2024-04-29

Teaching my regular classes at the Ross Farnsworth - East Valley YMCA.

I’ve got several students in my youth & family class who’ve been with me for a while and are starting to be “held back” by the constant influx of new students. Getting new students is a good problem to have, of course, but having to “rewind” everyone back to the very basic basics can understandably get a bit old for the students who’ve been with you for a while. So how do you deal with that?

One idea is to have a sort of beginner-beginner’s class, where you only go over the very basics necessary to survive in the “regular” class, but that means adding another class, with another time slot, which may or may not have anyone attending from week to week. If you run your own place, that might be a workable option, but when you operate out of a health club, with schedules and payroll and whatnot, maybe not so much. Another idea is to split the class and have an experienced student take the brand new students aside to bring them up to speed, but that requires having experienced students capable of teaching others.

My current solution is to simply “graduate” the younger students into the adult class, even though they’re not technically old enough yet. At the point this becomes an issue for any particular student, they’ll have been with me long enough that I’ll have a good idea of whether they can handle it or not. Granted, that means I’ll sometimes have a tiny 10-year-old paired up with a large adult for partner drills, but it’s always something isn’t it?

For those who teach classes, how do you deal with “advanced” child students?