December 10, 2024
After nearly two decades in education, I’ve learned that great teaching isn’t about perfection—it’s about authenticity.
In my early days as what I call a “bad tutor,” I was too focused on appearing polished or “glossy.”
Through years of experience and self-reflection, I’ve discovered that exceptional educators share three fundamental qualities: empathy, congruence, and unconditional positive regard.
When I’m truly present with a student, forgetting myself completely and focusing entirely on their learning journey, that’s when real teaching happens.
It’s not just about delivering content—it’s about modeling curiosity, showing students how to approach challenges, and helping them discover the joy in learning.
Even after 18 years, I’m still growing, still learning new approaches, and still finding better ways to connect with students.
WHAT YOU’LL LEARN
- The three key qualities that make exceptional educators: empathy, congruence, and positive regard
- How stepping away from a problem can lead to better solutions (cognitive incubation)
- The importance of authenticity over polish in teaching
- Whether great teachers are born or can be trained
- What tutors should teach beyond test preparation
AUDIO
Catch the full discussion of Qualities Of Great Educators And Coaches
TRANSCRIPT
Amy Seeley: Welcome, everyone. I’m Amy Seeley, president of Seeley Test Pros and Leap, helping students to succeed in all kinds of tests from 8th grade to grad school throughout Ohio.
Mike Bergin: And I’m Mike Bergin, president of Chariot Learning, helping students with test school and Life, based out of Rochester, N.Y.
Amy Seeley: Between the two of us today, we have over 60 years of experience at the highest levels of the test preparation and supplemental education industries.
Mike Bergin: We both love to talk and learn about the latest issues in education, testing and admissions. So let’s get down to Tess and the rest. The fascinating topic we want to explore today is the qualities of great educators and coaches. But first, let’s meet our special guest, Dan Lerman.
Amy Seeley: Dan Lerman is a professor of cognitive science at Columbia University. He is passionate about using cognitive science to optimize learning, and his specialty is in creative problem solving. Dan previously taught at St. Paul’s School in London, St. Anne’s in Brooklyn, and Oxford University, and he has founded three companies in the tutoring space. He is passionate about social skills, personal growth, and combating the loneliness epidemic which has spawned the Backyard Comedy Series. Welcome.
Dan Lerman: Thank you so much for having me. Did I write that intro?
Amy Seeley: You did. I take it from there.
Dan Lerman: That’s a good intro.
Amy Seeley: It caused me, actually, Dan, to find out what is the Backyard Comedy Series. So I went to the website because I was so intrigued, and I apologize. That was more intriguing to me than clicking on the link of your other bio, by the way.
Dan Lerman: What do you mean? It’s the coolest thing I do. I’m so happy. If I were to send you to one website, that would be the one.
Amy Seeley: I actually saw that there’s one November 6th, and I thought to myself, darn, I’m not going to be in California on November 6th.
Dan Lerman: You know why we picked that day?
Amy Seeley: The day after the election is what I presume.
Dan Lerman: Exactly. I think it’ll be a good time to be around other people.
Mike Bergin: You know, people will definitely need a little levity that day.
Dan Lerman: I think so. I think so, yeah.
Amy Seeley: So actually, tell us more about your cognitive science background. It’s one of the most fascinating things, sort of an education, at least for me. Tell me more about what, you know, kind of how you got into that.
Dan Lerman: Yeah, you know, I don’t know as I’ve. It was kind of perennially in school my entire life. I just finished earlier this year. I’m 38 years old, and I kind of, throughout the journey was thinking about, what am I actually an expert in, what am I actually good at? And for better or for worse. I think I’ve been obsessive about watching my own thoughts for my entire life. It’s like, you know, it’s led to some good things, led to some bad things. But in college, I was just interested in psychology, kind of selfishly to try and make my own life better. So that’s what I majored. Majored in. And then fast forward to my first teaching job in New York, which is at the school called St. Anne’s and they had. They didn’t pay very much, but they had a professional development budget. You could be taking classes, doing whatever you want. One summer I took a Chinese class and was it. And one summer I signed up for a class at Columbia. Can’t remember what the class was, but it was part of this program called Neuroscience and Education. It was just a blast. So like on Tuesdays, I’d take the train up from Brooklyn Heights to Columbia and loved it. So I took more classes and more classes. Before I knew it, I had a master’s degree. I kept going, you know, one night a week, turned it to two nights a week. I found a path towards getting a PhD and just kind of followed my passion, what I. What I liked. We took classes on neuropsych testing, we took classes on motivation. And never was like, I must have a PhD. Just kind of following the fun, following the curiosity, following the passion over a long time and here we are.
