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The 1000 Hours Outside Podcast
1KHO 785: You’re Never Going to Regret More Time With Your Kids | Jennifer Burns, American Faith Academy
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Everything you need to study and play with select Windows 11 PCs. Eligible students get a year of Microsoft 365 Premium and a year of Xbox Game Pass ultimate with a custom color Xbox wireless controller. Learn more@windows.com studentoffer while supplies last ends June 30th terms at aka mscollegepc. Welcome to the 1000 Hours Outside podcast. My name is Ginny Erton, the founder of 1000 Hours Outside, and I have such a special conversation for you today. This is one that might be some answers. It'll include some answers that you might be looking for. Jennifer Burns. She is the founder and head of school for American Faith Academy and also the president of Accelera. Welcome, Jennifer.
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Oh, thank you so much for having me, Jenny. I'm so excited for our conversation today.
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I am, too, because everyone's looking for alternatives, especially since COVID I think people learned that you can live your life a lot of different ways. And I think up until Covid, there was sort of this a little bit of groundswell of homeschooling, you know, but it was a little bit more fringe and people were, you know, a little bit more, you know, kind of against it, honestly, you know, and I would talk about it, people would, you know, get a little feathers ruffled, but then covet happened. And I think people realized, you know, there's a lot of different ways that we can live and there's a lot of things that we can go see in the world and can we adjust our schedule a little bit? And yet people still need some help because maybe there's dual working families or they just don't feel confident they're jumping in for the first time. And so what we're seeing is we're seeing, seeing amazing opportunities pop up for families that want this flexibility. And Jennifer, you are right there in the midst of it, really providing an incredible solution with the American Faith Academy. Let's kick it off, though, by telling people your story. So you're, you know, a homeschooling family, but back in the early 2000s, long before COVID back in those days where it was sort of, you know, people
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were, we were the weird ones. We were the super weird ones that you looked at going, wait, what?
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What are they doing? Why are they doing that? Yes. Okay. But even further back than that, you have a career, a background in business and education, so you're working with marketing and really are in tune with, like, what do people want? So can you talk. Start there, then to the homeschooling.
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Right. So that. That is my background. My background is in marketing, where I was able to really understand what made our consumers tick, look at how they were living their lives, and then helped my clients understand what those customers were at their very core. Right. What were their insights, what made them tick, and then helped my clients translate what they saw in their customers to fit good products and support communication and services that really delighted them. And so that's where my heart was. My heart was in innovation, but in innovation that was really grounded in. In consumer insight and what was not just what was possible, but what was useful for the customers. So that's. That's my backstory.
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Yeah. And you can see how that would translate. You're looking for innovation that delights a customer. And so in this case, then you, you know, you switch. You have these kids, you're home with them, you're starting this homeschool journey back when not as quite as many people were doing it. And, you know, realizing, you know, you need community, you need help sometimes, especially as they start to get into high school years, you know, middle and high school years. And then also if you're. You've got younger kids at home, but you're working a little bit, that type of thing, like, people just need support. And so you take this. This way of looking at the world, which is like trying to innovate to delight these homeschool families, basically, and you are creating what so many families need. So can you talk about those early homeschooling years? And you did, even back then, you found a Classical Consortium Academy. So this was a Christian hybrid school long before anybody was talking, even using the wor. Hybrid.
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Right, right. And really, it was at the. The resurgence of classical education in the United States. So, yes, we were. We were this odd family that was homeschooling their children. And when I saw really, all of the different kinds of homeschooling you can do, because there are so many philosophies, I'll never forget that I walked into a homeschool meeting and. And this sweet mom looked at me and said, so what philosophy of education are you following? And I looked at her and I said, kindergarten, because I didn't know. And I thought, well, I probably need to figure out what philosophy of education I want to follow with my son. And at the time, there was this organization called the Elijah Company. They were a publishing company. They had this beautiful. In the center of their catalog they had the descriptions of all of the different kinds of homeschooling. And it started all the way on the left with unschooling. And then you'd see, like, the pros and the cons, and. And you'd go all the way through, you know, Montessori and unit study. And. And Charlotte me said, and then classical was all the way over here. And I looked and I went. It speaks to me that that's. That's how I wish I were educated. That's what I want to give my child. And it was just off to the races from there. I just tried to absorb everything that I could about classical education, understand it, and implement it in my own home, only to then be called to realize that it's really challenging to deliver on a classical education on your own at home. And you need community and you need help. And so I really had a heart for people just like me who thought, I can't go it alone. We have this mantra in homeschooling, you know, we take it year by year, right? Everyone has a feeling, you know, we'll see what. What comes of it. And I thought, I really like homeschooling, like being with my son. I want this to be sustainable, but I'm wise enough to know I cannot do this on my own at home.
