Episode 255 | Amie Dorsey | Amie Teaches | The Knowledge Entrepreneurs Show

Welcome to the Knowledge Entrepreneurs show where we celebrate the innovators driving change in the education industry. At Edison OS we've worked with over 500 knowledge entrepreneurs to turn their ethnic ideas into profitable businesses. In today's episode of the Knowledge Entrepreneurs show we have Amy Dorsey. Amy Dorsey is the founder of Amy Teaches. Prior to that she was a creator of Tutor Ted. She specializes in GRE, SAT and ACT test prep. Amy has published seven test prep books and three online courses to prep her students for their admissions tests. With over 20 years of experience she has worked with thousands of students. She scored perfectly on both the SAT and ACT. The students is improvement of 170 plus points on the SAT and 5.5 plus points on the ACT consistently outpaces other test prep companies results. Hi Amy, welcome to the Knowledge Entrepreneurs show. Thanks so much for taking time out for this. Thank you Jack. My pleasure Amy. Amy, my first question to you as is most of my first questions. How did you get into education especially test prep? Is that something that you planned growing up or is there a story to it? I didn't plan on it growing up but I always loved school and I also weirdly I always loved standardized tests so when I was younger and was taking the ERB tests and then later on the SAT it always came very naturally. When I was in college I was walking across the campus at Princeton and I saw a flyer for a test prep job and I took the number the phone number and I called and got the job and I was really I became hooked once I had my first student who had a significant improvement in her score I could just hear the happiness in her voice and that was that was it that's that's when it sort of sunk its teeth into me. Got it Amy. Amy, you said you liked test prep weirdly why do you why why did you say weirdly I mean is that not the norm? Yeah good question I think that the standardized tests are can be intimidating and I think for a lot of students they experience them as a demonstration of what they don't know and what they're not good at versus a chance to showcase what they are good at. I always thought of them as fun I always thought of them as a game and that I think is part of why I've been good at this the test prep is that I share that feeling with my students showing them that there are certain ways that the questions are asked and certain techniques that the test makers have you know created and framed up the questions with and once we crack that code then it can be enjoyable to solve them so I think I had that insight from when I was young and it really is my goal to to share that feeling with my students. Got it Amy. Amy you said the first instance you know that got you hooked into teaching test prep for students how long back was that? That was in the year 2000. Wow okay and did you straight away after that did you straight away take this full time or how long did it take for you to get into this full time? Not right away but pretty soon after that so I was I was a senior in college at the time I graduated I moved to Los Angeles to be a screenwriter to try to you know break into the entertainment business and that that's a good challenge and an interesting career path to take while you're doing it you still need to pay the bills and so I got another tutoring job in LA and that was a part-time part-time gig and it was great but what I realized was I was enjoying that so much and I liked having a job that was sort of predictable in terms of I could always have students I could always have work to do versus trying to write something and hope that it would get sold later down the road so I started doing it full-time in 2004 and that's it took off from there I incorporated my business my my former business was Tudor Ted and that and got incorporated in 2007 so I was full-time before then but then actually turned it into a corporation in 2007. Got it so you said you moved to you know Los Angeles to be a screenwriter and then you know we're doing this on the side you want to get an entertainment so is that still going on in some capacity of other or you're completely into teaching now? Yeah that's a good question I am I'm a writer I'm a I'm a creator I like I like generating stories and just working with working from a blank page to turn it into something and I'm always looking for a way to scratch that itch and in one way writing my SAT books and creating my online courses and even building the business was an expression of that and I've got my old books here that I'm gonna show off all the Tudor Ted books that you know these were books that were there were a creative expression so even though I wasn't writing movies I was writing something I still am making music I still am I made a music video this March so I'm still always trying to express myself creatively and I think that those those skills aren't exactly the skills of a test prep professional but they can they can work together and you can you can incorporate those creative skills within the test prep business. Yeah yeah I was gonna you know ask you about that because I think today if you there are different types of tutors and one of the tutors is you know who can kind of go beyond the subject matter and then you know include a little bit of imagination or bring in some creativity and you know make it all interesting because today especially after we've gone virtual one of the common problems that I hear from tutors is that getting students attention or you know the engagement and stuff so you having the skills of you being passionate about writing did that help you here in any way Amy? Jake I missed the very end of your question oh yeah you said having the skills of writing and then what was the end of it did that did that help you in your tutoring in any way? I think so but I think that sort of a related skill that is part of being a good writer is empathy and empathy to me is relating relating to your students but also