Being a private tutor can put us in an awkward twilight zone between “friend” and “tutor,” making it difficult to maintain professional boundaries.

So let's go over ways to stay professional in three uncomfortable situations that we may occasionally find ourselves in. While these situations are rare, it’s better to be safe than sorry!

Unwanted Compliments

In professional contexts, compliments can, at times, be inappropriate. For example, a friend of mine was once taking a taxi, when the driver said to him, winking, “You’re really buff.”

Compliments like these can make us feel uncomfortable when they come from someone we’ve just met. But how do we respond to this?

First of all, keep in mind that our students may be well-meaning and that different cultures have different standards for complimenting people. For example, it’s more common for women in East Asia to compliment women they find beautiful.

And in Korea, it’s somewhat common for students to tell tutors “I love you” as a compliment. You can see this in a promotional video made by Engoo Korea and also read about it in the following comment from one of our tutors (🇵🇭):

I have this female Korean student in her twenties and she would tell me "I love you teacher” like a fangirl. I know this is somewhat normal though, because I worked in a Korean academy before where I learned that some adult students would say this as a compliment to their teachers!

However, regardless of their intentions, if something makes us feel uncomfortable, we should try to communicate that. That way, if the student is actually being creepy, we don’t give them room to get even creepier!

So we can deal with these remarks in two ways: directly or indirectly.  If you choose to be indirect, you can either ignore the compliment (signaling disinterest) or acknowledge it and change the subject.

For example, a member of Tutor Support recommends saying something like, “Thank you. I enjoy learning English with you, too” or “I’m happy that you are enjoying our class. Let’s move on to the next question.” Basically, thank them for the kind thought but remind them that you’re their English tutor!

If you choose to be direct:

1. You can tell the student that their compliment made you feel uncomfortable. For example: “Other people say this to me too, and it makes me feel uncomfortable.” 
2. You can remind the student that you are in a professional student-tutor relationship. For example: “I appreciate your compliment, but this is something that we should only tell people we’re close with and not in class to a teacher.”

In both cases, you can tell the student that their compliment made you feel uncomfortable while keeping things general.

And if they repeat the compliment or the uncomfortable behavior? Tutor Support says, “Be strict and tell them, ‘I’m sorry, but you’re making me uncomfortable. Let’s focus on the lesson, please.’”

Overly Personal, Impolite, or Insensitive Questions

What counts as a personal question often depends on the culture and the individual. For example, some Japanese students are suspicious of basic questions like “Where in Japan are you from?” Meanwhile, many cultures consider it impolite to ask about the person’s age or how much money they make.

So, if we feel uncomfortable about a question, let’s first try to assume good intentions. After all, maybe the student did not know the question was crossing boundaries. 

Then, we can turn this situation into a teachable moment by letting them know that the question they’ve asked is too personal, impolite, or insensitive in our culture.

We can also teach them how to ask questions more politely, for example, by first asking for permission to ask the question (e.g. “May I ask … ?” or “Is it OK if I ask … ?”) and by telling them that if they get something like “Sorry, but I’d rather not say” as a response, they should refrain from asking additional questions.

Inappropriate Requests

Lastly, you might receive some inappropriate requests from students. Unfortunately, this is a risk particularly common in one-on-one teaching situations, whether that’s online tutoring or office hours at a university. If it happens, be ready to take swift, direct action. 

For example, let’s say a student:

• sends us a friend request on Facebook
• asks to meet up with us in person when they’re visiting our city
• tries to convert us to their religion or sell us their product

In such cases, we’ll want to be direct about saying “no.” Luckily, we have policies in place for each of these situations. 

Like many schools, we consider it inappropriate to connect with students on social media. Our policies also prohibit meeting up in-person and selling products during a lesson. We also discourage talking about religion in general.

So we can explain that while we appreciate the student’s enthusiasm, company policy forbids us from doing any of these things. In fact, students are informed of these policies when they sign up. If they have any questions, we can direct them to Customer Service for an explanation.

And what if we get a sexually inappropriate request from a student? Again, we’ll want to be swift and direct. A university teaching assistant who received sexual emails from her students recommends saying, “I will only participate in a professional teacher-student relationship with you, and I'd like you to stop sending any emails that are personal or romantic in nature.” 

She adds, “If the emails persist, notify your supervisor or the dean of students to report the situation.” In our case, if a student continues to make inappropriate requests, we should report the situation to Tutor Support while the situation is ongoing if possible.

If you cannot contact TS until after the lesson, make sure to send the class link as well as screenshots of the lesson. Feel free to reach out to Tutor Support if you have any questions about this process.

👋 That’s it for now!

As tutors, we want to be friendly enough to establish rapport with our students while also maintaining professional boundaries. We hope this post has given you an idea of the most awkward situations you might encounter as a tutor and how to best deal with them.

Although we tend to get more relaxed with regular students, always know that you have the right to make your boundaries clear if a student becomes too friendly.

Finally, Tutor Support would like to reassure tutors reading this that the situations mentioned in this piece are very rare. Chances are, you won't have to deal with the majority of these situations. We just want everyone to be prepared!