Pathways to Successful Career and Test Prep, with Stephen Johnson

Stephen Johnson, educator, author, and founder of AptivPrep, shares his inspiring journey from growing up in inner-city Los Angeles to building an AI-powered platform that helps students reach top-tier SAT and ACT scores. With the mantra “Better scores lead to more open doors,” Stephen explains how early preparation, access to free resources, and intentional mindset shifts can transform college and career opportunities for students, especially those facing systemic barriers.

The conversation dives into his philosophy of service, how technology can scale impact without losing the human touch, and practical strategies educators can use to demystify standardized testing for their students. Along the way, Stephen offers encouraging reminders that persistence, preparation, and the right tools can change life trajectories. Visit AVID Open Access to learn more.

Transcript

Stephen Johnson 00:00 My mantra is better scores lead to more open doors, right? Like, if you can increase your scores on these tests, and that leads to better opportunities for you in college, then now this is my small way in which I'm changing the world.

Winston Benjamin 00:15 The topic for today's podcast is pathways to successful careers and test prep, with Steven Johnson.

Winston Benjamin 00:23 Unpacking Education is brought to you by avid.org. AVID believes in seeing the potential of every student. To learn more about AVID, visit their website at avid.org.

Rena Clark 00:36 Welcome to Unpacking Education, the podcast where we explore current issues and best practices in education. I'm Rena Clark,

Paul Beckermann 00:46 I'm

Paul Beckermann Winston Benjamin 00:48 and I'm Winston Benjamin. We are educators,

Paul Beckermann 00:52 and we're here to share insights and actionable strategies.

Transition Music with Rena's Children 00:57 Education is our passport to the future.

Winston Benjamin 01:01 The quote from today is the preface to our guest's book, Small Beginning Requires Bigger Dreams. In it, Steven writes: "The things we seek to avoid are more than likely the very things we need to grow, develop, and attain genuine happiness. And most of all, to truly honor the dreams of our life." Paul, that's heavy as heck. There's a lot in there, in there.

Paul Beckermann 01:34 I could go a lot of ways here. I think back to my days as a swim coach, and I would tell my kids, "Don't run away from hard." You know, I used to tell them the things that they're going to be most satisfied with in the long run are the things that were the most difficult, that they had to work the hardest for. Those are the things that you're grateful for. You're proud of. Those things, don't just automatically run away from it, you know. Look the long run and then take that vision and look forward and see past that potential struggle and ask yourself if it's worth it to get to the other side, because oftentimes it is so true. I feel like I say that every day to my middle school students, like, "It's okay that you believe you're not good at math right now. You may not be good at math, but there are things that you can figure out." So I love the idea of being able to pursue things, even though sometimes we doubt ourselves.

Winston Benjamin 02:30 And again, because the quote was so heavy, we're so glad that we actually have the person who spoke it, so that we can dig into that conversation a little bit more about what he meant by that quote. Um, so we are excited to welcome our guest, Steven Johnson, to the podcast. Thank you, Steven, um, for being here. Thank you. Thank you. He's the founder of AI-powered test prep platforms helping high school students achieve the top ACT and SAT scores. Um, with over 20 years of tutoring experience, and check this out, 100% success rate of private clients scoring at the top 1%. Again, power in numbers and success. We applaud the ability to do that. Steven is on a mission to democratize elite test prep and support families through the college application process as a kid who's a first-generation student. Wow, bro, I appreciate you. I wish you were around when I was still trying to apply to college. Um, so we would like to open up our podcast and say thank you so much for your time and welcome, Steven. Thank you so much for being here.

Stephen Johnson 03:41 Thank you. Thank you for having me. I wish. I mean, I wish I was around when I was a kid.

Winston Benjamin 03:47 Right, bro?

Paul Beckermann 03:48 I think we're all first-generation college students here. That's pretty awesome, right?

Winston Benjamin 03:53 Yo. So now, um, could you tell our listeners a little bit more about yourselves, the things that made you want to pursue or come up with these things?

