“I watched every single one of Heimler’s videos,” said junior Jordana Lo when describing how she studied for her AP US History exam. 

She was not alone. Normally, teens follow their favorite trendy influencers on social media, but it’s not every day that multitudes of students subscribe to a YouTube history channel. From cramming concepts with Heimler’s livestreams just nights before the big exam to purchasing his review guides, many AP History students have made “Heimler’s History,” a multimedia AP resource platform, a common part of their social studies studying. In the process, educator and content creator Steve Heimler, better known just as Heimler, has gained fame and trust in high schools across the United States.  

In the beginning of May, Harrisites were part of what was expected to be over three million students nationwide to take AP Exams. Many students at Townsend Harris studied for months beforehand, and for sophomores to seniors and even some Pre-AP World History freshmen, Heimler’s History was a popular resource both inside and outside the classroom.

Oftentimes, it was Heimler’s simple and quick videos that appealed to students. Jordana said, “I’ve tried a couple of other creators… and it just wasn’t in the same concise and clear format. So that’s why I chose Heimler.” 

In an interview with The Classic, Heimler said that his videos had initially been meant to help the large population of homeschooled students in Georgia. He said, “I have a theater background and, you know, I love teaching and explaining things. 
And so I thought, ‘hey, I could do all this.’” 

He said this unintentionally led to the YouTube channel that students know today: “I ran out of hard drive space pretty quickly. 
And so I thought, ‘well, I guess I’ll just upload these to YouTube as sort of a holding space until I get them all done.’ And then people started finding them. And people started watching them and subscribing. 
And it kind of blew my mind. And so after maybe six months of doing that, I thought, huh, it really seems to be something over here on YouTube. And so that’s when I kind of transitioned in that direction.”

Heimler’s popularity also stems from his ability to be detailed and clear. A common complaint among many AP History students is that the essay rubrics can be difficult to understand, so Heimler created multiple videos explaining how to get credit for written responses. Sophomore Evangelos Lianos, who took the AP World History exam, said that one of the main reasons he studied with Heimler’s resources was because “Heimler’s videos explained the right way to write [responses to various types of AP questions]; those specifics were helpful.”

Evan also said that Heimler’s resources gave him time to focus on practicing test skills. When talking about how his studying would have been different without Heimler, he said, “I would have had to read my textbook a lot more, which is more time consuming. And I used that time that I didn’t have to read through entire units of a textbook to do actual practice.… For me, practicing with multiple choice… is the most important.” 

When reflecting on AP History trends, Heimler told The Classic that “the biggest thing that we see every year that students struggle with on the exam is actually more of a big larger concept, which is chronological reasoning.” Hence, for the AP History exams, Heimler said, “it’s hard to do this, but if a student could study everything in order and not necessarily know every date or anything like that, but just understand how things unfold in order, man, it’s going to be so much easier, so much better. And even better than that, how they unfolded in order based on the themes of the course.”

Yet it wasn’t just the efficiency of his videos that made Heimler popular among students and teachers alike. For numerous viewers, his humor and enthusiasm have made his videos both educating and engaging. Heimler often jokes in his videos as he drills concepts into students’ heads. He called the Gilded Age “a gold-covered turd” in his AP US History video on industrialization, and he famously says to his viewers in the beginning of his videos that if they’re “ready to get them brain cows milked, let’s get to it.”

When asked about where this humor comes from, Heimler said, “I don’t know how I do that…. It’s not intentional. Who I am in my videos is who I am with my students when I was teaching or with my family, with my friends.”

As AP World History teacher Ms. Aliza Sherman said, “Heimler has made AP world review… really accessible and fun. And, you know, he’s managed to reach a really wide audience and to make history [be] a subject that people actually want to listen to.” 

Similarly, senior Jedadiah Juarbe, who took AP United States Government and Politics, noted that Heimler “has a special type of humor that only [he] has that just doesn’t feel like I’m sitting down for hours studying and watching some video. It feels like I’m doing an interactive lesson.”

Heimler said that knowing his audience is out there and in need keeps him motivated to make so many resources for AP History students nationwide. He said, “I can get stressed and burned out in all of this, but it’s like, you know what? There is a student out there who really needs me and I want to give them everything that I have…. I just want them to know from the first second of the video… I’m in good hands.”

At Townsend Harris, teachers are encouraged to give projects and foster group work settings, though many students have raised concerns about how that relates to the AP curriculum’s density. Sometimes, they say, there’s just not enough time to learn the whole curriculum. While Heimler does use graphics, his videos are largely in lecture format: Heimler talks, students listen. 

Rafal Olechowski, Assistant Principal of World Languages and Social Studies, explained that while projects and reading primary sources are integral aspects of learning in history, a major obstacle is that other states “have more time.” Since AP Exams are in May nationwide, states that begin school in August may have more time to cover content. Give this, Mr. Olechowski said he thinks Heimler’s resources offer a tool that can help fill the gap.

However, some teachers are reluctant to encourage their students to rely on Heimler. In an interview with The Classic, one Social Studies teacher said that they were conflicted about Heimler. Although they described the content as strong review material for students preparing for an AP exam, they argued that students should not view it as the kind of resource to depend on in order to understand the world we are living in, believing that the resources do not delve deeply enough into history or the underlying content.

Sophomore Owen Garcon, who took the AP World History exam, said, “I’d say the main in depth teaching is the teacher’s job.… Heimler’s videos are just to brush you up on certain topics.”

Thousands of students joined his livestream reviews, taking place in the nights before the exams. According to YouTube, over 362,000 viewers watched Heimler’s AP World History livestream review for units one through five, where he went over major concepts for each unit. 

Many students at Townsend Harris said that both they and their friends joined the livestreams, and the second part of the AP US History review was the very night before the exam. Owen said that the livestreams were quick with “major ideas of the units, but it still was packed with a lot of necessary information that [he] did retain during the exam.”


He said, “When I sat down to actually take the test, the questions seemed a lot more simpler than I would have imagined, thanks to that study session.” 

During these livestreams, Heimler himself gave shoutouts from multiple enthusiastic viewers, including some Harrisites. Via YouTube Superchats, students submitted comments for Heimler to read out, largely containing requests to name their AP History teachers and wish their class luck on the exam. During one session, Heimler announced, “Logan Kylie Liu from Band 9 Sherman at Townsend Harris High School is Tung-Tung-Tung Sa-Cool.”  

Heimler emphasized the significance of the community in these study sessions for both students and himself. “Everybody has this collective amount of dread and stress about this exam coming up. And we all get to be together in that,” he said. He also explained that this year, he had his livestream comments open next to him while lecturing, which got him through consecutive nights of talking for hours. He said that being able to see the constant flow of messages made him realize that he’s ”not just talking to a lens.… It really helped.”

With the next school year coming in a few months, rising juniors and seniors at THHS will all take another AP History course. Many Harrisites are already planning to study with Heimler again. Evan, who will be taking AP US History next year, and Jordana, who will be taking AP US Government and Politics, both responded with “absolutely” when asked about studying with Heimler next year.

Beyond test prep, however, Heimler offered non-AP course related advice to the high schoolers taking AP Exams: “this sounds like an inspirational cat poster… but I would just love to free up people to chase not the dreams of somebody else, but their own, you know, and to be at ease with who you are and not who anybody else says you ought to be.”