Mike Bergin: That sounds great. I mean, I know that that path to the PhD might involve some research. Did you do much of that?
Dan Lerman: Yeah, yeah, you have to. That wound up being the last, I think four years of it was designing a study. And Covid made things a little bit trickier in terms of getting research, getting data. So, yeah, my research was, you know, they talk about PhDs getting niche down as you keep going and getting more and more and more specific. And my research was on phenomenon called cognitive incubation. You guys know what that is?
Mike Bergin: No
Amy Seeley: I do not.
Dan Lerman: Okay. So if you get to a problem, it actually came to me. I was on the subway in New York City. I was doing the New York Times crossword, and I noticed that I got to a clue and I didn’t know how, I didn’t know the answer. And I moved on. I went through the puzzle and I got back to the clue, and somehow I knew the answer with no extra information. And so I don’t know if either of you have experienced like getting to a problem, getting stuck, leaving the problem.
Amy Seeley: It sounds like taking a test with students, right?
Dan Lerman: Oh, there we go. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, so something I teach
Mike Bergin: And that’s called cognitive incubation.
Amy Seeley: I love it. I didn’t know that term.
Dan Lerman: Yeah, incubation. Like you’re, you’re. There’s two, two reasons it might be happening. One is just a fresh look at the problem. The other is, is like the unconscious mind is working on it in the background and you could see it when you’re thinking of someone’s name. The tip of the tongue phenomenon. Like I can’t remember their name but like I start thinking about something else and then the name comes back to me. Or writer’s block or coder’s block or. Yeah, of course, like on the ACT, if you just feel like you can’t get the answer and then you leave and then you come back. I actually the title of my dissertation is. Is. Is a method that like just like leave the problem and come back later is. Is the rough non academic explanation of my, my dissertation.
Mike Bergin: That is some fascinating stuff. But we’re going to skip to an entirely different topic which is equally compelling to all of us. And that’s the qualities of great educators and coaches. And we know, Dan, that you give a lot of thought to this. What do you see are the foundational qualities of a great tutor or coach?
Dan Lerman: I love this question, Mike. Thanks. I spent fair amount of time thinking about this when I was building my tutoring company. And wasn’t until recently that I’ve really started to kind of elucidate these feelings, write them down, start to communicate them to others. I’m a big fan of the psychologist Carl Rogers. He’s a humanist psychologist from the 1950s and 60s. Kind of mentioned in the same breath as Maslow. Maslow, famous for his hierarchy of needs. Carl Rogers wrote a book called On Becoming a Human and in it he outlines the quality of a great therapist and his framework. He has three qualities that make a great therapist and those qualities are empathy, congruence and unconditional positive regard. Empathy, congruence, unconditional positive regard. And I think those are foundational for a good tutor. Empathy. I think we all know what empathy is. The ability to feel what another person is feeling. Congruence I think is less talked about and I think it’s just so important. When I was a bad tutor, I started.
Amy Seeley: When I was a bad tutor. I love that.
Dan Lerman: Oh, it lasted a long time.
Amy Seeley: Early days.
Dan Lerman: Yeah, in the early days when I was a bad tutor, I. I was fortunate enough to have some mentors who were very open about what wasn’t working for me. You know, one of them. I remember Dan Gonzalez at Manhattan gmat, which is now Manhattan Prep. I was auditioning for a job with them, and he described my teaching as glossy. Ooh, glossy, glossy. And he was very kind about it, but, like, very clear. Like, Daniel, I feel like I.
Amy Seeley: So slick, would that be an appropriate, like, synonym for that? Slick. I don’t know.
Dan Lerman: Slick. I think what he was saying is, like, I just wasn’t being myself, you know, I was like, oh, and now, Amy, you can back solve. And like, it just wasn’t the way I’ve interpreted it is. I wasn’t being congruent. Like, I maybe was feeling uncomfortable, but trying to present as polished or feeling angry and trying to present as nice. And I think this is what congruence means. Like, are you being genuine, authentic? Am I being Dan Lerman right now? And I hope. I don’t know. I haven’t done a ton of podcasts. I hope I’m coming through as being authentic and not glossy right now. And I try and bring that to my tutoring. Like, if I’m confused, I’ll be like, oh, man, that is confusing. Like, I’ll actually speak my experience.
Amy Seeley: I wonder if that authenticity translates into, like, relatability, do you think?