Stephen Johnson 04:05 Absolutely. I mean, I think it all comes down to that, that statement that was just made by you, "I wish someone like you," meaning me, and even me saying, "I wish someone like myself was around when I was a kid." I grew up in the inner city of Los Angeles, single mom, grandmother in the house, raising this a multi-generational household, two very strong women, a neighborhood where there weren't a lot of academics, to say the least, in my in my surroundings, but a very strong, a very smart kid, very bright kid, and a situation in an environment where education was important, but there were not a lot of role models, right? So when you're trying to traverse and figure out the path to be on, and there's no breadcrumbs, and there's no role model, and there's no whole model to follow. There's no blueprint. You find yourself either wanting to give up, right? Because you're fighting against the, "Well, I should just give up." Or you pull your britches up, as they used to say in the olden days, you pull it, pull your pants up and and you figure out, "Well, I'll be it. I'll be I'll be the one to do it." And that was my attitude from a very young age, "I'll be the one to do it, and not only will I be the one to do it, but I'll also turn around at some point and be an example and be a role model for others." So that's that's really where everything starts for me. Everything that I've done comes from that place, um, in my life, and

Paul Beckermann 05:37 then you have teaching background as well now, right?

Stephen Johnson 05:39 Oh, absolutely. So I've taught in the classroom. So funny story: I graduated from high school when I was 16 years old, and start—my mother, my mother so also to, you know, to shift the energy directly to her as soon as I make that type of statement—my mother started a home school where we had about 20 students in our home, K through 12, and I was teaching high school kids at the age of 16, 17 years old, in math and science and our school. So that's when teaching started for me. So I was teaching throughout the day. I took two gap years, right? So you heard the gap year, but I was young enough to take two gap years after high school, and was teaching in our home school during that time, and then tutoring kids after school. So some of my high school peers that were sophomores, same age as me, juniors, same age as me, were then coming to my home after school to get tutored in chemistry and physics and calculus and things like that after school while I was teaching, you know, eighth graders, ninth graders, tenth graders during the school day.

Paul Beckermann 06:40 Wow. So then you talked about the fact that you were a first-generation college student, and the struggles that maybe that presented itself to you. How did that experience like impact you, both then, but then also moving forward, you know, into your career?

Stephen Johnson 06:57 So many different things, I think. So there's moments that that definitely stand out to me that formed that for my entire life, right? I think there's, there's the front side of the mountain kind of conversation of, you know, never, never give up, never quit. Stay persistent. You know, drive forward. And those are the all the messaging that I got from my mom and my grandmother and my son. You know, definitely the most positive voices and loudest voices in my community. And then there's other side of it, right, where I remember being in—I went to UCLA, born and raised in Southern California—and I remember seeing, I think it was maybe Parents Weekend. And, you know, my mom couldn't come to visit because she's, you know, she's working. And I see, you know, very simple interaction, mom and dad sitting with their daughter having lunch, and I just break down and start crying, right? And it's like I realized in that moment, no one who's the closest to me even knows what I'm going through. Like, no one really understands what it means to stay up until two o'clock in the morning and doing all the studying that I'm doing and like, it's just one of these, like, kind of existential moments, people call it, where it's like, my—your existence feels like you feel so alone, really, right? Like no one around me understands really who it is, like, how it feels to be me. And then, since then, I think it gives me a lot of empathy for other, first-time, for other first-generational students, right? So you get to understand that it's not just about studying. It's not just about push ahead at all by all means. It's also, you know, "How's it going? How are you feeling," right? Like, "Don't give up." But also, "I understand. I understand why you want to. I get it. I understand. I understand why you think just getting a job would be easier. I understand that you may have the feel the responsibility to take care of your parents and take care of your, you know, take care of other responsibilities that your classmates have the luxury of not needing to even think about right now, while they're getting while they're taking care of their studies," right? So you get to see both worlds there as a first-gen student a lot of the times, and that drive and that balance of humanity, I think, makes me a better business person as well, because now when I speak to my clients, I can speak to someone who's the child of an immigrant. And I think we can relate at a level where maybe another person cannot, but I can also speak to the child of a person of, you know, of a high-powered, you know, third-generation Harvard graduate, and say, "Well, you know, yeah, push drive, like, you know, you got to make it happen," because that's also what was in me to make it happen for myself.

