u/Alicemw98

I’m reaching the point where I’m seriously considering dropping a student, and I’d like some honest opinions from other tutors.

Today was the straw that broke the camel’s back.
We had major connection issues during the lesson. To be fair, I genuinely don’t know if the problem was on my side, his side, or the platform itself. However, the issues started when he went outside to show me around his new flat, and from that point onwards the connection became terrible.

What frustrated me was that he immediately started blaming my connection and pointing out that my connection bar was showing red. He became visibly annoyed and said it was ridiculous that we’d been in the lesson for around 10–15 minutes and hadn’t learned anything yet.

I found that comment particularly frustrating because technical issues are not something I can control, and I’ve often gone above and beyond for this student, including regularly staying beyond the scheduled lesson time to help him.

The connection issue itself isn’t the whole problem, though.

Over time I’ve noticed several recurring patterns:

- He becomes defensive when corrected.
- If he answers something incorrectly and I correct him, he will often immediately repeat the correct answer and say something along the lines of “Yes, that’s what I said.”
- He frequently challenges lesson activities before we’ve even started them.
- He likes to take control of the lesson and push things toward topics he enjoys, even when the lesson plan is based on things he previously asked to work on.
- He can be quite dismissive of exercises very quickly without giving them a chance.
- He also tends to ask a lot of personal questions that aren’t really related to learning Spanish. Individually they seem harmless, but over time they sometimes feel more personal than I would expect in a normal tutor-student relationship, and occasionally even come across as slightly flirtatious.

Ironically, many of the lessons that run overtime aren’t because of me. He often starts personal conversations, asks unrelated questions, wants to show me things from his personal life, or asks for “just a little more practice” when we’re already well past the scheduled end time. I have often accommodated this because I wanted to help him, but it makes comments about “wasting lesson time” particularly frustrating when I’ve regularly given him extra time for free.

Another challenge is that his confidence level doesn’t always match his actual level. Confidence is great, but sometimes he seems convinced he already understands a topic completely when there are still noticeable gaps. This can make it difficult to correct mistakes because he often reacts as though he already knew the answer.

The strange thing is that he is not a bad student academically. He has made progress and can be very engaged when things are going well.

But I’m starting to notice that I feel tense before lessons with him because I never know whether he’s going to be cooperative or argumentative that day.

At what point do you decide a student is simply not worth the emotional energy anymore?

Would you try setting firmer boundaries, or would you move on and make room for students who are easier to work with?

Hi everyone 😊

I wanted to ask about two things as a relatively newer tutor on Preply.

First: how is the Corporate Tutor program? Has it helped you get significantly more students or more stable bookings? What has your experience been like overall?

Second: I’d really appreciate advice about pricing and visibility on the platform.

It took me around 2 months to get my first student, but now I have around 5–6 active students. The issue is that this still only gives me around 6–8 lessons per week maximum (sometimes less).

I started at $15.50/hour, then increased to $19, and now I’m at $22. Since increasing to $22, I haven’t received any new students in about a month or so.

For tutors who successfully increased their prices:

- Did bookings slow down temporarily at first?
- Did you notice certain metrics affecting visibility more than others?
- Is there anything specific that helped you appear more in search results?
- Did updating your intro video/profile help significantly?
- At what point did higher pricing start feeling sustainable?

I’d really appreciate any honest advice or experiences from tutors who have gone through this stage already 😊