New Podcast! Joe Sebestyen: Mastering AP History

Parents, is your teen college ready? Are you feeling overwhelmed, stressed out, or excited about your teen applying to college? Do you know what colleges are looking for? And if your kid gets in, do you know what you'll pay for it? College admission has never been so competitive or expensive. Shellee Howard will take you on a journey to help you and your teen get college ready. Now here's your host, Shellee.

Hello, parents. Is your teen college ready? This is Shellee Howard, CEO, and I have a wonderful guest today. Joe's in the house. Joe, can you introduce yourself, please?

Hi everyone, my name is Joe Sebastian. Nice. Thank you for having me on, Shellee Howard. I appreciate it.

You're welcome. Can you share a little bit about who you are, what your background is, and what you're up to right now?

Absolutely. So yeah, my name is Joe. I have a free Facebook group called Athletes in AP History. We launched in September, I think, have grown to over 735 members. We focus on two things: helping athletes with their AP History exams. My background, I've been in education for over 13 years, first as a history teacher. I've taught almost every social studies course under the sun, including APs. I'm also IB certified. It's where— it's there where I got my passion to actually helping kids individually, because how IB is set up is enormously focused on writing. And so I had to become a writing expert as well as a history teacher. From there, I obtained my master's in educational leadership. I transitioned out of the classroom in 2016. I've been in educational leadership as an administrator since, and honestly kind of went back to tutoring and coaching during the pandemic because I got, you know, it was not the most positive thing for educators coming out that way. Uh, so I got linked up with a private tutoring company, did all of it on Zoom, and it was mostly test prep clients. So I brought all the experience from the classroom and what I knew about teaching quality writing to the test prep, kind of throwing it together. What makes the most sense to help all these kids and all these different subjects? And was pretty much successful. Did it again the next year and said, you know, I think I'm pretty good at this. Um, so it was about a year ago that I decided to start my own company and kind of focus exclusively on test preparation for the AP History and Government and Geography courses.

That's such a great story. You— it's that you took lemons and made lemonade. I, I think that is such a cool story. So I'm a parent, I'm a parent of 4, and I am an independent college consultant of hundreds. And one thing I know for sure is There is good, better, and best when it comes to APs and student studying. I often tell the story of my firstborn when he studied for AP Euro. I found his head in between the pages of a book face down because it was so painful for him to do it on his own. And as soon as he started small group studying, he ended up with a 5. Can you talk a little bit about your technique or why somebody would want to work with you? Sure.

So I mean, starting with the AP History courses, you know, I, I kind of— on the channel last night, I went through how you're actually being evaluated. There is this big disconnect in how AP History is taught to how AP History is evaluated. Uh, 60% of your score from College Board comes from writing 3 different types of free response questions. So you can know all the content you want, if you can't apply the content in a meaningful way, you're not gonna do well. And that's where I think the biggest hangup is for a lot of kids that spend all their time kind of down here, just trying to memorize or interact with the content there. But the majority of the tests, not only just the writing, but also the application of stimulus-based questions causes you to go a little deeper and a little bit of higher level thinking skills. And I've found just in my conversations with parents and helping kids, our classrooms aren't really necessarily set up that way consistently enough. So that's one of the big disconnects in that if you're not engaging with the material in meaningful way, like you said, small group, or you're working with someone, or even individual, working with your individual teacher and getting that feedback and digging deeper, you're not going to see the benefits down the road.

It makes so much sense. So if we called you and we said, Joe, hey, can you help us? Like, we're doing well, we got a good grade, but we're still not feeling confident that that AP test is going to go well. What could they expect? It's always that unknown that stops people from reaching out. What, what would you— how would you interact with them, um, if they reached out?

Yeah, I mean, I would say the majority of the kids I work with are A students, so like, it's not, um— usually those are the ones that out because they're like, I know I'm probably missing something. Or it might be, you know, there's a lot of unknown if it's your first AP class, right? You're like, how am I going to do? But your grade in the class has no direct correlation with how well you're going to do in the exam, unfortunately. And that's for a variety of factors. Teachers have autonomy in their classroom. They have to give more grades, right? They have to make sure kids feel supported. But there can be disconnect between how you're set up for success The biggest disconnect I always say is, well, 60% of the test is writing. Are you spending 60% of your time in your class writing? That's right there. And it's the not. You're usually not. Because especially with AP History, there is so much content you have to, quote unquote, cover. So teachers are blitzing through information to make sure it's all covered. But that's not always the best case scenario for kids if they're not applying and digging deeper. So I work with a lot of kids who have good grades in their class, they know that they need something a little extra and some guidance. And usually it's, have you done this before? Or take me through it so I know what to expect. You know, I use the acronyms or the analogies, excuse me, for sports. Like you practice like you play. If you have no time under pressure, if you're not practicing or scrimmaging like you are gonna be in the test, which schools don't have that capacity, you're not gonna be ready. So we do focus on that. We focus on personalized feedback in the writing. We do comprehensive content review, of course, but we focus on personalized feedback on the writing so the kids can get that exponential gain, because that's usually where the biggest struggles are, is the writing. And then we put it all together at the end and we make sure that they feel that they're ready in the time limit that they're given, because it's one thing to know how to write an essay, but it's another thing to deliver that in 40 minutes, hitting all the points.

