Sounds like you need to fire them and get an instructor that will give you your money's worth by maximizing your time with structure, objectives and a plan of progression.

You're paying them to have a plan of action for you. If they chuck you the ball, they aren't doing their job. Granted, once in a while if I had a hard working student that was getting themselves in a rut by overthinking NDB holds or something, I might just suggest we do something completely out of sequence in the syllabus (How 'bout we file IFR to TPA, shoot an approach, park, get lunch and talk about this NDB thing some more) but still with learning as the objective.

The student shouldn't be telling the instructor what the plan is for the day. It erodes the student's confidence in the fact that the instructor actually has a plan at all.