Dan Lerman: Yeah, I hope so. I don’t know. I can’t control anyone else’s experience. I hope I’m relatable. But I looked, man, I looked at a lot. Hundreds of hours of videos of me tutoring, which is painful to do when. When you’re as bad as I was.
Amy Seeley: Actually, that makes me think with our Fathom note takers these days. Right. And recordings, that’s actually a really. Would be a very good exercise for a lot of us teachers and tutors, especially if you’ve been in the space for a while. Because we kind of take for granted how we’re coming across. And yet if we were to watch ourselves, that’s a real exercise, right?
Dan Lerman: Totally. I love, love, love that idea, Amy. And you could even take the transcript of Fathom and feed it into an AI tool and say, critique me. Like, what went well here? Which I’ve done with a couple of my tutor friends couple of times. Not like, we do this regularly, but right when these tools came out, we’re like, take this transcript. What am I doing well? What am I not doing well? It doesn’t capture things like vocal quality and authenticity, but it does capture the words that you’re using and can give you some feedback there. But I think. I think looking at yourself in the mirror and saying what. What’s good what’s not having trusted colleagues, trusted friends of yours that are great tutors. You give you feedback that has helped me come a long way, and I hope to continue to do that.
Mike Bergin: So, you know, we can identify great qualities or take qualities of great educators or coaches. Are great educators born or made? Can anybody be trained to be a great tutor or coach?
Dan Lerman: This might be my personal optimism as a human being. I think with enough time, anything can be coached. I think with enough time, anything can be coached.
Amy Seeley: That is a growth mindset, Dan.
Mike Bergin: So anyone can be taught to exhibit congruence. Anyone can be taught to display unconditional positive regard. Right. You can be technical about it. Even if you don’t feel that unconditional positive regard, you can orient yourself to at least manifest the physical appearance of it.
Dan Lerman: I think that’s exactly right, Mike. You know, how does that happen? Right. I think a conversation. If you and I were working together, Mike, and I was a starting tutor and was delivering. I think it really requires looking at you while you’re tutoring. Yeah. And if. If while I was tutoring, someone got a bad score on the ACT reading, and the. The news I delivered to that student was, you really suck versus. Okay, look, what I’m seeing here is you don’t know how to read. But great news. I’m gonna. I’m gonna show you. Like, I know exactly what’s going on. I’ve been here before. I’ve seen people in 19s before. I think you’re just tuning out, and I think I can help. Like, let’s take a look. I think that second one is better objectively than the first, and sometimes it doesn’t even occur to people. So what I’m. I’m trying to say is with. With good mentors, good mentorship, alternative approaches, alternative words, alternative phrasings can be taught. I see it in myself. I’m still learning. I’m picking up little phrases and language in areas that I maybe didn’t think about as much as other people have. And I’m using them. So I think I’m getting better. 18 years into this game, well.
Amy Seeley: Would almost propose a sensitivity to a student to try to meet them where they’re at, like, to try to. Like, I find myself in that very first session with a student, like, really within the first 10 minutes, trying to figure out, like, what’s the student going to be all about? Like, what’s going to drive them, what’s going to upset them? Right. You know, sort of. Because I feel like a great tutor can sort of almost modulate, right. To sort of figure out where do I get this student? You know, and because it’s not going to be the same for every student. Students might have the same goals. I want a better score. But how to get there. Sometimes, really, there’s a nuance to that.
Mike Bergin: Yeah. I’m going to push back a little on the concept that anybody can be a great tutor or coach, because I think that the great ones have empathy and without.
Amy Seeley: Is that teachable? Is that coachable? That’s the question I have.
Mike Bergin: Can you exhibit sufficient interest, compassion, and where required social intelligence to navigate challenges? I think a lot of educators are technicians. They’re like, I’m good at calculus. This is calculus. I’m going to give you calculus. And you’re going to take it the way I give it to you.
Amy Seeley: You’re going to take this dosage.
Mike Bergin: Right. And that might be a decent tutor. Right. Because they know the material. They may be professional, they may show up on time, they may be responsive. They may have all those things, but without the ability to create a connection, which is, you know, I mean, it’s. It’s. Again, it was one of those Rogers qualities that you describe. I feel like the true spark can’t happen.
Dan Lerman: I think it’s really, really well put. And again, I haven’t had this con that it’s so fun to be having this conversation with you guys, because these conversations happen with myself in my head.
Amy Seeley: When I’m in the shower.