relating to your audience when you're writing and when you're writing well in my opinion you are creating a message that is meant to be understood and to do that you need to be able to put yourself in the reader's position and think about how they'll receive it so when you're working with a student and you're trying to come up with a way for them to understand a concept you often have to sort of model their thinking hear what they say understand understand their understanding in order to bridge the gap between where they are and what you want them to know and understand so I think there's that's that's the skill I think that that overlaps there being a good writer is being a good communicator and I don't think you can be a good communicator without having some understanding of other people's mindsets gone Amy Amy does that sometimes become a double-edged sword because you when you say that you know you're able to understand the your students you know you compared writing and teaching in writing it's the leader in teaching it's a student you while you write you want to know what the leader's mind is like and when teaching you want to know what the students mind is like if students are different right so do you adapt so much with every student with every session and that takes me to was where your sessions one-on-one or with a group yeah I've thought about that a lot most of the work I've ever done has been one-on-one with students and then I've also worked with say two students at the same time and three and four and six and 10 and 14 and more than that and I've noticed that as soon as you go above one student immediately you're compromising on your ability to interact directly in a way that's that's helping them if I'm talking to a room say of say it's 20 students I can only say one thing and I can gauge the eye contact in the room for connection but I can't figure out whether they're understanding it necessarily in that moment and if they're not understanding it why they're not understanding it whereas in a one-on- one context I can immediately ask a question that will get me to understand if they if they know what I'm what I'm saying or not so I've thought about that a lot and I being a perfectionist anyway my preference is to work one-on-one so that I can always be interactive and be supportive you know in an immediate way and try to literally try to make every second of every session beneficial and helpful you use the word engagement earlier I don't think there's a more important quality to education than engagement and I think when you don't have engagement then learning isn't happening so it's easier for me it's much easier for me to maintain consistent engagement in a one-on-one capacity got it Amy Amy you spoke about classroom teaching today we have pretty much virtual I'm sure I'm assuming you are completely virtual as well do you still in person classes I have it's been years since I've done an in-person session yeah okay yeah I mean was your transition mainly due to the pandemic or did you go virtually even before that I was virtual before that I was kind of living a mobile like van van life lifestyle for a year in 2018 and I just saw my students from the road wherever I was and I just needed to find a robust internet connection so yeah I'm a believer in it I do think it can be effective highly effective just as effective as being in the room but you do still need to pay attention to the cues of engagement you know you still have to read body language check for engagement but you can do that if you're if you're conscious of it you can definitely find those signals in the person got it in so you said you it was much before I it was mainly due to the van life that you're you led is that the main reason why you had to kind of go virtual that 28 that was the biggest reason the most significant reason it's also so very convenient and really it's convenient for the teacher but it's also convenient for the student and they can meet me after school from the school campus from a coffee shop from home upstairs downstairs wherever they want to so you know you have to have your technological ducks in a row and you have to make sure your computer has a charge and all that but if you have a computer that's charged in the internet you're pretty much good to go got it Amy for you to have done this for more than you know probably a couple of decades you know it's the same story when you're starting you don't have much network you don't have visibility and stuff like that but beyond the point in time how did you manage and maintain and grow your audience and you know get yourself to a point where you had a consistent flow of students yeah well from from a business point of view we always grew organically and I would say 90% of our business came from word-of-mouth we would often work with though you know the oldest sibling and then they're younger you sibling and then the one younger than that so the the network was sort of within families and within schools sometimes within a sports team at a school so I think reputation really matters and doing a good job and creating good word-of-mouth really matters you can solicit some of that stuff but also you just have to deliver a really high quality product and then people will be happy to talk about you so it always happened very organically and then we always we always I didn't start off to say I want to have a business with this many employees or this many tutors we always hired tutors as we needed them so that that's another way that it was that you could describe the growth as organic learning so you have a team now so what's your what's your team size well it's funny you mentioned that because I had a team we had a we had a pretty team in that up until pandemic and the year or two after pandemic so I had someone who was running the running the office had somebody else who was administering the practice tests and then I had a team of tutors that would do most of the the tutoring with the organization when COVID hit the for you know a year and a half basically