Winston Benjamin 09:36 I appreciate your the mountain analogy that you have, that you went up and people were seeing the didn't know well, you were going through the mountain. Now you went, and then you're on the downside of this particular mountain, possibly going up on the next mountain, as we age in life. So on your way down from that mountain, you went and built an EdTech company. Okay? You tell us a little bit more about that side of the mountain. You know what I mean?

Stephen Johnson 10:03 Yes, I mean so with that side, I think you for—so my story is, I've always wanted to serve other people, and when you get very good at serving other people, I think you just you get addicted to it, just like I wanted to serve more people, right? And the better at that you become, the more people you want to serve, and the more people want to be served by you. So there's a business case for it that that begins to get developed there. And the the business case in itself then begins to create a barrier of success. In some ways you can, you hit it, you kind of hit a wall. "Well, I can only serve so many people because there's only 24 hours in a day. I'm only one person. And if I try to hire a lot of the people, they don't have the same passion I have. They didn't go through the same things I went through. They don't care about people the same way I care about people." And, you know, so there's, there's that thing that I went through for, you know, at least five or six, seven years. So technology becomes an opportunity to to expand who I am through the means of technology, and especially now with artificial intelligence, which I'm super excited about, right? There's a lot of reasons to be nervous about it, and there's a lot of reasons to be afraid of it. And there's, you know, so there's that, there's balance there as well, which I understand. There's a lot, I think there's a lot of reason to be excited about how a person like myself, a person like you all, can take all of the good within yourself, right, and infuse it into a technology like artificial intelligence, and replicate some of the good that you're doing in the world beyond what you could ever do yourself, right? And then therefore serve humanity at a much farther scale than you could ever have done yourself. And that's, that's what I learned on the other side of the mountain. Is like, how do I scale this thing that I'm super passionate about and not burn myself out, not exhaust myself and decide to quit on the other side of that mountain?

Paul Beckermann 12:00 Now my follow-up question, I think I can probably infer the answer, but I want to hear from you. Why did you choose, then, to make your service goal of yourself, Test Prep. I mean, why the test prep focus?

Stephen Johnson 12:12 Great. So I started, I started off in this world with K-12, math, science, reading. I was working with kids, second grade, third grade, all the above, right? I just wanted to serve whoever I could. And what I learned—and this might be good for educators who are listening to this—the riches are in the niches, as you may have heard. And I am. I'm. I was raised in a very impoverished neighborhood. Money is important to me. I want to make money. I want to take care of my family. I don't want them to be raised in the same environment. Same environment that I was, carte blanche, right? There it is. And outside of like so the one one degree outside of that, the tragedy that I started to notice once I got to college, right? So throughout middle school, elementary school, middle school, high school. You ask kids, what do they want to do? I want to be a doctor. I want to be a lawyer. I want to be an engineer. I want to be a police, policeman, a firefighter. You get to these top five, top 10, top 25 colleges. You don't see a lot of kids who look the way, you know, who looked like the kids in my environment growing up. What happened? A lot of things happen, much more than we could ever cover in this podcast, but some of what happened, some of what we can maybe control about what happened is you get to a test like the SAT, a test like the ACT, and you can't pass. You can't get a score high enough for at least the schools that are of stature to even consider your application, right? So I saw that as, again, a business opportunity. Okay? So I saw that as something, "Well, I'm good at that. I know how to deliver a message. I know how to communicate well. I know how to teach well. And if I can help students of any, you know, of any ilk right of society to take on these exams and then to open up opportunities for themselves." My mantra is, better scores lead to more open doors, right? Like, if you can increase your scores on these tests and that leads to better opportunities for you in college, then now this is my small way in which I'm changing the world, right? Because now, if you take an ambitious eighth grader, ninth grader, tenth grader, eleventh grader, who may have had opportunities to go to a state school or a junior college because of their environment or because of the what you just what they were exposed to, and now they have an opportunity to go to a top 10 college, a top 25 college, we know that the outcomes are much better, right? Just there's who they're, who they're socializing with, changes who their friends are, changes the types of job opportunities they have post-college, changes. And I wanted to be a part of that industry, and that's what I've been doing over 10 years, or 15 years, really, at this point.