Okay, so first thing that came to my mind is my 4 kids, and they're extremely busy. They're definitely— there's not a lot of extra time in their life. Um, I talked to one of my, my parents right before you, and they're just like, when, Shellee, when are we supposed to do? And so can you help maybe shed light for parents on how many hours or how much prep is needed or How do they fit this in? Their kid's already staying up all night. Can you help maybe with that a little bit? And I know it's prioritizing, but beyond that.

Yeah, I mean, that's been my whole shtick, if you will, with the athletes in AP History because I was a 3-sport athlete in high school. I played in college. I was heavily involved in extracurriculars like a lot of our students are. And you're spending— you're slammed in your books and studying like that. But it does not have to be that hard. And actually the biggest, the biggest thing I could tell parents is start early. Like I released an updated game plan because we're about 12, 11 to 12 weeks from the exam today. The first 2 weeks of May are the AP exams. So starting reviewing now is going to compound and benefit you better down the road than trying to cram it all in. The majority of the kids I work with start between 8 and 12 weeks out. And honestly, the commitment is like an hour a week outside of us in the coaching sessions. So, you know, we, we provide review materials like we use a couple of really good books that align with College Board. So it takes the massive amount of content down into just what they need to know as a refresher. And then what the value we're adding is we're putting that content knowledge to work in the forms of the FRQs and getting that practice in and then being reflective and getting feedback because it's, it's shocking to me how many kids have not started FRQs yet, DBQs. LEQs, um, any of them, or they're not practicing enough. You have to consistently live in that environment to be good. My big, my other big thing is like, you have to be comfortable being uncomfortable. So when you get to that point, it's, it's okay. But it's not like this massive time commitment. I can do it usually with an hour a week varying. It doesn't have to be all at once, but I, you know, the, the method we have done is like, you have to hit all these benchmarks, all these checkpoints, and you're ready. And so you'll know you're ready when we do the practice exams and you see your score and you feel that you can deliver on this exam.

Yeah, and my mom brain is just firing. I hope you listeners are just feeling what I'm feeling. It's like, why didn't I have somebody like this guy? Like, life would have been so much better. Um, do you do any other subjects or is it just AP History?

So I mean, I'm, I would love, I'm eventually want to expand, um, you know, in offering as many APs as possible. My certification is history, so I do the 3 AP histories: European, World, and U.S. I do AP Government and I do AP Human Geography. Um, that's, I mean, like, I can probably piecemeal together macroeconomics, but I would probably look to hire someone else. You know, being an administrator, I do get asked that question a lot, like, okay, what other subjects? I'm like, well, I can bring— I can onboard people, but I would onboard people that I trust and vet correctly. And I would want to expand down the road, absolutely. But for right now, it's these subjects. And we threw up some stats on the channel last night on the Facebook Live is that the top 10 hardest AP exams to pass, the 5 that I focus on are in those top 10. So, and that's because, you know, you would think, and the sciences are hard, the maths are hard, but a lot of it's black and white. You either know it or you don't. It's very content-driven. The reason these exams are harder to get the top scores on is because of the writing. And if you're not practicing the writing, then you do leave a lot out to be desired in terms of getting those scores. I had the privilege of being an AP grader And, you know, there's, for example, like AP US History, there's 500,000 kids that take the exam every year. They're spending maybe like 30 to 60 seconds on your paper. So if you don't have what's needed, your chances are you're not getting the full points. So it's like knowing that and then kind of reverse engineering to what a good answer would be is part of that process. Hopefully that answers the question.

No, it was brilliant because I start to think If I'm a student, the last thing I want to do is write. And then how do I even know if I'm, I'm writing the right thing or if I'm using the right information? And how can a book teach that?

Yeah, it's really hard.