there were no tests standardized tests administered in California and not all of our students were in California but but the majority were and then a lot of other states had their tests cancelled as well so we had this long disruption and during that time I basically had to shut the business down when it came time to restart it I made the decision just as an older professional to simplify and streamline it and rather than you know rather than immediately build it back to to the sort of level of sort of infrastructure that we had before I was like look the work I really love doing I didn't mind managing the tutors but I didn't love it that wasn't my that's not where my passion is my passion is where it started which is in the teaching so I'm back to doing you know being the you know the big boss teacher basically and working with you know a boutique number of clients but that's that brings me joy and it's and it's the thing that I think I'm specifically the best at for you know in my skill set that's the part that I enjoy working on the most. Got it Amy. Amy this is probably a multiple part question you can you know answer it the way you want because it's connected to a bunch of things that you said and a bunch of things that are out there right you were tutored Ted and your Amy teaches now so there's a transition and the reason I say this is a multiple part question is you said your student base was mostly from word of mouth which is you know networking and stuff like that so people know you people talk about you and stuff like that so my questions are tutor Ted into Amy teaches why and how that happened it's not just with the name you were Ted Dorsey and now you're like Amy Dorsey you were teaching SAT ACT now you're majorly focusing on GRD and stuff like that so if you can just you know walk us through all of these aspects maybe sure yeah so during during pandemic as the as standard as testing was you know going away for a full year and a half you know maybe even two years I also began a gender transition and have evolved into the person that I am today and it's been kind of an interesting challenge in terms of my business life especially because I named my business after my dead name so I had to I didn't feel obligated to change it like I could have continued to be Amy you know Amy Dorsey the founder of tutor Ted but at some point it felt awkward and it's nice to it's nice to change here in there and evolve your business and so made the decision to rebrand and just get a fresh start so that's kind of the the motivation behind it now because I was taking not a complete break but you know sort of a hiatus you know maybe a sabbatical from from tutoring for some of that time I do have to rebuild my my grassroots network and that doesn't happen without doing some hard work when I was first starting my tutoring business back you know in you know basically between 2004 and 2008 I was working very hard and working at times you know tutoring seven days a week and when I wasn't doing seven days a week I was tutoring six days a week and driving all across Los Angeles and just seeing this you know so many clients that I couldn't even dream I literally I don't think I could see half as many clients as I was seeing back then I was just so much energy and so much you know just like excitement about this this new you know gig that I had that was so so rewarding and so fun and but that also created that network of referrals so now that I'm older and trying to rebuild my word-of-mouth network I've got to hustle again you know so it's it's an interesting challenge it's a good one and and I'm up for it and I may not have my same youthful energy that I once had but I do have some more some more wisdom to impart in the situation got it Amy Amy you said you got to start grassroots networking again and you know you've got to hustle and stuff like that why is that because of your gender transition or is that because of your subject matter teaching transition it's both I am I am by the way I'm still doing SAT and ACT tutoring I'm actually right now that my Amy teachers website only mentions the GRE which is that's that's my new kind of favorite test but I'm back on SAT specifically I love the digital SAT and ACT is so easy that's fun to tutor as well but the the hustle is more just about just kind of client volume you know when when 90% of the calls that come through say I was referred by fill in the blank you have to have that person the fill in the blank name you know you have to have that as the your happy client to you know be the sort of reference point for the new client so that that's the most important thing I think and then also encouraging my current clients and recent clients to you know tell their friends about me as well yeah interestingly but the gender change I don't know what I don't know but I don't think it has hampered my business too much I don't think that too many people have made a decision not to work with me because I'm trans and if they if anyone made that decision then then I don't want them as a client anyway so yeah I think that I think that people want quality tutoring and it doesn't matter from whom the quality tutoring comes so got it Amy but let's say for the new clients are you upfront about your gender transition or do they find out because of the tutor thing that's a good question this morning this morning I wrote a script for a YouTube video because I used to make a lot of YouTube videos so if you want to if you want to see who I was before go to YouTube and search tutor Ted the I wrote a new script for basically introducing Amy teachers because I haven't made a YouTube video in like five years maybe four years but and it just explains basically hey that's who I was this is who I am now you know there there are no changes I'm kinder and happier than I used to be but other than that I'm the same person so I think that giving people the chance to know that is helpful I don't think that it's I don't think it's necessary information because and I've learned this from my own marketing