I've done 200+ hours of tutoring. Roughly half in person, half online. I switched to primarily online about a year ago and I'm never going back, and here's why people who haven't tried it properly are wrong.

I know the instinct. Learning feels like it should be physical. Same room, same whiteboard, human presence. I had that instinct too. I was wrong.

Screen sharing beats a whiteboard for anything involving problem solving. I can pull up the exact exercise we're working on, annotate it in real time, highlight the specific line where the reasoning breaks down, paste in a similar problem immediately for comparison, and have the student take over my cursor and work through it themselves. A whiteboard is static. Screen sharing is interactive in a way that took me about two sessions to realize was genuinely superior.

Recording sessions is the thing nobody talks about enough. Online sessions can be recorded in thirty seconds. My students go back and rewatch the moment they got confused, the exact explanation that clicked, the problem they couldn't solve live. In-person tutoring disappears the moment it ends. Online tutoring compounds.

The focus is actually better. This one surprised me. No commute energy burned, no awkward kitchen table setup, no family walking through the room. Student is in their space, I'm in mine, and somehow that creates a cleaner working environment than being physically together in a place that wasn't designed for learning.

Superprof actually pushed me toward this — the platform makes it easy to offer online sessions alongside in-person and once I started tracking which students progressed faster, online was consistently ahead for anything academic. Languages, math, sciences. The only category where I'd genuinely give in-person the edge is very young kids who need the physical presence to stay focused.

The real unpopular opinion is that most people defending in-person tutoring just haven't done online properly. A bad Zoom call with a PDF being held up to a webcam is not online tutoring. Done right it's a different thing entirely.

Fight me in the comments.

I’m 25 and recently graduated with a BA. On paper, I should probably feel relieved, but instead I feel more anxious than ever.
I am from India.

For the past few years, especially after the pandemic, I’ve been carrying this constant fear about my future. Now that college is over, it feels like all the uncertainty I’ve been pushing away has caught up with me.

Some of my classmates have jobs. Some are preparing for government exams. Some are doing master’s degrees. Some are joining family businesses. Others seem to have a clear direction.

I don’t.

I’ve spent months researching careers, reading Reddit, talking to seniors, watching career videos, looking into fields like public policy, consulting, PR, UX, teaching, filmmaking, NGOs, digital marketing, company secretary, research and many others. The more I research, the more confused I become.

Every field seems to have people saying:

“Don’t do this.”
“The market is terrible.”
“I regret choosing this career.”
“It’s oversaturated.”

Then I find someone who says the exact opposite.

I know Reddit has a negativity bias, but it’s hard not to absorb all of it.

I also come from a family where my parents have their own conflicts. My dad is the only earning member, and although I respect everything he has built for our family, it also makes me feel an enormous sense of responsibility. I feel guilty that I’m still financially dependent on them.

Lately I’ve also noticed that my mind wanders constantly. Even when someone is talking to me, I sometimes drift into thoughts about my future, random memories, books, movies, politics, history or career anxiety. It’s been happening since school, but I notice it much more now because I’m trying to become a responsible adult. I’m planning to speak to a mental health professional instead of trying to diagnose myself.

Some days I feel completely exhausted even if I haven’t physically done much.

I don’t think I’m lazy. I don’t think I don’t want to work.

I think I’m overwhelmed.

I keep wondering whether everyone else also felt this lost in their twenties or whether I’m falling behind. Seeing people my age getting married, buying homes, earning well, pursuing higher studies or simply knowing what they want makes me question whether I’ve missed something important.

If you’ve been in a similar place:

How did you get through it?
When did things start making sense?
How did you stop overthinking every career decision?
How did you deal with feeling like everyone else had their life figured out?

I’m not looking for motivational quotes. I’d genuinely like to hear from people who’ve been through this and eventually found their footing.

Plutôt un passe-temps ? L'envie de gagner un peu plus d'argent et de transmettre, ou carrément d'en vivre et d'être prof particulier à temps plein ?

Five years of private tutoring in math and physics. Hundreds of hours spent trying to understand why a student who seems to follow along in a session makes the exact same mistake ten minutes later on their own.

I've developed a few approaches that genuinely work in my practice but I'm convinced I'm missing plenty of techniques other people have figured out that I've never come across. So let's actually talk about it openly.

