Why I Stopped Teaching Group Classes

I used to teach group sessions. Not many, a short period early in my career, before I understood what was actually happening in the room.

On the surface, it looked fine. Children were completing projects. Parents were happy with the reports. The sessions felt productive.

It took me a while to notice what was missing.

What I Started to See

About six weeks into a group course, I noticed a pattern. The children at the front of the learning curve were bored. The children at the back were lost. And the children in the middle (the ones the lessons were pitched at) were doing something I initially mistook for understanding.

They were copying.

Not dishonestly. The way children copy when they are trying to keep up with a pace that is slightly too fast. Following the steps, getting the right output, never quite understanding what they had built or why it worked.

I could not slow down for them without losing the fast ones. I could not speed up for the fast ones without losing them entirely. The lesson had one speed, and it served no individual child particularly well.

The Session That Made Me Stop

One student, nine years old, enthusiastic, never missed a session, came to me after the course ended asking for help with a simple bug in her Scratch project.

It was a bug she should have been able to fix herself. We had covered exactly this in week four.

I asked her to walk me through what she thought was happening. She could not. She knew the project worked (at the end of the session it had worked) but she had no model of why. She had followed the steps. The steps were not there anymore. Neither was the understanding.

That was the moment I understood what the group format was producing:

the appearance of progress, without the substance.

What 1-on-1 Changed

The difference is not dramatic to watch. A 1-on-1 session looks quiet. One child, one screen, one adult asking questions.

But what is happening underneath is completely different. Every question gets answered: the real question, not the one the child was willing to ask in front of peers. Every confusion gets caught before it hardens into a gap. The project belongs to the child, not to the curriculum.

And the pace. The pace is everything. A child who needs twenty minutes with a concept gets twenty minutes. A child who is ready to move gets moved. Neither has to wait for the other.

After 200+ students over twenty years, the pattern holds. Children in 1-on-1 settings build more durable understanding, plateau less, and continue longer. You can read more about why 1-on-1 tutoring produces better outcomes.

When Group Classes Still Make Sense

I want to be honest about this: group classes are not worthless. If budget is a genuine constraint, a decent group class is better than nothing. Some children are motivated by the social energy of a group in ways that 1-on-1 cannot replicate. At the very earliest stages, before learning really diverges, groups can work reasonably well.

But for sustained progress, for a child who is building real skill over months and years, the structure of group teaching works against the goal.

The pace problem does not get better as children advance. It gets worse.

I stopped because I could not ignore what I was seeing. The format was not bad. It was just not good enough for what I wanted to give.

More at kidscodingtutor.com if you’re weighing up the options.