Paul Beckermann 14:55 That's awesome.

Winston Benjamin 14:56 Yeah. Like, I'm here being like, "Yo, can I. How much money should I pay to buy this for my niece?"

Stephen Johnson 15:03 No, no, no. Part of part of—Let's talk. Yeah. You know what I'm saying. Like, part of it is also learning opportunities, like, yeah, like, there are chances to open doors for other individuals, as long as we are engaging and supporting and recognizing that there are barriers, and not like, negative barriers, but realistic barriers, like you got to hurdle this thing to get here. So one of the things that I've seen with my a lot of my teachers and a lot of young teachers, is this resistance to standardized testing. And I recognize, like we sometimes it's like teaching to the test, but one of the things that I want to ask you is like, I think it's a test. Testing is a game, and you got to know the game rules of the game to be able to be successful to the game. So as you're thinking, what are some of the keys to success in test prep, and what can teachers who are listening use to help their students who will have to take these tests succeed?

Winston Benjamin 16:21 So like, what are some things you can share to us that might be useful to pass on the students as they're engaging? I'm not, you know some of the sauce you got to keep for yourself, to let us come over there, but also being able to share some some valuable knowledge that would be helpful? Yeah, I won't keep anything to myself. I mean, there's, there are so many, there's so much free knowledge floating around right now, right? People like me at this stage in the game, we're just we aggregate the information and we disperse the information in a regulated fashion, right? Like that's all I'm doing, right? Or and I'm maybe motivating you in a way that maybe you can't motivate yourself. So when it comes to teachers, and especially when it comes to the argument, to the argument of teaching to the test, it's just awareness. The test. As long as it's here, it's here. When it's gone, it's gone. As long as it's here, it's here. So we have to deal with just the facts on the ground.

Stephen Johnson 17:35 We can't deal with what we wish was, what it was, and what it's not, right? So it is what it is. It's kind of one of another one of my things, I like to say, it is what it is, and as long as it is, we got to deal with what it is, right? So we, if we want to increase college enrollment in our communities, we need to realize that if the tests are here, they can become amazing opportunities to level the playing field and allow for students who have experienced barriers in the past to have opportunities for those barriers to be lowered, right? So the College Board, who writes the SAT, has a lot of free material online, and that free material is accessible to anyone—a fourth grader, fifth grader, fifth grader, sixth grader, eighth grade or ninth—you don't have to wait till your second semester or junior year to Google that information.

Stephen Johnson 18:24 So teachers who are especially working with these students who are considered to be disadvantaged or whatever the label once we want to slap on these students who are first generation or whatnot, expose the students to what it is. You don't have to become now the purveyor of teaching a student to a test. I can understand if you have issues with that, but hey, a ninth grader, SAT is coming. It's not going anywhere. Top schools are requiring it. Get used to it, expose yourself to the types of questions that are on there. You are on there. Take a practice test. Doesn't have to be just the official PSAT once a year. Take more than—do more than that. Maybe I'll sit with you on a Saturday. Hey, let's, let's community, let's, let's, let's get together and have a practice test on a weekend at a public library. Let's do that. Score doesn't matter. It's just to expose you to what's coming. Now that you've done that, let's see where where your weak areas are.

Stephen Johnson 19:15 Let's, let's expand the amount of time that you have to master this exam, because the stress comes in and the the angst comes in where. Now it's May of junior year, and you're applying in September of senior year, and now say, "Oh, and by the way, if you really want to go to Harvard, if you really want to go to Yale, you really want to go to Stanford, you have to have a 1550 out of 1600 on the SAT and, oh, yeah, your your school didn't really prepare you for it. Good luck," right? Like, because, and that's, that's the situation that far too many students find themselves in.

