Eleni and Konstantinos on the maths of teacher attention — and why a forty-person waiting list has never changed it.
A sixty-minute class with twelve students gives each dancer five minutes of a teacher’s attention if it is shared perfectly evenly, which it never is. With twenty-four students it is two and a half minutes, and in practice the quiet ones get none.
We have run the numbers every time the waiting list has grown. The answer has always been the same: open another slot, not a bigger room. It costs us more and it is the reason we have three studios rather than one large hall.
The corollary is that we sometimes have to say no, or not yet. We would rather do that than teach a class where a beginner can hide at the back for a whole term.
