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Some students or their parents, send me a specific topic for the trial lesson but at the time of the
- Rudi T
- Dec 11, 2021
- 2 min read
Updated: Dec 13, 2021
Some students or their parents, send me a specific topic for the trial lesson but at the time of the lesson, after the lesson has started, the student wants to have a lesson on a very different topic. What am I supposed to do? Those are new clients and I do not want improvise a bad lesson and appear unprofessional.
What you described is not so unusual especially when tutoring online. The student or one of his or her parents may have sent you the topic for the trial lesson one or two days before the lesson. In the meantime the student may have gone through some other topics at school and now wants to have a lesson on another topic. Whether you want to give a lesson on the new topic or not depends on you, more specifically:
-Are you well prepared on the new topic and do you feel confident about it? -Do you have the right material within reach? -Is the student willing to postpone the lesson since the topic is different from the topic you have prepared for the lesson? Since this is the first lesson with a new student it is arguably the most important lesson for the tutor and you won’t get a second chance if the lesson doesn’t go well, you should carefully consider whether to improvise a lesson of postpone it.
Some things to consider:
-Postponing the lesson may make you appear a rather weak teacher since an experienced teacher who is supposed to master the whole syllabus of a specific course is expected to be able to improvise a lesson about a different topic from the same syllabus without much or any extra preparation.
-A not-so-good lesson where the tutor is hesitant and not very confident on the topic may easily put the student off and that will translate in losing a new client.
-Some clients will be perfectly fine with postponing the lesson while some, especially those with a tight schedule, will not.
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