Paul Beckermann 19:25 Now, early in our conversation, you had said that AI was exciting. How do you see AI kind of maybe filling those gaps or helping people in this test prep world?

Stephen Johnson 19:36 Great. So, I mean, I will give a plug for the for the platform that I've built. So in the platform that I've built, students are able to come in and take practice tests, like I just mentioned. There are 15 practice tests on that platform, and what I love about it is it removes the need for a tutor to come in and explain what you've missed and how you missed it. As soon as you take the practice test, you get feedback: you've missed this type of question. This is why you missed it. There's an integrated tutor to explain to you how to get those questions right, and if the student is motivated enough, they can spend time within the system and learn from their mistakes prior to taking another practice test, and just the iterative process of that alone, right? Over time, you will improve. So that, in itself, is a net positive impact on students from around the world. And there's, you know, I have a platform. There's a thousand platforms out there. You go on Instagram or YouTube or Google, you can find any platform that you want. But that's that is, I think, a net positive for for all students if you're out there looking for it. So, so artificial intelligence in general, allows for a student, now, for any student, to have more personalized feedback. Right? When I was coming up, it was the big names. Kaplan, Princeton Review, you go to a class, you have a textbook, it's a lecture. We're all hearing the same thing. The teacher doesn't know the difference between how I learn from how you learn, from where I'm strong from where you're strong. There's no there's no differentiation. That's all changed, right? So when you log in versus where I when I log in, and the results from how we're taking tests, the system now, through artificial intelligence, can respond to us differently based upon how we're performing differently, and to me, that's extremely exciting.

Paul Beckermann 21:26 And what's your platform? If people are interested in checking it out.

Stephen Johnson 21:29 So the name of my platform is Active Prep. That's A-P-T-I-V P-R-E-P dot com, is the website. Activeprep.com.

Paul Beckermann 21:40 All right, thank you.

Winston Benjamin 21:41 So as I see and I hear you and I see that you're on the front line of the future of test prep, you're right in thinking about how to utilize AI in adjusting the engagement model that students who are coming up are going to have while testing.

Stephen Johnson 21:59 Yes,

Winston Benjamin 22:00 where do you see the future of testing and test prep?

Stephen Johnson 22:06 Yeah, I think, I think testing becomes even more adaptive than it is right now. I think you'll see more of an evolution of that. I think that, you know, I've taken, I've taken, you know, the SAT, the GRE for graduate school. I went to business school. I've taken the GMAT. There's so many different tests. I've taken the MCAT for medical school. All these tests are have different, a little bit different flavor, but I think there'll be some interest in kind of seeing, "well, you know, who are the true best and brightest out there?" And really the only way to find that out is to have a truly adaptive test so we can really kind of grade on, like, who's top 1%, 2%, 3%, 4%. So I think that's, I think that's what's coming in standardized tests, which kind of makes what's considered standardized a bit gray in a way. So it'll be interesting to see how that late plays out, if it, in fact, does play out. And then in terms of test prep, I think we have to then focus on core skills. And I think those core skills will need to be integrated more into core curriculum across all state lines, right? And I think we've seen that, you know, get momentum and then lose steam. And get momentum and then lose steam, right? Because you need you need teachers to buy in across state lines. You need school boards to buy in, and it's always hard to do that across, you know, different state lines and different counties and all things and things like that. But I think that as we as our world is more globalized, and as we have a more global economy, and, you know, not to get into politics, but that's—political winds shift from time to time, and we're looking at how the job market changes based upon immigration status and all these types of things, we're going to need a higher-skill workforce, even just thinking about AI, right? So going back to maybe some of the darker sides of AI, right? How will that have an impact on the job, on the workforce? How will that have an impact on job skills? What is it? What types of skills do our kids? You mentioned, you know, the middle schoolers that you teach, what types of jobs are they? Are they aiming for 10 years from now? Maybe none of us even know what jobs are there for them in 10 years, right? So I think that, you know, the education system will need to evolve at a much faster clip than it has in the past, and it will then therefore need to integrate technology a bit more than maybe it has in the past in order to achieve that.