So, right, okay, so learn by doing. Yeah, I mean, you're not paying me to do this, but in my mind I'm going, well, wait a minute, if 60% is writing and I can't teach myself how to write better for this exam, I'm potentially leaving a huge amount on the table that I don't even realize. So wow, that one little chunk of information definitely will be helpful to our listeners. Let's think about it a different way. So, um, teachers are unique, like you said, some good, some better, some best. Some have taught longer, some not so much. Some teach to take the test and some do not. So if a student is not feeling confident or comfortable in either their grade or what they've learned, how will it be any different with you?

Well, I mean, they get that personalized approach. So I guess let me just back up to when I was teaching IB. And again, if you're not familiar with IB, it is International Baccalaureate. All the tests are writing. So that's like, it's applying your content through writing. And I became IB certified, but I literally had to learn how to teach writing. And to be honest, you don't learn that in secondary social studies education school. Maybe a few of them, but most history teachers aren't familiar with how to teach writing, let alone how to evaluate writing. And it's just for a variety of things. So it kind of all works against the student's favor that teachers are teaching content. There's a stereotypical history teacher that just loves to stand and deliver content, loves to lecture. And I was one of those too, but I had to shift a lot of my understanding. It happened by teaching IB. I will say what coupled with that was because of the school I taught at had a block schedule and there was a non-academic block where kids could request to go to whatever teacher to work on either enrichment or remediation. And that was almost like an advisory kind of block. And I would say I was a good history teacher, but I was a great one-on-one teacher for that. So the kids that struggled, I could give them that individualized time. And it's usually not much more than that, is working with them and giving them some guidelines of here's where you have to hit and then practice and get that feedback. It's all about the feedback loops. So doing that time and time again and having them practice getting the feedback they can. Everyone has that ability to do it. But like you mentioned earlier, we learn by doing. If you're not doing it, you're not learning. So that's the big, that's the big thing that we focus on when we work with our students.

Yeah, that makes so much sense. I will say I just spoke to a young lady this morning who was struggling in AP Euro, and she was, I think she, yeah, she's a sophomore. And it's her first AP class, and I told her, hang in there, because that is a rough first introduction to APs. Um, do you find that out of all of the histories, one is harder than another, or is it truly dependent on the student?

That's really a question. Um, you know, it is— it's not only just depend on the student, but it's also depend on when they take it, because like, I've, I've I'm working with a couple kids in California that they have AP Euro after AP World, which makes sense, but then AP US is taught 9th grade over here. Like, you— the, the beautiful thing about the AP History exams is they're all the same format, you just swap out the content. Um, and there is that factor of like, you have to, you have to like reading a little bit. You have to at least read and interact with the material in that. Uh, I don't know if one is is much more harder than the other. If— but again, I'm— this is my, like, preconceived notion. I'm biased. Like, some— there's— I taught a lot of first-generation American kids, a lot of immigrant kids who don't have the, the necessary— the primary years involved in U.S. history. So U.S. history becomes a huge undertaking because they didn't get it in 3rd grade and then 5th grade and then 8th grade. So it's all new to them. Um, and it's weird how schools do different things. That's not what's standardized, the sequence of classes, because, like, I've taught a lot of kids, or I've worked with a lot of kids that do AP Government first before they do AP US History, and the context of understanding the Declaration and how history developed around those foundational documents is lost. So it is, it is very interesting to see how many different school systems do very different things. So I couldn't give you a solid answer on that, but I will say that AP Euro is, is a challenge for a lot of kids because it's like the opposite of AP US History. We go really, we really hard on AP US. This is just really hard on just AP European History. So you're like learning everything that a lot of kids don't know a lot about.

Yeah, I remember those study sessions at my house with all the kids gather around the table, and yeah, it brings back some, some interesting memories. Now, how did you link it to athletes? AP and athletes? What is that connection?