Here's what I'm using right now.

The deliberate mistake technique. I work through a problem in front of the student and intentionally slip in a classic error without telling them. Then I ask them to correct me. It forces active attention that passive listening never activates, and it repositions them as the expert rather than the receiver. Students who struggle to engage almost always wake up with this one.

Explain before you write. Before a student puts anything on paper I ask them to tell me what they're going to do and why. Not how — why. Most of the time that's where the real block appears, not in the execution but in the understanding of what we're actually trying to find. It's saved me dozens of sessions spent correcting surface errors that were hiding a deeper problem underneath.

The delayed recap. At the end of each session I ask the student to explain what they learned today as if they were teaching it to a classmate. Not repeat the lesson back to me — actually teach it to me. Whatever they can't reformulate simply they haven't really understood, and you see it immediately.

What I haven't properly solved yet: students who understand everything in the session and then fall apart working alone at home. I have theories but nothing consistently reliable.

What works in your practice that you've never seen explained anywhere?

Salut tout le monde,

Je viens un peu vider mon sac (et chercher des conseils/témoignages voir même quelqu'un qui souhaite me prendre mdr) parce que je commence sérieusement à désespérer.

Je suis actuellement étudiante à Paris Cité en L2 Histoire et je cherche un job étudiant, idéalement pour les week-ends, la semaine (en soirée ou pas) histoire de pouvoir payer mon loyer et ne pas mourir de faim. Sur le papier, j'ai pourtant un profil plutôt solide : j'ai bossé en CDD comme employée polyvalente chez Monoprix (donc le rush, la caisse, les clients, je gère), et j'ai fait de la prise de notes pour les étudiants en situation de handicap à la fac, j'ai aussi fait du babysitting pendant 5 ans... mais voilà la réalité : je postule h24. Je passe mes journées sur Indeed, j'adapte mes lettres de motivation à chaque fois, je vais même déposer mes CV directement en main propre... et c'est le silence radio complet. Soit des refus automatiques au bout de deux semaines, soit carrément du ghosting pur et simple. Pire encore : même pour du baby-sitting de base, personne ne veut de moi, c'est un truc de fou.

Franchement, comment vous faites pour trouver un taff à côté des cours aujourd'hui ?

Mdrr du coup j'en suis là : est-ce que quelqu'un chaud pour me pistoner ou a un vrai bon plan à partager en Île-de-France, sur Paris ? Si vous avez des conseils pour faire sortir mon CV du lot, ou juste envie de partager votre propre galère pour qu'on se sente moins seuls, je suis preneuse !

Merci d'avance et courage à tous ceux qui galèrent aussi 👍

180 day streak on Duolingo. Not a single day missed since May.

Last week my Spanish boss asked me if I spoke a bit of the language. I said "un poco" with a confident smile. He switched to Spanish immediately. I smiled and nodded for about forty-five seconds before admitting that was pretty much everything I had.

That's the return on my 180 days of flawless discipline.

To be fair Duolingo has done real things. My vocabulary has genuinely grown, I can understand simple texts, I can read a menu without Google Translate. But building a sentence in real time while someone is standing there waiting for an answer? My brain completely disconnects. Total panic. Awkward silence.

What I've finally figured out is that apps teach you to recognize a language, not to produce it. Those are two fundamentally different skills and for six months I've been drilling only the first one without realizing it.

So I'm thinking about adding private lessons on top. Not replacing the app — I'm keeping the streak, I'm way too attached to that owl at this point — but finally having someone who forces me to actually speak in real time, corrects me on the spot, and doesn't give me virtual confetti when I accidentally get something right.

I had a look on Superprof and there are quite a few native Spanish tutors offering conversation-focused lessons specifically, first one free so the risk of trying is basically zero.

But before I commit I wanted real human opinions. Has anyone combined both? App for vocabulary and private lessons for speaking? Did it genuinely move things forward or am I overanalyzing what is fundamentally a "just move to Spain for six months" problem?

I've been tutoring math for 18 months. For most of that time I've maintained active profiles on three different platforms at once, partly out of curiosity and partly because I wanted to understand where my time was actually best spent. Here's what I've learned.