Paul Beckermann 24:28 Let me follow up a little bit on what you're saying there with artificial intelligence and the human impact on it. How do you see artificial intelligence impacting human intelligence?

Stephen Johnson 24:40 Oh yeah, yeah, I think, I think that artificial intelligence has the power to make humans superhuman, but also has the power to make us the dumbest generation ever. For lack of a better or lack of a better word, I'll take the first option on that. If I have a choice,

Group 24:59 [Group Laughter]

Stephen Johnson 25:02 Right. I mean, it's, we've seen it with all technological advances, right? So you think about the internet and the ability to not need to go to an encyclopedia and instead just Google search something, right? The amount of just tactical, like tactile, flipping the pages and having to spend time at a library and read multiple books as you're doing research, versus, you know, sit at a screen and maybe spend an hour or so and look or look through Wikipedia and get a summary of things, right? It's, it's the depth of knowledge that you get from one source over another, and the output that you're getting from one type of skill set over the other. It's different. It just on. It's honestly different, right?

Stephen Johnson 25:57 So if we were to put, if we were to extrapolate even from that data set and say, "Well, what does artificial intelligence look like five or six years from now," if our—if we're already seeing reports of students using ChatGPT to write essays for them in school for which they have not read the source material at all, right? They have not written anything. They're not even presenting their work and saying, "Please make it better for me." They're just saying, "Write it fully for me from zero," right? We can imagine, well, the darkest sides of that are our kids are not getting smarter because of this technology. They will have more time to do, have more fun and to be more entertained, right? So who knows where that leads. But it doesn't seem like if we were to go down that path, that we're getting any smarter.

Stephen Johnson 27:03 However, the other side of it is, well, if, if we can somehow, and I think educators have a huge, huge role to play in this, if we can somehow turn the tide and maybe not demonize AI, as much as some of us have decided to, and instead figure out how to position AI where it can be of support, especially in the classroom, right? And teach students, "Well, how do you use it properly? No, don't go and say, 'write the essay for me.'" Maybe at least make an outline. Let's start with that. Maybe at least read the source material. Let's start with that, right? Okay. Now you okay. Now it gave you something, okay. Now use that, and now you write something based upon what you read from ChatGPT, or whatever, whatever source you're using. Okay, now, now you take that, and the teacher reads it, gives you some feedback. Now you make if there's some iterative back and forth and now AI, it becomes the assistant to the human, not the replacement of a human.

Stephen Johnson 28:22 Now, I think that's a path of superhuman-ness, right? Because now we're able to iterate at a much faster pace than we could before, and it's still keeping the human at the optimal level, like we're still at the top of the food chain, and we're not just surrendering our cognitive processes to a machine, right? Instead, we're just utilizing, using the machine to support, you know, our activities. So that's the that's the future that I'm hoping for, that's the future that I'm pushing for with with my students, that for sure that's going to take some reimagining of the classroom, what that looks like. I don't know if you're familiar with Ethan Malik from the Wharton School of Business, but when his in his—these are graduate students—but in his graduate classes, he requires his students to do one impossible thing with every assignment.

Stephen Johnson 29:08 So it's something that they don't know how to do, that they have to lean on AI to stretch themselves, not just to duplicate or replicate what they were going to do in the class, but to do one impossible thing. And I think that's kind of an interesting approach to reimagining the classroom, you know, how can we change it so that we're elevating it, like you and like you said, not just, Yes, you know, making it easy or too simple, yeah. I mean, what's already happened is the old paradigm is dead. No one wants to say it, but it is dead. We're trying to fight and say it's not dead. Kill it. Don't allow it in our district. Don't allow it in our—it is already dead, right? It's, it's the CD, it's the it's the record player, it's, it's our the MP3. I guess it's here already streaming. It's like, streaming music. Remember those? Remember those days when it was, "it's illegal, you cannot stream. You cannot share music via, via stream." It's, it is dead. Yeah, it's dead.

