

If you have too few students in class, then people don't have as much opportunity to work with different partners and round out their skill sets. Also, one or two people not showing up can have a huge impact on the class.

On the other hand, if you have too many students, then classes can get cramped, and each student gets less attention from the Master or Instructors.

If I am working one-on-one with a student, they will get the most feedback on their technique, but also won't get much chance to try the technique on different people. And if I have a class of 50 students, then I can barely give a few seconds at a time to each student without holding up the other 49.

For me, both as a student and as a teacher, I like when there's 6-8 people in a class of similar levels, or 8-12 people in a class of mixed levels. 6-8 people is about the right number to run group drills and still get a lot of individual attention, and 8-12 means there's probably a couple in my belt range that we can work with, and then you can learn from those more advanced and help out those that are less advanced.

What about you guys? How many students do you find to be the sweet spot as an instructor? As a student? Or do you only prefer to work 1-on-1, or only prefer as large a class as possible?

It depends. If they are all green, 10 at most. Even that is a lot.

Once you get some competent students that can work with the more green students on basics, that number increases.

The thing I don't want is green students working with each other unsupervised on things they don't yet understand.

 

[Gerry Seymour]

It depends. If they are all green, 10 at most. Even that is a lot.

Once you get some competent students that can work with the more green students on basics, that number increases.

The thing I don't want is green students working with each other unsupervised on things they don't yet understand.

When I started reading that, I thought, "What the heck does he have against green belts??"

 

[Martial D]

When I started reading that, I thought, "What the heck does he have against green belts??"

Lol.

Only belts where I train are for keeping your pants up.

 

[Buka]

If the person teaching is more skilled and knowledgeable than me, I'd rather be the only one in class.
I want to be partnered with him all day. It doesn't get any better than that as a student, training with people better than you.

If I'm teaching it would depend on where, what and who. What resources I have at my disposal, what I'm teaching - be it fighting, DT, fitness or a complete curriculum of our art, and who I have in class. But it dosn't matter, you go with the flow.

Perfect scenario....really nice mats, really nice bags - lots of them - a good ring or cage, an assistant, twenty students who have been at it for a year or two, and a whole lot of time.

 

[Gerry Seymour]

Lol.

Only belts where I train are for keeping your pants up.

You wear pants when training??

 

[TSDTexan]

As a solo teacher, I prefer small 3-5, and can live with a class of under 12-13 attending students.

Anything more than this, I find that the quality of instruction and transmission begin to become hampered.

Some of my very best training as a student has been in a 1 to 1 & a 2 to 1... student teacher ratio.

But if there's enough qualified instructors to maintain about a 7-10 student to 1 teacher, then I don't see a problem with scaling up to 50 something students.

 

[Jaeimseu]

I like classes of 15-25, personally. I get pumped up if classes are packed. If the school’s culture is good, being surrounded by students who are excited to train is awesome!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Gerry Seymour]

I like classes of 15-25, personally. I get pumped up if classes are packed. If the school’s culture is good, being surrounded by students who are excited to train is awesome!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I tend to like the energy of classes that hit some critical mass. That varies by art and training style, but I just have more fun (and seem to be more energetic, myself) when there's something of a crowd. And I like being able to take time and work on stuff on my own, so I like when the instructor has some distractions (in the form of enough other students) that they're not able to correct every mistake I make before I get a chance to work on it.

 

[JR 137]

Our dojo is pretty small. We’ve had around 25 students in there for special events like kagami baraki, and there’s not much room to move outside of your own little circle.

We have a kata specific class on Tuesday nights, and with about 15 people that can get hectic too. We usually have to take turns.

Regular classes in our dojo, 8-12 seems like the best number. Enough people to keep the energy high, enough sparring and drilling partners, etc. Class always moves at a great pace when we’re around that number for some reason. We typically have 6-8 people in class.

My former dojo was significantly larger. The more people we had in class, the more interesting things usually got. Of course that depends on who was there too and not just about pure numbers.

For some reason, both my former and current teacher seem more fired up when the classes are bigger. It seems like they get more technical and go at a slower pace when there’s less people, and it’s more about faster pace, grit and sparring when there’s a bigger crowd. I guess a better way to say it is when there’s less people, it’s “slow down and analyze what you’re doing and why” where as when there’s more people it’s “stop thinking so damn much and just do it.” You need both approaches.