Dan Lerman: Can you teach sensitivity? Can you teach hearing? I think, you know, I agree with both of you. Amy’s point about sensitivity is, I think, one that I was just mulling over. Can sensitivity be taught? And in my experience, I think when I wasn’t as sensitive or present or trying to, you know, being as focused on that connection as you’re talking about, I’m like, I was very much in my head and egotistical. I was worried I might not know enough. I was worried I don’t. I might not be able to fill this hour.
Amy Seeley: Yeah, well, I think in the beginning, I mean, I think back because I started my tutoring journey. I mean, I was fresh out of college. I mean, I was 22. I did have an education degree. And I remember the fear that I had, you know, with testing, right? Students bring you a test and you look over questions. Now, I was. I was very formally trained at Princeton Review. So all the materials, everything I knew because I’d been provided, and I looked over those and, you know, studied those But I remember the fear if someone were to bring me a question that I had not done before, and usually that specifically is going to be math, Right? A math question where I remember that it was like, you know, I had ways of trying to dash that, like, oh, let’s do that next session, or. And I remember that fear. But what’s interesting, over my career now that we, we got so many tests over the years, like TIR’s from acts where they’d show up and there it is. I actually found myself being more relatable or empathetic because I would look at a question not having ever seen it before, but I could talk to my students if I was in their position. Wow. If this were the question I were given, what would I do? And I found that I could express the fact that I wasn’t sure initially or how would I process this, but I would walk through it with them. And I think that the fact that your tutor could look at something and find it difficult and to express that, I think allows a student to feel like, oh, if they have to think through this, you know, I can still. I can think through this too. Like, it’s possible to see something initially and not know it or understand it, but then work through it.
Mike Bergin: That’s good, Amy. I’m going to throw out what I think is an easy question.
Dan Lerman: Thanks.
Mike Bergin: How do you know if you are not a great tutor?
Dan Lerman: Yeah.
Amy Seeley: Dad’s like, I don’t know because I’ve only known myself to be great tutor.
Mike Bergin: You can take it from the other side and say, how do you know if you’re a great tutor?
Dan Lerman: Yeah, no, I like the question. How do you know if you’re not a great tutor? Well, Mike nailed the importance of connection. It’s a very kind of intimate, present feeling to be a great tutor, to form a connection, to know someone’s mind. If you don’t have the desire to do that, if the desire to connect is not there, if you are in sessions and they feel overwhelmingly uncomfortable, you know, of course there are moments of uncomfortability, even in great tutoring sessions. But if you leave a long tutoring session, like, man, that painful. Wasn’t comfortable. That was painful. I really barely escaped that one without them figuring me out. You know, I think I’m just trying to recreate memories from my early tutoring days. Doesn’t sound like you’re doing a good job. I think the flip side is when things go well, I really feel in flow. I feel like God is coming through me. You know, I. I really do Feel.
Amy Seeley: Channeling the divine
Dan Lerman: Completely. I. Honestly, this sounds silly and insane. I had a tutoring session the other day. I walked down, I told my wife. It’s like I just felt like. Like God came through me. I was having a bad day, personally. I went into a tutoring session, forgot myself completely, left myself. I love the fact, and this is a little bit random, but someone taught me a couple years ago the root of the word NA XECHORIZEI. Do you guys know the root of the word NA XECHORIZEI?
Amy Seeley: Oh, God. You’re asking the right guy, Mike.
Mike Bergin: Yeah, it’s like to stand out.
Dan Lerman: To stand outside of oneself is one interpretation from ancient Greek to stand outside. Very good, Mike. No one I’ve asked has ever known that.
Mike Bergin: I do publish the roots to words.
Dan Lerman: Word of the day makes a lot of sense.
Amy Seeley: That means NA XECHORIZEI is going to be on next week’s Roots.
Mike Bergin: It might have already been on. I didn’t.
Dan Lerman: There it is. Yeah, but that is such a stand outside oneself. Yeah.
Amy Seeley: That’s funny. I’ve never thought about that. Being in a session where you’re. You actually. You don’t have a sense of yourself. It’s all about the student. That’s a very interesting thought. I’ve never thought about that.
Mike Bergin: So I’m going to come at this from a totally different. And I think, Dan, this is betraying that we might come from different schools of psychology because I look at it as completely behavioral or mechanistic. You’re a great tutor if you get results and you get referrals. You’re not a great tutor if you’re missing one or both of those things. Yeah, right. It’s not how you feel about it. I think that a person can be really good at something and not enjoy it.
Dan Lerman: Yeah.