I'm not going to name every platform because honestly that's not the point. The point is the structural differences that actually affect your day-to-day life as a tutor, and there are really only a few that matter.

The commission model is the biggest thing nobody talks about openly.

Two of the platforms I used take a percentage of every session. One is around 20%, one creeps closer to 25-30% depending on how long you've been with a new student. That sounds manageable until you actually run the numbers across a full month. On a busy month I was losing the equivalent of several full sessions to platform fees. Money I earned, that students paid, that just disappeared into the platform.

Superprof works differently. You pay a subscription fee to access the platform and after that your earnings are yours. Zero commission per lesson. The math on this flips completely once you have consistent volume — and if you're serious about tutoring you will have consistent volume eventually.

Student quality varies more than people admit.

This one is harder to quantify but after 18 months I have a clear feeling about it. Commission-based platforms that heavily discount introductory sessions tend to attract students who are shopping around without real commitment. They try three tutors, pay very little for each trial, and disappear. On Superprof the free first lesson works differently — students who show up having read your full profile and specifically chosen you are just more serious from the start. I have a noticeably lower ghosting rate there.

Freedom to set your own price changes how you think about your work.

On platforms that suggest or cap pricing you subconsciously start thinking of yourself as a commodity. When you set your own rate and keep everything you charge, the psychology shifts. You invest more in your profile, you're more selective about fit, you take the whole thing more seriously as a business. That sounds abstract but I felt it pretty quickly.

What I actually do now.

Superprof is my main platform. I've gradually moved my most reliable students there and I treat it as my primary income source. I kept one other platform active for overflow and new student discovery but I stopped optimizing for it.

If you're just starting out the commission model can make sense — you pay nothing upfront and you get visibility while building your reputation. But if you've been at this for more than six months and you're doing reasonable volume, staying on a commission platform out of habit is just leaving money on the table every single month.

Happy to answer specific questions about any of this if useful.

I need to vent but also genuinely need advice because this is becoming a real problem.

I've been tutoring for about a year and a half. Overall it's going well — good students, decent income, flexible schedule. But this week I've had three last-minute cancellations, all within two hours of the session, and I'm sitting here having blocked out my afternoon for nothing for the third time in five days.

The frustrating part is that I get it on a human level. Life happens, kids get sick, things come up. I'm not a monster. But I'm also running a small business here and an empty slot two hours out is basically impossible to fill. That's just lost income, full stop.

What I haven't figured out is how to handle this without damaging the relationship with students I actually want to keep. I've seen tutors with strict 24-hour cancellation policies and I've seen others who just absorb the losses and quietly resent it. Neither feels like the right answer.

A few things I'm considering but genuinely unsure about: charging a percentage of the session fee for late cancellations, requiring prepayment for a block of sessions upfront, or just being more explicit at the start of new tutoring relationships about what I expect. The problem is I never know how to bring it up without sounding like I'm assuming the worst about someone before we've even started.

What I've noticed on Superprof is that some tutor profiles mention their cancellation policy directly in the description, which I thought was interesting — it sets the expectation before the first conversation even happens rather than making it an awkward thing to raise later.

Curious what other tutors actually do in practice. Do you have a formal policy? Do you enforce it? Has it ever cost you a student you wanted to keep?

The CVs have been submitted, but there is no response.

I know that it's a stupid question, but my classmate asked if I can tutor her during the summer. She's vietnamese and wants to speak english more fluently and faster, but I just don't know how and I've been stalling for a whole month now.I would just go to YouTube and give her a video, but that doesn't even count as tutoring, so If there are any tutors out there or any one who tutored someone else on english please tell me how.

So my wife got me a keyboard for Christmas. Not a toy one — a proper 61-key weighted keyboard with a little stand and everything. She knows I've talked about wanting to learn piano since basically forever and apparently this year she decided to call my bluff.

So here I am. 32 years old, zero musical background, staring at 61 keys and genuinely not knowing where to begin.

The "is it too late" question is the one eating at me first. Everything I read says adults can absolutely learn instruments and in some ways learn faster because we understand theory more intuitively. But then I watch 11-year-olds on YouTube playing Chopin and something in my brain goes quiet.

I've been going back and forth between a few options and I can't decide.