Stephen Johnson 29:43 Guys, teachers, it's, it's dead. We have to figure out something new and innovative, and it's, you know, it's not our fault, and it's not our responsibility. And I empathize for for teachers that are in the classroom and being being laden with the responsibility to all of a sudden come up with, you know, the solution to all of to all of education, right? Because it's not necessarily our responsibility, but the old paradigm is definitely gone because of because of this new advance in technology.

Winston Benjamin 29:46 So my pops is 81 years old, so I remember when I was a little kid, he was always complaining, "You don't need no calculator. Remember the multiplication tables? Remember the multiplication tables?" Yeah, and it got to a point where I got into high school, and like you said, Paul, the tool helped me stress myself. I didn't know how to fully do all of the mathematics for sine, cosine, tangent, but I understood what I needed to put into the computer in order to get an accurate answer. So that's an example of how the tool maximizes our ability to be able to engage in knowledge, right? So that's my easy way of transitioning to the next segment, which is, "What's your toolkit?"

Transition Music with Rena's Children 30:32 Check it out. Check it out. Check it out. Check it out. What's in the toolkit? Check it out.

Winston Benjamin 30:43 Paul, thinking through our conversation, what are you thinking about as a toolkit that you would like to share with our audience?

Paul Beckermann 30:50 Well, look what Steven said earlier. He said, "There's a lot of free resources out there ready for test prep," and you can access those at any age, so you don't have to wait, like you said, till you're a junior in high school and do a midnight cram, you know, the night before the test, because that's not really going to do it for you. So check out those practice tests. Look at the resources that are available, and if you're not sure what's there, talk to your school counselor. They're fantastic about providing those kinds of resources.

Winston Benjamin 31:16 I'm going to piggyback off of your toolkit, Paul, and I'm going to go and add it to just not the practice, just the practice test. Practice is an exposure as a way of becoming better. We watch athletes do practice all the time. You need 10,000 hours in order to be great at something. If we're going to have our students do something that they want to be great at, how do we give them the time to practice with the amount of time needed to be great? Steven, I'm going to throw it to you. What's a tool you want to throw into our toolkit?

Stephen Johnson 31:51 Awesome. I'm going to piggyback off what you just said about the athletes and go the coaching route. I spend a lot of time on social media and the number of kids who are on TikTok giving away gems regarding test prep on TikTok is amazing. The algorithms out there on these social media sites, they're not just for entertainment, guys, they're not just for TikTok Shop. If you start searching SAT or ACT, I promise you, on—you open up your feed, you will start to see more creators than you knew, that you may have realized are on TikTok or Instagram or YouTube, right? I have a YouTube channel as well, by the way, that's out there, The SAT Guy 1600—The SAT Guy 1600 for YouTube, also TikTok as well, but not as, not as active there, but just, you know, the algorithms that a lot of getting a lot of parents like, "stay off, stay off, don't do it, don't do it," but the kids are on it. We know they're on it. They have phones, so they're on it. Use it. You don't know who your coach may be. It may be a kid who is a senior, and they got into Princeton and they're just filling out. "Hey, this is my schedule. This is the books I use. This is the system I use. This is how I studied." And voilà, you can follow that exact model and get exactly what they got. And instead of feeling like you're alone, you now have a guide to success. Fantastic. All right, check them out, and we're going to hop into our one thing. It's time for that one thing.

Paul Beckermann 33:31 That one thing, all right, one thing. Time. Time for our final takeaway for the day. Winston, why don't you go first? What's on your mind?

Winston Benjamin 33:37 Yo, so I as a guy who still uses vinyl records? You broke my heart. You broke my heart.

Winston Benjamin 33:46 Just joking. I still do, but you didn't break my

Paul Beckermann 33:48 All the cool kids do vinyl, Winston.