Amy Seeley: Well, no, I think what you’re. I think that what we’re talking about, maybe, Dan, because I can relate to what you’re saying is it’s almost like you’re not even thinking about it. And I think. But you’re right. That’s almost like actually, let’s call that tutor Zen. Right. Where you can get to that level. Right. Where that there’s almost nothing. The thought about it. It’s just the. The moment, being in the moment, being present for your student. I think that’s what you’re describing. And I can relate. Shouldn’t say that I’m good at that, but I would say that I can relate to that being like, wow. But that comes, I think, from time, experience, knowing students, knowing your content, where that can happen.
Dan Lerman: I think you’re both Right. You know, just like psychology, there are Freudians, there are behaviorists, there’s a couple, their cognitive psychology, there’s different lenses with which to look at this. And yeah, I agree with both. Amy, I agree with you because, you know, that was the point I brought up. Of course I agree with myself and like, you know, the idea that you, by leaving yourself, make it entirely about the other person or present for that person. But Mike, your point’s a really good one. And in thinking about this conversation, I was thinking about a psychologist named B.F. skinner. Do you know, do you know about Skinner?
Mike Bergin: The founder of behaviorism? Right, exactly.
Dan Lerman: Yeah. And the Psychological association came from Pavlov. Very good, Amy. So he, I think, would totally agree with you, Mike. He would say human emotion, human feelings are all overrated and they’re so subjective that we shouldn’t even talk about them. Forget feeling, throw it away. Let’s just look at behaviors, let’s just look at results. And that is an interesting, I think, business forward and objective data heavy way of looking at quality of tutors. I have at points been in moments where I’ve been running a company and been looking at myself and other tutors that way. I think it’s totally valid. I think it’s totally valid. What are your results objectively and how many referrals are you getting? I think are two great metrics.
Amy Seeley: Well, let’s, let’s talk about, we’re talking about results. Let’s kind of translate this into what we all do, which is test prep. So beyond teaching to a test, what do you think DM that a great tutor teaches?
Dan Lerman: Yeah. One thing I keep coming back to is curiosity, academic curiosity, curiosity about the test. If there’s a situation like the one you described, Amy, where there’s a question I’ve never seen before. Just like saying I’ve never seen, you know, box and Whisker Plaza. You know, there was a moment in whatever 2018 where that popped up for the first time. I was like, oh, I like, I vaguely remember this from college. But look, you’ll get to see me figure this out in real time and, oh, it’s that interesting. It’s a little rectangle. And so I think curiosity in, in the micro, but also the macro. I get to know my students very well on a personal level. I go out of my way to do that, to build rapport. I think it’s a really important part of the whole process, the whole job and ultimately getting referrals too. But modeling curiosity and talking about what I’m reading. Oh, here’s this book called the Artist’s way. It’s a 12 week guide to unlocking your creativity. And I’m going through it with a couple of my friends. It’s really fun. That’s a true fact. And you know, I share the fact that I’m a very almost pathologically curious person with my students. I think that helps. I think that helps beyond the test, beyond curiosity. I, I think especially nowadays it’s a novel idea to let people know that you could, you could associate reading with pleasure. Is a big one. Yeah.
Mike Bergin: Yeah. that’s a big thing to teach.
Dan Lerman: Yeah.
Mike Bergin: I think any educator or coach, anybody in any walk of life who impacts a teen should be trying to really drive that lesson home. You can be a sports coach, you could be a music teacher, whatever. Anybody should be helping people find that pleasure.
Dan Lerman: Totally, totally. And it’s, I, I joke with people about it, but really this thought has not occurred to a lot of 11th graders because English class has been such a drag. You know, it’s been going through the motions and pretending like you understand what the Scarlet letter means. And it’s just I, you know, I really early on make a push that you learning to read in an elite level, learning to enjoy it will change your life. So I think that goes beyond the test and some of the most lasting impacts I’ve had when tutoring goes really well. Sure. 35 on the ACT. But you know, I love Kurt Vonnegut now. You know, I’ve read every one of his books. Years later. I love that.
Mike Bergin: So I guess we should talk about the current state of tutor training because we can try to quantify the qualities that educators and coaches should have, but there really aren’t many formal ways for educators to develop that. Right.
Dan Lerman: I’m actually curious with how you guys got to where you are. For me, I, to pay for acting classes when I was 20, got hired by Kaplan. I don’t remember who Kaplan.
Amy Seeley: People in the room.
