Let's say you had the bills paid for your school space for a year...money was not an issue, so you didn't charge your students. You open the doors & have 25 students between the ages of 16-30 for the first class. You run a hard, hour & a half class 4 days the first week. At the first class of the next week, you only have 10 students return! The rest thought it was just too difficult.
Would you change your classes? Would you continue as it were doing?
I am assuming that there must have been contact with the departing students, otherwise, you would not know why they did not come back. At that point of contact, I would ask them for honest feedback and thank them for whatever I get.
As an instructor, I have a good idea of what I want to teach and the level of difficulty for the class. On my teaching days, I run a demanding but not hard core class; I often wind up teaching the kids classes. But with adults, my main focus is on instruction in technique. I let my GM do the hard core stuff.
I frequently am asked to teach beginners, so I treat them as if they have no experience whatsoever. Thus, the classes are not over the top and mainly are focused on kibon anyway. I generally work with only a few basics at a time.
Consequently, if I am told that
my class is too hard, and in this example, it is a
white belt class (new students all start at white), chances are that the students are much more out of shape than they had thought, or they are quitting for some other reason.
If I am not charging money for the class, I would be curious as to why the fifteen dropped off, but I would be much more concerned with the progress of the ten who stayed.
Daniel