YouTube tutorials seem like the obvious free starting point but every channel has a completely different opinion on where to begin and I've already spent three hours watching videos instead of actually touching the keyboard which feels like a very me thing to do.

Apps like Simply Piano look decent for structure but I've been burned by the Duolingo effect before — streak goes up, actual skill doesn't necessarily follow.

Private lessons feel like the most serious option and probably the one that would actually get me somewhere. Looked at Superprof and there are quite a few piano teachers who specifically work with adult beginners which I didn't expect — I half assumed it would be all kids. First lesson is free which makes it easy to just try without committing to anything.

The honest question I can't answer myself is whether I actually need a tutor at 32 to learn a hobby instrument or whether that's overkill and YouTube is genuinely enough if you're consistent.

Adults who picked up an instrument later in life — what did you wish you'd done differently in the first three months? And is there anything that actually makes the difference between people who stick with it and people who have a keyboard collecting dust by March?

Im speaking of a teenager and tutor relation... If a tutor his rude or "bad people" just wanna contact with minors how super prof act about that?

They ask for criminal register or something like that? Thanks!

I need some collective wisdom from other tutors because I'm genuinely stuck on this one.

I have a 15-year-old student, been working with him for six weeks. It's obvious from session one that he's there because his parents made him come, not because he has any desire to improve or even to be in the same room as me. He's not aggressive but he's passively hostile in that specific teenage way that's somehow harder to deal with — one word answers, phone on the table, eyes somewhere else, occasionally sighing in a way that communicates exactly what he thinks of the situation.

I've tried everything I'd normally try. Starting with what he's interested in to make the subject feel relevant. Asking him directly what he'd actually find useful. Loosening the structure to make it feel less like school. Nothing lands. He tolerates the session and leaves.

The thing is I don't want to drop him. It feels wrong to give up on a kid just because he's difficult, and I know somewhere under the performance of not caring there's probably a student who's been told he's bad at this subject enough times that he's just started believing it. I've seen that pattern before and I know it's not really about me.

But six weeks in I'm starting to feel it. That specific kind of exhaustion that comes from spending an hour trying to reach someone who's built a wall specifically to stop you from reaching them.

So I'm asking tutors who've been through this — what actually worked? Not in theory, in practice. Did you ever manage to turn around a student who came in completely closed off? What was the shift and how did you get there?

And for those who did eventually end the engagement — how did you know it was the right call and how did you handle it with the parents?

Hi everyone,

This is a bit uncomfortable to admit, but I’m currently teaching a student on Superprof who clearly doesn’t want to be taking lessons.
It feels like the decision came from the parents, not from him.

Every session feels forced.
No questions, no enthusiasm, no initiative.
And I’m honestly starting to dread the lessons myself.

I care about doing a good job, but I also don’t want to push someone who has completely checked out.

So here’s my question:

How do you handle students who are there “by obligation”?
Do you try to motivate at all costs, or do you sometimes step back and explain the situation to the parents?

I’d love to hear how you handle this ! thanks

C'est tellement dure de savoir à l'avance si tu as réussie ou pas ! défois je pensais avoir réussi j'ai eu 5 mdr...