 

[skribs]

I tend to like the energy of classes that hit some critical mass. That varies by art and training style, but I just have more fun (and seem to be more energetic, myself) when there's something of a crowd. And I like being able to take time and work on stuff on my own, so I like when the instructor has some distractions (in the form of enough other students) that they're not able to correct every mistake I make before I get a chance to work on it.

I can see this, and it might depend on what you're doing. Things that you do in bursts (like flying kicks) it might be better because not only do you have the energy, but you also have a longer break between each explosive leap.

However, most of the time, I feel more comfortable with a small group. I've always been a small group type of a person. When I was growing up in church, I preferred small groups over main service. When I was hanging out with friends, I'd rather have a friend or two or three come over, than a whole group go to the mall. In World of Warcraft, I preferred 10-man raids to 25-man raids. And in-class, my favorite classes are when I get to work 1-on-1 with a student (i.e. a new white belt going over the basics, a private lesson, a blue belt going to the green belt class for makeup).

I am an introvert, which means I find large groups draining, and solitude uplifting. Working 1-on-1 or working with a small group is a good balance where I can feel rewarded, but not overwhelmed.

 

[skribs]

Our dojo is pretty small. We’ve had around 25 students in there for special events like kagami baraki, and there’s not much room to move outside of your own little circle.

We have a kata specific class on Tuesday nights, and with about 15 people that can get hectic too. We usually have to take turns.

Regular classes in our dojo, 8-12 seems like the best number. Enough people to keep the energy high, enough sparring and drilling partners, etc. Class always moves at a great pace when we’re around that number for some reason. We typically have 6-8 people in class.

My former dojo was significantly larger. The more people we had in class, the more interesting things usually got. Of course that depends on who was there too and not just about pure numbers.

For some reason, both my former and current teacher seem more fired up when the classes are bigger. It seems like they get more technical and go at a slower pace when there’s less people, and it’s more about faster pace, grit and sparring when there’s a bigger crowd. I guess a better way to say it is when there’s less people, it’s “slow down and analyze what you’re doing and why” where as when there’s more people it’s “stop thinking so damn much and just do it.” You need both approaches.

This is why I think there's a sweet spot. With 40 people there's never a chance to slow down, and with 2 people there's never a chance to speed up.

It's also kind of funny, because our sparring club can be described as "just do it" and we typically have 40 people in there, and our Hapkido class is much more technical and we usually have 4-6 people in there.

 

[Gerry Seymour]

I can see this, and it might depend on what you're doing. Things that you do in bursts (like flying kicks) it might be better because not only do you have the energy, but you also have a longer break between each explosive leap.

However, most of the time, I feel more comfortable with a small group. I've always been a small group type of a person. When I was growing up in church, I preferred small groups over main service. When I was hanging out with friends, I'd rather have a friend or two or three come over, than a whole group go to the mall. In World of Warcraft, I preferred 10-man raids to 25-man raids. And in-class, my favorite classes are when I get to work 1-on-1 with a student (i.e. a new white belt going over the basics, a private lesson, a blue belt going to the green belt class for makeup).

I am an introvert, which means I find large groups draining, and solitude uplifting. Working 1-on-1 or working with a small group is a good balance where I can feel rewarded, but not overwhelmed.

I'm an ambivert (nearly equal parts introvert and extravert), and it shows in my preferences. I prefer small groups for some things - small parties, small dinners, gaming, etc. But I prefer large groups for other things - when I'm doing corporate or public (non-MA) workshops, most of the time in MA (except when I can get 1-1 with someone to just exchange ideas). Sometimes I like that anonymity of the crowd, and sometimes I like to stick out in a crowd.

But, yeah, I can see where an introvert would get more out of smaller group settings, for sure. I've always wondered if there was a way to cater to both introverts and extraverts in a thriving school, where classes get to a size that favors the extraverts.

 

[Gerry Seymour]

This is why I think there's a sweet spot. With 40 people there's never a chance to slow down, and with 2 people there's never a chance to speed up.

It's also kind of funny, because our sparring club can be described as "just do it" and we typically have 40 people in there, and our Hapkido class is much more technical and we usually have 4-6 people in there.

I recognized a bit of myself in JR's description. I definitely tend to get more technical and cerebral with smaller classes, and push for more activity from larger classes.