efforts over the years I used to think it was about me I used to think people cared about how smart I was you know how many perfect scores I've gotten etc and they don't they care about what I can do for them you know what what impact I can have on their life and so I think that my my transition though though it can be though it is an interesting part of my story it's only part of my story it's not you know it it it may have no impact whatsoever on my students so I'm still here for them and you know if they if they have more questions about it they're definitely welcome to ask me but in the meantime I'd prefer to just help them get ready for the rest. Having touched upon you know people who might not want to you know associate with you for whatever reason it is we are also at a time when you know there's a lot of polarization when it comes to gender and stuff like that do you think there's also a positive attach to it because there's someone I think in the teaching community or the tutor community a person who's undergone a gender transition is not very common yeah I'm not sure you know you're the first one I'm meeting you know in the podcast and so don't you think that's also a positive for you have you ever thought of you know using this as a marketing tool or something like that. I've seen some people in some public spaces who are quite successful and who are transgender in very different media so I saw someone who is a an expert at electronics like small electronics. I've seen someone who's a synthesizer you know musician and you know outstanding at that in fact I've seen two or three synthesizer musicians and I think that I think that when people succeed sort of not necessarily despite who they are but sort of including who they are then they can serve as a good role model for a good example for all of society there really aren't that many of us you know it that we're in the news pretty heavily these days but you know we might be we might be one point six percent of the population but if you walk around on a given day and you see a hundred people there's a pretty good chance you're not gonna see anybody who's transgender so we really are such a small group so yes there's this profusion of news stories making examples out of us in in negative ways I take it on as a responsibility to show a good example right of a person who is thoughtful responsible professional clever etc and really good at tutoring and being sort of an example for for the world of what a transgender person can can be if that turns into good marketing I'm fine with that I I don't necessarily plan to take advantage of it or plan to sort of announce it make a big deal of it but if people notice I'm okay with that in fact I'm happy about that go to me any going back to the grass grassroots level networking that you said you need to kind of you know get started with and hustle what does that look like and how long has it been since you started that yeah I think it's a lot about discommunication I think sometimes people well different people connect you with their friends based on their own sort of social structures in their lives some people are very extroverted and share a lot other people are very introverted and share nothing with their friends so you have to find the people who are the connectors you know who are eager to tell their friends about you and you also have to encourage people to do that so I saw a name in my inbox today of somebody who I hadn't spoken to in probably six months and their kid got into college recently I don't know what college they're going to and a great thing for me to do which I haven't done yet but I will is email the father and just say hey just checking in I wanted to hear how things are going you know where's she going to go to school this you know this fall and then in the next note after we connect I'll say just want to let you know I am currently looking for more students and if you have anybody you can connect me with that be great so just that little stuff you know a lot of a lot of communication and connection and clarity in terms of what I'm looking for and how they can help me and you know I personally never want to burden people with too much too many requests but I think people are happy to help when they when they like you they're happy to help so yeah got it Amy so Amy I also had a look at a YouTube channel that was you know Q2dead but you said you just started this morning on the same channel you're making videos again well so the Tudor Ted channel is up now and so I'm the you know account owner on that on a different sort of profile but then what I'm going to do is I'm going to I just found out this morning that you can change the well if you have the administrator you can change the name of it so I'm going to change the Tudor Ted YouTube channel to Amy teaches great the reason I got that up was I think one of the best ways to build up build yourself up is also to be out there on the internet today right on as many social media channels as possible I mean especially you've seen the value and you've done that before I think probably that's a good idea because I don't see very many tutors you know use social media to kind of you know put themselves out there except very few of them you know whose main student acquisition source is something like tiktok or you know YouTube yeah well can I ask you Jack what's the what do you think is the success rate for tutoring finding tutoring students via YouTube or tiktok or Instagram so Amy instead of can I rephrase that question a little bit it's sort of you know looking at it in terms of what is this is a success rate I would rather because of the conversation that I had with another tutor you know a month ago his name is Daniel Rives I'll probably share his episode with you like that episode whenever I get a chance to talk with tutors when they love talking about marketing I just don't never talk about the test at all because you know that's one of the most important aspects for any tutors and you know they kind of think it's