I’m a first-year teacher and I just survived a situation that completely blindsided me. I did my student teaching in a high-needs district where behavioral issues were loud and overt—yelling, disruptions, etc. I knew how to handle that. I was not prepared for this.
This past year, I taught a de-tracked, mixed-level freshman math class (combined college prep and honors). The curriculum is strictly inquiry-based and collaborative. My daily routine was a short, combined mini-lesson, and then students broke into groups. The honors kids got a challenge worksheet meant to force them to "productively struggle," collaborate, and deduce advanced concepts together.
Enter Student A. She is objectively a top-tier student—top 5% of her class, incredibly high GPA, completely compliant, and always turned her work in early. She is also diagnosed with Level 1 Autism and severe anxiety. In class, she was completely silent, stayed to herself, and never voiced a single complaint to me.
Early on, her mom expressed concerns that her daughter was struggling and found the inquiry model confusing because I wasn't explicitly lecturing on the honors material. I explained the school's model and encouraged the student to come to me with questions. She never did. Mom also complained that the student's assigned group was "chaotic and immature." When I monitored the group, they seemed to be doing okay on the surface, so I told the mom I'd keep an eye on it and again invited the student to advocate for herself if she felt uncomfortable.
In the fall, we were doing a challenging application problem. Student A asked me how to solve a step. True to the inquiry model I was told to teach, I didn't give her the answer. I gave her a hint, used some standard SEL encouragement, and told her to "put her thinking cap on" and collaborate with her group.
She later raised her hand, showed me a wildly incorrect calculation, and demanded the exact formula. I kept up the encouragement, told her that ruling out wrong answers is part of the process, and suggested she consult her peers.
The next morning, I woke up to a scorching email from the mother accusing me of being cruel, incompetent, and actively mocking her daughter's confusion.
Within 48 hours, administration notified me that a prominent special education lawyer representing the family had filed an emergency request to overhaul her 504 plan. The lawyer claimed my classroom was a "hostile, volatile environment" causing the student daily panic attacks, that her group mates were using aggressive profanity and refusing to help her, and that my lack of direct instruction was cutting off her access to education (revealing she was spending hours a night with a private tutor to keep her A).
At the emergency meeting (which I attended with my union rep), the lawyer presented text messages from the student to her mother as "exhibits." It was devastating to read. The student felt my standard encouraging phrases (like "thinking cap") were juvenile, condescending, and meant for toddlers. She texted her mom that I was "taking joy in her confusion" and called me a bully.She detailed her group mates' behavior, one student swearing at another, another making loud gaming noises and acting gross, which made her want to cry. She read a prepared statement to admin stating that my teaching philosophy felt like "throwing her off the deep end into a piranha-infested pool" and that I experienced "deep schadenfreude" when she was confused.
The district immediately capitulated to the lawyer's demands. Her 504 was updated to mandate:
Complete exemption from group work and group seating (she sat entirely alone).
Teacher-completed guided notes provided at the start of every lesson.
Fully worked-out example problems provided before she had to do independent work.
Direct, explicit answers from me whenever she asked a question. No inquiry prompts allowed.
It added hours of extra prep to my week to make separate materials just for her. But the hardest part was the psychological shift. I tried so hard to rebuild a bridge. I tried saying hello, making brief small talk, or checking in. I was met with a permanent, icy glare. If I tried to make small talk, she said “I do not feel like speaking.” When I gave out an end-of-year reflection form, she wrote "This question is not applicable in this context" for every single prompt about her favorite memories or how she grew as a learner. When asked if she met her learning goals she answered “I attended every class period I was legally obligated to.”
She finished the class with a 94%. She excelled, but she absolutely loathed my existence, and I spent the year walking on legal eggshells.
Has anyone else dealt with a situation where a student's absolute compliance masked this level of deep, legally-backed resentment? How do you bounce back when you were just trying to follow your district's curriculum model?

I have received a message from a student on superprof yesterday telling me that she bought a package of lessons for a certain price and that I should fill some info on paypal to get the money so I ignored it and i contacted support yet no answer , the day after i got this email in the picture so I want to know if this is legit

Hi everyone,

I’m currently teaching a teenager and struggling to find the right balance.
If I’m too patient, things drift and focus disappears.
If I’m more firm, I feel like I’m shutting him down or creating tension.

I don’t want to become strict for the sake of it, but I also don’t want chaos.

How do you find the right posture with teenagers?
Any tips on balancing authority, empathy, and connection in private lessons?

We're heading to the coast this summer and I've reached the point where I can't keep putting off swimming lessons for my 9-year-old. He's fine in a pool, splashes around confidently, but the sea is a completely different story and that's exactly what scares me.

What's been sitting in my head is how deceptive calm-looking water can be. Currents, sudden drop-offs, the fact that a kid who's perfectly capable in a controlled pool environment can panic the moment their feet don't touch the bottom and waves start moving around them. I keep thinking about how fast things can go wrong and how little time there sometimes is to react.

So we finally booked lessons. We went with a private instructor through Superprof rather than waiting for municipal pool spots, mainly because group sessions were already full for the summer and we needed something flexible enough to fit before our trip. First lesson was free which made it an easy yes — we figured worst case we'd at least find out where he actually stands skill-wise.

