Import models from custom folder

In the folder of my django application there is a main folder containing settings and in the same directory there is a folder apps which contains all applications with their models and settings for the admin panel.
For example I wanted to specify AUTH_USER_MODEL and for this I wrote the path “apps.user.models.user_model.User” here:
user - app name
models - folder containing all models of a certain application
user_model - file containing the model
User - the very name of the model contained in the file user_model

When I try to make a migration (this is the first migration in the whole application), I get an error:
ValueError: Invalid model reference ‘apps_user.models.user_model.User’. String model references must be of the form ‘app_label.ModelName’

I know my teacher managed to do this somehow.