something that's out of the capability but what Daniel Rives told me was you know what's helped him because I don't have experience myself but you know if I can borrow from what Daniel Rives said Daniel Rives said he was not serious about it and he didn't expect anything and he was just being very authentic and you know didn't really care about where he was what he looked like as long as what he wanted to share was something that he really wanted to with authenticity that's about it and he said that's what's worked for him on TikTok relatability and you know not being overly studio-like or stuff like that and another thing that he's added ever since he took it seriously you know I think he said one of his TikTok reels or something that went viral and then he saw the potential and then he started doing every day one hour of live ask me anything sort of a thing in terms of tutoring and then you know students come in track with you know what happens there is you get to create one hour of content every day that is directly asked by your viewers so the validation is right there so and I think he's at about 60-70k followers on TikTok right now and he also said that you know after every test once the student takes the test they message him you know up front saying that I don't want to see you anymore you know I'm done with the test but thanks so much and bye but then the new stream of students that come and follow him haven't dropped off and that keeps happening as well but going back to your question as to what's the success rate I think in I don't know about that but he said having a good followership ensures that you are never free you know you don't have any vacant slot you always have something but the percentage of the students that want to become your students may be less but you know for one person that's more than enough but there are so many students who just make use of your free stuff and then you know they learn from that but another thing he also said was there are a bunch of companies that always approach him to kind of you know join them because of the distributorship that he's already the followership that he's already built which is going to help the company as well so there are multiple ways in which you can be successful and if you probably have a product yourself I think there's nothing like it if you've got that kind of followers like I mean 50k may not sound much in mainstream social media where you know it's common content but in a niche content 50k is huge even 25k can be huge so these are some of the things that I recollect of the top of my mind I hope I answered your question in yeah it's really interesting yeah it's interesting also to think about how having a subscriber base can be valuable not just for running your tutoring business you know but for other sort of you know purposes in terms of affiliate marketing and you know that's another huge one that's another huge one because when you have people that follow you who could be customers of other businesses nothing like it you know they're going to be businesses approaching you and some of them might pay you upfront money to promote their business some of them might give you a link like an affiliate link and you know every same you get 20% 30% 40% stuff like that so I think it's a no brainer for all tutors to kind of you know go and put themselves out there so yeah yeah this the other tutor is Daniel what was his last name Daniel Rives R-Y-E-V-E-S if I'm not wrong but I can you know what I will share the episode link with you and yeah you can directly from that should be easy for you. Thanks Daniel. Yeah I've like used his name so many times because he's the only one you know who spoke about social media content creation such depth so yeah I think it's really useful for all the tutors. A related just a related thought is I've always valued authenticity and I think that you can always tell when someone has it pretty quickly you know you just get a feeling for it and I've never really wanted to buy anything from anybody who didn't feel authentically connected to what they were doing so I'm really happy that authenticity is back in fashion and I don't know how long it'll stay in fashion but it's definitely it's it's useful and it makes it makes sharing a little more a little easier and a little more fun and and I don't know and hopefully if I do that on social media hopefully hopefully people like me we'll find out. Yeah no I mean I personally think it's just the beginning Amy because I think it's taken so long for all of us ever since social media was you know kind of became prominent I think it's kind of a destination authenticity has been like a destination more than anything else I don't think it's a trend I think we've taken however much time that we've taken to figure out you know at the end of the day people buy from people and people relate to people that look and sound more like themselves and real and stuff like that so I think it's pretty basic at this point and so yeah it's it's just the beginning and the AI is not making it any difficult you know it's only making it easier because more and more AI you see everywhere I think it's a time where people are like okay you know what AI is there but can I see some human beings so you know especially also in tutoring and all of those things so yeah I think it's it's just the beginning let's see how it pans out. I heard an advertisement last night a television commercial and I think it was for the the website Kayak and I could be wrong about this but I heard the voiceover and I and I said out loud I think that's an AI voice I think AI just did that voiceover yeah very very subtle but you can still tell you can definitely tell the difference so and I'm I support AI I think it's an amazing innovation but there is no replacing the true human connection I don't think. Yeah I think I mean nothing against AI I think AI is only helping increase the value of human beings now and I think we're gonna be we're gonna walk hand-in-hand together I mean I think if you can kind of use AI as