Why I Teach Fewer Students, Not More

People assume I keep the number small because I'm protecting something. Exclusivity, status, some version of scarcity marketing dressed up in a uniform. That's not it. I keep the number small because I know exactly how much attention a person needs before what I'm giving them actually becomes theirs, and I know how little of that I have to give once the room gets past a certain size.

A class of thirty can learn a curriculum. It cannot receive a transmission. Those are different things, and most people never notice the difference because most schools never let them experience the second one to compare it against.

When I had more students than I could actually watch, I told myself I was reaching more people. What I was really doing was teaching everyone slightly worse so I could teach more people at all. Corrections got generic because I didn't have time to find what was specifically wrong with each person's structure. Feedback got delayed because there were six other hands raised before mine got to yours. Nobody was being neglected exactly, but nobody was being seen either, and seeing is the entire mechanism. You cannot correct what you haven't actually watched closely enough to understand.

I capped the number after I noticed something uncomfortable about my own teaching. I could tell you what was wrong with a technique. I could not always tell you why it kept going wrong for that specific person, in that specific way, rooted in whatever they were carrying into the room that day. That second kind of seeing only happens with repetition and proximity. You have to watch someone fail the same way often enough to understand the actual root of it, not just the symptom in front of you.

So the number isn't a marketing decision. It's a limit I found by hitting it. I know how many people I can actually watch closely enough to teach the way I was taught, and I stopped pretending I could serve more than that number without quietly shortchanging every person in the room, including the ones who never would have noticed.

If that means fewer students, it means fewer students. I'd rather transmit something real to twelve people than distribute a diluted version of it to a hundred.

-R Gonzalez