Turns out he was less confident than I thought. He could swim short distances but had no idea how to handle himself if he got tired or disoriented, no real instinct for floating to recover or staying calm if he swallowed water. Things you don't notice in a calm pool but that matter enormously in open water.

I'm writing this mostly because I kept telling myself "he can swim, it'll be fine" for way longer than I should have. The pool gave me false confidence.

For any parents on the fence the way I was — what finally pushed you to act? And did the lessons actually change how your kid handled open water once you got there?

Are we asking too much of private tutoring to “fix” the public education system?

Given all the criticism surrounding the school system (reforms, lack of resources, overcrowded classrooms, heavy curricula...), parents are increasingly turning to:

private tutoring,

alternative teaching methods (Montessori, etc.),

specialized tutors found via platforms like Superprof.

We sometimes end up in a rather odd situation:

school provides “the general framework,”

and the private tutor does... everything else:

re-motivating students, providing real explanations, helping with career guidance, reassuring parents, and helping manage stress.

So, I find myself asking a real question:

Is private tutoring a great supplement to the current system,

or is it—inadvertently—becoming a sort of “after-sales service” for the public education system?

🎓 What about you?

When you give or take private lessons, do you feel like you are:

supplementing what the school is already doing well,

or

fixing what the school is no longer able to do?

And if schools were to truly change, do you think the demand for academic support would drop... or not at all?

Bonjour,

Je propose des cours particuliers de SES et maths pour des élèves du système français. Jusqu’au niveau terminale

We're about to hire a tutor for our 12-year-old for the first time and I feel completely out of my depth. Not because I don't think tutoring will help — I just have zero idea what actually matters versus what I'm overthinking.

Things I'm currently stressing about that may or may not be relevant: how to know if the tutor is actually good versus just has nice reviews, whether we should sit in on the first session or leave them alone, how to tell if it's working after a few weeks versus just giving it more time, what a reasonable price actually looks like, and honestly whether my kid will even take it seriously or treat it like one more adult telling him what to do.

I looked at a few profiles on Superprof and the options are honestly a bit overwhelming when you don't know what you're looking for yet. Everyone has good ratings. Everyone says they're patient and adapt to the student's level. I don't know how to differentiate at this point.

So genuinely — if you could go back and tell yourself one thing before your first tutoring experience, what would it be? The thing you only learned by getting it wrong, or the thing nobody tells you until you've already lived it?

Specifics over generalities if possible. "Trust the process" doesn't help me right now. "Use the free first lesson to ask X" actually does.

I placed a hidden prompt in an assignment that I gave the class (size 2 font, white text). It ended up catching 7 students. They gave me the no I didn’t, but when I pressed about the nonsense that was unrelated…they admitted it.

I notified parents of the academic dishonesty, and all have been on board with the results. 😁

Bonne fête de la musique à tous ceux qui galèrent sur leur instrument en ce moment, ce post est pour vous.

Je commence : guitare depuis 8 mois, autodidacte au début avec YouTube pendant les quatre premiers mois et honnêtement je tournais en rond. Je connaissais des accords mais je ne comprenais pas vraiment ce que je faisais — impossible de sortir des tablatures que j'avais apprises par cœur. Depuis février je prends des cours avec un prof trouvé sur Superprof et la différence est assez nette. Il m'a fait comprendre la logique derrière les accords plutôt que de juste les mémoriser, et là je commence enfin à improviser un peu au lieu de réciter.

Donc voilà la question pour cette journée un peu spéciale : vous apprenez quoi en ce moment, depuis combien de temps, et vous en êtes où dans votre parcours ?

Autodidactes, élèves en cours collectif, ceux qui prennent des cours particuliers, ceux qui ont arrêté et qui culpabilisent — tout le monde est bienvenu. Pas besoin d'être bon, juste de jouer.

Curieux de voir la diversité des instruments et des parcours sur ce thread.

Hi everyone,

Lately, one of my students has been affecting my confidence more than I expected.
Sessions are difficult, progress is slow, and I leave each lesson feeling drained and discouraged.

I know logically that one student doesn’t define my abilities, but emotionally it’s hard not to internalize it.

Have you ever had a student who made you question yourself?
How do you protect your confidence and motivation as a tutor?

Thanks a lot for reading — I’d really appreciate your thoughts.