an assistant and if you can collaborate with AI as a creator I think something like a sweet spot can be found there. Absolutely absolutely can definitely make us much more efficient that's for sure yeah. Yeah yeah great Amy coming to the teaching right I mean who are you as a teacher what are your methods what are your processes what do you use? Yeah so I would say there's a testimonial I was just looking at my own testimonials and the one that I think most efficiently summarizes how I work is that I balance a sense of fun with high expectations so I'm always working from a sense of a positive regard and trying to make the learning experience enjoyable and also demanding of the student and sort of expecting them to listen and hear me the first time and I'm happy to remind them of something a second time but if I have to tell them a third time I'm gonna show them that that that they need to pick it up on the first or the second time and then if they're in line with me which they typically are you know we usually have good relationships then they'll learn it efficiently and sort of stay engaged so yeah so it's it's positive regard plus the expectation that they're going to stay with me. I usually start with the essential content that they might not know that I know what my student body in general has not been exposed to and so I'll teach that stuff first and basically say like hey take this down store this away you're going to need it you know just put it away in your mental closet for now you're gonna need it and then as we go we'll do a lot of practice material a lot of practice tests official tests you know are always my preference I've got other secondary sources as well but that the secondary sources are only so good as they are good at imitating the the primary resources and then we use that as a takeoff point and say okay are we making careless mistakes if we're doing that you know that might sound that might sound casual it might sound like something you can correct today but if you make that same mistake today and tomorrow we need to figure out a way to do it differently so you don't make that mistake so focusing on workflow techniques methods for being just a little bit more precise on those kinds of questions and then also and this is the really fun part is developing problem-solving strategies and lining up your strategies with the methods of the test and basically saying okay this is an algebra question that's asking you to start from this equation and get to some other equation let's let's figure out what are the priorities what are the you know the variables that they want us to isolate or whatever what are our techniques what it what is our entire catalog of algebraic simplification techniques that we could use here and which ones look like they might be ready to go and once you put together that sort of like short deck of possible approaches and strategies they'll start to formulate up into a step-by-step technique for solving that or for or for examining the question to solve it and that is the probably the most rewarding part of of teaching test prep is building a strategy that you know based on really fundamental building blocks there really aren't there are not that many of them you know there's probably I mean this is an oversimplification but say 25 things you need to know on the math test and there's about eight things you need to know on the grammar part of the as of the reading and writing test of the SAT whatever the number is you can you can know all of those things and then it's just a matter of choosing which ones to use to apply and that's the problem-solving part so yeah that's the that's my that's my overall approach is have have the knowledge and then learn how to deploy it got it any any one of the other aspects today is you know it's not just about being a subject matter expert it's also a little bit about you know interpersonal relationships or you know because students have anxiety they have test anxiety today and stuff like that and then you know there are some tutors who are pretty clear that you know they want to they do not want to get into the motivating aspect of things they just want students who are already motivated and you know want to learn by themselves they're not forced and then there are other tutors you know who don't mind helping students who are not intrinsically motivated and then you know helping them kind of realize what it means you know stuff like that so do you get a lot of students who you have to work with outside of the subject matter expertise and are you okay with that yeah I mean first off the most important word you said was motivation motivation I think underlies all of education every day and every minute of every day when you have a motivated student and they're listening they will respond and they will they will grow at different rates but they'll always continue to improve when standardized tests were more mandatory when basically every single high school student in America was taking SAT or ACT unless they were definitely we're not planning on going to college I had more a motivated students and that can be hard and I always try to encourage their parents to find a way to get them motivated because you know there's this cliche that I've said more than any other cliche which is you can lead a horse to water but you can't make them drink yeah you know you can offer someone the very best in test prep but if they're not interested they're not interested so I think I think helping students find their own internal motivation is key it's it can sort of be forced in the short term that doesn't make anybody happy it doesn't make the parent happy or the tutor or the student and it's not a long-term solution either so so I don't think I don't think that compelling someone to learn is is effective try to think I think I had another answer to that question but did I answer your question fully oh yeah you did I mean it doesn't have to be you know so yeah oh you know actually I wanted to add one more thing about anxiety because I think