Dan Lerman: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don’t remember who trained me. It was at the Long Island Center. I remember getting a binder and you know, like, yeah, Princeton had this big script.
Amy Seeley: Big, big red binder.
Dan Lerman: Totally. Yeah. I can’t remember the colors. Color various, but it was probably purple. But the. Not only did they have a script for what you should say that I remember on the bottom of each page they had a transition to the next page. So it was very, very. Here’s the, here’s everything you can say it was a script. It was unbelievable.
Mike Bergin: When I write curriculum, I still incorporate stuff like that, you know, just because, like, you learn that model and it makes a lot sense and it’s helpful. I think what you’re getting at is, right, that most formal tutor training comes if you work for a company and that you have to work for someone who’s going to invest professional development time in you. It’s not like going to school and going to tutor school.
Amy Seeley: Well, think about why that is, though. A big company, it’s like a McDonald’s. You need to walk into McDonald’s and a cheeseburger McDonald’s is the same no matter where you buy that McDonald’s cheeseburger. So for a big company, the reason why that training has to be so formalized is intentionally to try to make sure as. As much as you can that that tutoring or that that teaching is the same.
Mike Bergin: But great tutors aren’t like, no, no, no, no, no.
Amy Seeley: No, no, they’re not. What I’m saying is that is a great foundation. What someone does with that training is what will elevate them to an amazing tutor. Because was very useful for me, but I don’t use that script.
Mike Bergin: But I’m saying I think that that’s fine. In an industry where the only tutors are tutors that work in those environments, shouldn’t there be some ways for people to get tutor training where they don’t have to apprentice themselves 100%?
Amy Seeley: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Sure, sure. Yeah, I get that.
Mike Bergin: I mean, if this is a professional craft and nobody teaches it, that’s weird. There’s a big disconnect that people can have tremendous careers as tutors, not as classroom teachers. Certified class, like teacher certification doesn’t really carry in the tutor space. Right. A person can go and become a school counselor, but that won’t teach them to become a college counselor.
Amy Seeley: Truth.
Mike Bergin: College counselors at least have certification programs.
Dan Lerman: Yeah. I’m so happy you guys brought this up. I think every tutor training program that exists is. Is created by someone who employs you, who would employ you. I think that’s how it currently works. Like. Like an apprentice model. It’s how. How mine have worked. And I think, Mike, I love how you’re comparing it to other fields, other educational fields. This is strange. And it’s time for a change. So over the last two years, I’ve been applying and bugging Columbia to let me teach a course on tutoring. Here’s how to be a great tutor. I don’t think again, someone might. A listener might correct me on this, but I don’t think course on tutoring, on being a great tutor has ever been taught at the university level. And after two years Columbia finally listened to me and in January they have a kind of shortened winter term. From January 2nd to January 16th I’m teaching almost like a boot camp. It’s called Advanced Tutoring techniques and I’m running the course. I think as long as 25 people sign up and they feel confident that number of people sign up. So that course is kind of my baby. I care very much about it. I’m putting a lot of work, a lot of thought into how to get some of these ideas that we’re talking about across. And maybe, you know, if things go well, the hope and dream would be to turn it into a deeper thing. Whether it’s, you know, full semester course as tutor certification program through Columbia. I’ve I floated all of these ideas and people are aware of them. But I think it depends on this first kind of pilot going well to maybe start to shift towards a direction where the people who train you are focused on pedagogy, not on employing you.
Mike Bergin: Yeah, that is fascinating. We will look forward to hearing how that goes and maybe have a follow up episode find out how that goes. But for now though, we could talk about this all day. We are out of time. Thanks for joining us today, Dan.
Dan Lerman: You guys rock. Thanks so much.
Mike Bergin: If listeners would like to get in touch with you, what’s the best way for them to do that?
Dan Lerman: They want to email me directly. My email address is DML2183. That’s Daniel Matthew Lerman [email protected] EDU. Or they could check out my personal website which is just dan lerman.com awesome.
Amy Seeley: We hope you enjoyed this discussion as much as we did. Be sure to join us for another fascinating topic and guest on the next Tests and the Rest.
Host: Did you enjoy this episode as much as we did? Find expanded links and more for this and all of our episodes at our show page of tests and the rest.com while you’re there, be sure to explore everything the larger Test Bright site has to offer, including real, expert, unbiased answers to the toughest admissions testing questions. Of course, we’d love for you to rate, review and subscribe to Test and the Rest on your favorite podcast platform. If there’s a topic or guest you’d like us to feature, just let us know and spread the word.