Winston Benjamin 33:50 I totally understand what you're saying about being able to prepare for the future. But the thing that I really love in your rhyming, "better scores open doors," right? Like, some of the times it's not even, like, you don't need to go through the door, you just need to have access to opening it. And the more access to more doors you have to open, the better off it is, because then you can say, "No, that's not where I want to go, but I'm going to go over here." So, like, I love the idea of better scores open doors.

Paul Beckermann 34:25 I love that too. That that was actually in my notes there, Winston, you stole that one from me. I've got a couple more, though, because Steven was dropping so many nuggets for us today. Steven, we had, we have what's called T-shirt moments, you know, where it's so memorable, we should put it on a T-shirt and wear it. There were a couple of those today. One of them that I loved was, "Infuse your personal good into the tech." You were talking about how you have your own goals. Infuse that personal good into the tech you're using to do better good. I mean, I love that idea. And the other one: "As long as it's here, it's here." In in regards to the test, you don't have to love them, but you have to acknowledge the fact that they're here, and that's a reality, and that is one of those doors that you need to open for kids. So I love those two. All right, Steven, your chance last, last comments for our listeners. What do you want to leave them with?

Stephen Johnson 35:20 I always love to go to mindset. To me that's, that's, it's the core of everything. It's a core of everything. From my own life, I mentioned a little bit about my upbringing. You've heard a little bit about my story and kind of how I've gotten to where I am today and hopefully to where I'm headed for the next 50 years of my life or more. And it all comes down to never being satisfied with yesterday and continuing to grow personally and continuing to—as you grow personally, wanting to share what you learn with others, right? So as a teacher, as a dad, as a husband, as a community member, as much as we can, I think that we should all be striving to do that, to learn ourselves and to share what we learned with as many people as we can.

Winston Benjamin 36:06 So I appreciate you, and I appreciate your humbleness that you only dropped the plug for your website once. Before I close this whole thing out, I'm going to give you another chance to let people know where they can go to get access to this wonderful resource as well as I feel valued, like Paul said, the person that I am communicating with. I feel that you have infused your personhood into the tech. So I just want that tech to be heard. So do you mind again sharing your website, sharing your social media, sharing all of the places that people can access your knowledge?

Stephen Johnson 36:44 Thank you. Thank you for that. So the—I'll start the social media. So it's The SAT Guy, G-U-Y, 1600. That's TikTok, Instagram as well as YouTube. And then the website is Active Prep, that's A-P-T-I-V P-R-E-P dot com.

Winston Benjamin 37:07 Thank you so much for being here. I know sometimes it's like Paul and I—one of the things that we like, before we got on, like we were, I was very jaded with the way things are in terms of conversation with people that I've had, and Paul is like my—Paul helps me find my balance. And for you, I appreciate that you're helping me find another balance point in my educational experience and career, is that while it's still here, we got to do something with it. And I appreciate that you are providing, not only a knowledge framework from the perspective of when you were younger, trying to help somebody who you were in the same age range with, because you can explain it in a different way than I can, and I appreciate that you're continuing to push forward. And like we said, I love your analogy. "Yo, getting up the mountain is the hard part, is the rainy part, but guess what? You're on the other side of that mountain is sweet, but then you got to see another mountain." So as you are modeling for your community, we appreciate you being a guest here. Thank you so much for your time, and continue to push forward. Everybody listening. Check out the website, check out the men's social. We appreciate you.

Winston Benjamin 38:22 Thank you. The SAT dot

Stephen Johnson 38:23 Thank you. Thank you guys. It's been a pleasure. 

Rena Clark 38:27 Thanks for listening to Unpacking Education.

Winston Benjamin 38:30 We invite you to visit us at avidopenaccess.org where you can discover resources to support student agency and academic tenacity, to create a classroom for future-ready learners. 

Paul Beckermann 38:44 We'll be back here next Wednesday for a fresh episode of Unpacking Education,

Rena Clark 38:49 and remember, Go forth and be awesome.

Winston Benjamin 38:52 Thank you for all you do.

Paul Beckermann 38:54 You make a difference.