that in a way the student who's anxious is almost overly motivated like too highly motivated where their success their success is such a kind of life and death feeling goal that anything less than perfection will be failure so I would I would love for all of my students to be motivated in a healthy way I do not mind at all working with students who have test anxiety because it shows that they want to perform the students who are a motivated that's that I was talking about before where like my goal is to try to help them find their motivation but for the students who are anxious the thing I recommend is just knowing the test well enough that you know what to expect because you even if you're perfectly prepared if you care you will be nervous before the test because it's significant but if you're prepared as soon as you start the test it will look familiar and that stress will go away and now you'll just be answering the questions in the way that you've been answering them in practice so that to me is the secret is basically growing growing your confidence in your knowledge to the point where you can't be surprised and then your anxiety will actually surprisingly lead you to a better performance because you you cared enough to do the prep got it Amy Amy you spoke about you know who you are as a teacher and you know how do you approach talking about the tech side of things you know from a tool's point of view this so much today there's AI you know so many things that you does had to do a couple of years back you know it's it's become easier with gen gen AI and stuff like that very you stand as far as using AI for your you know teaching business and what's your tech stack look like apart from of course zoom maybe that's the most basic thing yeah I mean it's funny to grow a little bit older and I don't I don't feel old but at the same time the technology sometimes makes me feel old I I think I'm sort of a I was an early adopter of some of the technology for sure but now I'm starting to realize that I'm not necessarily using the technology all the way to its fullest capacity so I think I run my online classroom as a sort of sophisticated version of the traditional classroom so I have my right I have my pen tablet here I'm just gonna pull out and show you here's my tablet okay that's right I've got you know probably 10,000 pages of PDFs and maybe more than that you know I'm hard drive ready to go you know I mean I yeah I have I have so many I have every every SAT I have probably a hundred ACTs you know so just a deep sort of resource catalog of tests to use and then once once I have that then it's a zoom session and a connection and solving problems as we go so that's that's the kind of the depth of my my technology with AI I've used it recently for generating ideas or themes from a book and that sort of thing and basically saying like if a student of mine is reading a book in class that I don't know I haven't read I'll just basically type you know what are the themes you know within this book and then can you tell me more about the theme of you know alienation and belonging in this book or whatever so it's like a a really nice cheat sheet shortcode for me but it's it's just a way of I don't know helping me do some of my lesson planning more quickly so you have to be careful with it you have to make sure it's accurate check your sources but it can make those things more efficient but yeah other than that it's like I said it's it's basically a traditional classroom just with a couple of tech tools involved how are you with Desmos I love Desmos I mean I've learned more and more as I every time I use it I learned something new about it I think it's it's the best graphing calculator I've ever known and I'm actually kind of a graphing calculator like nerd like I've loved I've loved the Texas Instruments graphing calculators since I got my first one in I think 1991 or two and yeah I've been a fan ever since I've been writing programs for them for you know however many decades that is now and I think Desmos is even better so I'm a fan any I'll probably you know conclude with this question so where are you currently at last time you spoke you were creating I think a GRE course and so how's it coming up what are your next plans yeah thanks for asking I I'm still working on the GRE course it's getting closer I've been finding that there's more demand for me for the SAT and ACT so I'm kind of shift shifting my focus back to SAT in particular I also like that test a lot so the advantage of being a solo practitioner right now is I can do whatever I want to the disadvantage is that there's only one of me and I can only do so much you know so so at some point I will have a GRE course up and an SAT course up and then probably an ACT course as well it's gonna take as many hours as it takes for one person to get all of that stuff done but yeah right now I'm focusing on generating some new video content for the web and trying to find more students to work with you know I you know my bread and butter is working one-on-one with clients and anyone who wants to find me you can go to AmyTeachers.com amie so you spell Amy and I'd be happy to have a conversation about how I can help you with your help you get into college and help you get into grad school as well. Got to be Amy thank you so much Amy it was a pleasure talking to you I probably you know check back a year later and see how things are going and you know we can have another episode. Sounds great thank you so much I really appreciate your time and thanks for the opportunity. This podcast is brought to you by Edison OS a no-code edtech platform to operate an online education business. Knowledge entrepreneurs can use Edison OS to sell online courses from their own websites, manage online masterclasses, launch mobile learning apps, sell online practice tests for competitive exams, run online learning communities, digitizing their offline tutoring business, use it as a learning management system and a lot more cases in the domain of knowledge commerce. (upbeat music)