So if you got time, I got a couple stories that link that. So the first, and it's always been there, it's just never been— I was actually working with a business coach myself who helped come up with the idea. I was just throwing these things out there. He's like, dude, I think you got this. Like, this sounds like what you should be focusing on. I was teaching back in Virginia, back in about 10 years ago, and I was— I coached as well. I was coaching baseball and football, and I was coaching a traveling baseball team.. And I was coaching kids from a much more affluent area in a couple of different schools than my own. And we were just talking because it was the spring. I was like, hey, how's AP going? They're like, well, we haven't even done a DBQ yet. I'm like, it's April and the test is in May. I'm like, how have you not done that? And just again, stereotypical good students, good school, but there's a lot of false assumptions that happen. Kids know already how to write. It's not a big deal. And I was like, I think we should probably put together like a little writing boot camp or something like that. So that was like the first thing I was like, I can kind of help these kids give some guidance because that's all I lived in. That's the only thing I knew is I just teach writing from day one in my course. Fast forward a couple years, I'm now an administrator and I came across— I was still tutoring at the time with that company. I was helping a couple traveling hockey players. But as an administrator in my school, we had a traveling hockey player who was involved in AP courses and was kind of getting jammed up in the attendance, like truancy. We weren't making that necessary accommodations, but he was a straight-A student. He was like the best, like, kid you could ever see in terms of like model, like helped out in this community, was giving, great, great kid. But I felt like the school system kind of failed him because it didn't give him a lot of options and give him a lot of ability. They kind of forced him into the online world. And, um, then I'm over here having success getting kids from a different state that are doing the same thing to get a 5 on the exam. So I kind of always had that in the background, like, of what it is. And I'm like, you know what, it might just have to be that athletes, but I help, I help all kids. It's just that the, I think it's, it sounds a little better in terms of helping those kids that are multifaceted, have a lot going on. Um, so that's kind of where the inception kind of came up with, and then working with a coach helped me put it all together.

And yeah, it's brilliant. I work with scholar athletes, I work with visual and performing artists, I work with engineering students, you know, from law to math, like every type of student. And I think why I was curious is students who are involved in athletics or even theater have less time than most students to focus on their academics. They're truly scholar athletes. And so giving them— I haven't gone through your course, but I could imagine it would be something like if you gave me SparkNotes or Cliff Notes to teach me just what I need to know right now about doing well on the AP exam. Am I close to just—

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I would.

It's—

so the principle is built around flexibility because like you said, not like it's like I'm involved in this and I'm involved in this. And if you're a winner of spring sport, you're missing time. If you are traveling for games, if you're like practices start to compile, you're missing instructional time, you're missing homework time, all those things. And I don't think— my whole founding principle is you shouldn't have to sacrifice one for the other. I believe that athletes can be successful on these classes without having to sacrifice time in their sports. So, um, the big change that I did was there is You know, there is some independent work they have to do that I guide them through on what, like, to review. And again, we work in a framework of course companion books that help you narrow down the content. But where the flexibility comes in is how I do scheduling. So it is on-demand coaching. I don't cap it at an hour. Um, and what I mean by that is traditional tutoring, you lock a tutor in for say Tuesdays at 8 o'clock. So every Tuesday you meet with a tutor for 1 hour. Well, the only problem with that is sometimes kids need more than 1 hour. And like a lot of our athletes, they're not always available on Tuesday. Their schedules constantly change. So how the course, and I hate using the word hybrid because in the era of post-COVID, everyone hates that word hybrid, but it is in a sense like that. I hold you accountable in making sure you're on keeping up with the pacing of the review, but you reach certain checkpoints or benchmarks in the course and it prompts you to book your call around your schedule. So I have my availability set up. If you book a call and we're not lollygagging, we're not— I'm not watching you read. I'm not watching you write. There was work that's supposed to be completed. You have submitted it via Google. And we just go and just on the spot coaching, making sure that you get the exact stuff that they need. So personalized to them. And it's a lot less wasted time. It's a lot more efficient and it helps the kids better. But the best thing about it is if they need more time, we give them more time. If they need to swap out a session, they need another session, we just add on more time. So it's— there's no cap to how much you need. It's not— you're not boxed into an hour time limit. So that's my, my big shtick of being different from others.

Yeah, I mean, those scholar athletes are performers that they are time limited, so As a parent listening out there, think of your child and think, are they really prepared to get a 5? Because we're looking for at least 3, 3.4s, and 5s on their exams to stand out to colleges. So how can somebody get a hold of you, Joe? What would be the best way for them to reach out?

So if they are on Facebook, they could just find the group. It's a private group, Athletes in AP History. Submit their information and we'll let, we'll let them in. We usually focus on parents, uh, student athletes, and traveling athletes, but all are welcome to try us out and see what we're all about. That's probably the most direct way to get ahold of us. Yeah.

Okay. Excellent. If they're not in Facebook, is there a backup option?

Sure. I can, um, give my email to you. Would you like that right now?

If you can just spell it out to them for who's listening and then I'll post it in the show notes, that would be great.

So, so it's, um, Joseph, J-O-S-E-P-H, at athletesaphistory.com.

Perfect. I know some parents are, but a lot have boycotted and they're over it, so I always try to give them two avenues to reach out to my guests. So Joe, it has been a pleasure, and thank you so much for all you do, and thank you for being on Parents, Is Your Teen College Ready?

Thank you for having me, Shellee. I really appreciate it. Good luck to everyone out there.