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Okay, so you started what is. You know, now people use the word hybrid. They kind of throw it around. Let's dive a little bit deeper into two parts. First of all, my. My experience was similar to yours, Jennifer, where someone was like, what kind of homeschooler are you and I? I don't know what the options are. You know, what. What are the options? So that's a very cool thing that you are able to come across as material that's basically says, these are the options. These are the acceptable answers. When someone asks, what is your philosophy of education for someone who's confused about that and maybe dipping their toe into the water for the first time? I know the spring is often a time when people are thinking toward the fall, what are we going to do for education? Are we going to make any changes? Or if they have younger kids, what are we going to decide for the first time, for the person who is, like, wildly confused that there are even more than one there, that there's even more than philosophy of education? Because they're like, well, you just put them on the bus and then they come home and you do your homework and they go back the next day. There are a lot of philosophical underpinnings of how we're supposed to learn and grow. So can you talk about why the classical model spoke so much to you and then how that fits in with the American faith Academy?
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Sure. So there are many aspects of a classical education that really speak to me, but at its core, it really goes with the grain of how all students develop, how we learn. It leans into that. And that understanding of how students brains develop and how they learn really influences then what we teach students, how we teach students, and how we approach those subjects. A couple of hallmarks of a classical education. Now, of course, the classical education was founded in the years of Plato and Socrates, so it wasn't grounded in God. But classical Christian education knows that its source of truth is the Christian Bible. So everything is taught from a Christian worldview. So science is a study of his creation, history is a study of his story, math is a study of his order of things. And so he's at the foundation of all. Some other hallmarks is that when we teach students in the younger years, we recognize that they're really good at memorizing. And when Socrates talks about this part of a student's development around K through 6, he says, we're going to teach students how to speak without error, give them a common lexicon, give them the words that help identify things, maybe even without them knowing what those words mean. You know, that'll come later, but we need to have a foundation of, of just us being able to talk about the thing. And so that's what we really do. Then because kids are so good at memorizing, we can just, you know, put, fill their heads with facts, use things like mnemonic devices and songs and chants to help do that so that they understand the grammar of all of the subjects that they're learning. Then as they get older and get that junior high stage, if you have a middle schooler in your life, you know that they are phenomenal at arguing, right? You say the sky is blue. They're like, no, actually I think it's purple. They're great at that. It's their developmental stage. What they're trying to do is reconcile what it is they know what they're experiencing, what they're hearing and new information that's coming in and they're trying to put it together like a puzzle piece. And because they are phenomenal at arguing, we're going to use that to our advantage. In a classical education. We're going to teach them formal logic, which is the grammar of argumentation. We're going to teach them critical thinking. We're Going to use tools like debate, Socratic questioning, Socratic seminars. And I love that Socrates says, at this stage of a child's development, your job as a teacher is to be a midwife. I mean, have that idea that as a good teacher, what you're doing is asking thoughtful questions so that the student gives birth to the ideas themselves. And you think, well, yeah, that makes sense. Because if you're dealing with an argumentative teenager or tweenager, all you do is, well, ask the questions. They come up with the idea so they're not arguing with you about it. Right?
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Yeah.
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And then as students get older and get into those high school years, if you can recall back to when you were in high school, it was probably the time that you actually started to care about what you look like, how your hair was, what clothes you you were in, what your room looked like. So all of the presentation of self, and we lean into that understanding and that development of a student and say, okay, well, we're going to really focus on how you present your ideas to others. So it's not just your outward, outward appearance, but what's in your head and how do you articulate that to others, both in written and oral form? And so that just understanding of how a student develops and leaning into that just made so much sense to me, as well as this idea that we focus on goodness, truth and beauty and virtue in our children. That, that's not an isol thing. I used to have friends that would say, well, I don't really care about the academics. I want to build a, a young woman or young man of character. And in my mind I thought, well, you can't separate those two. Right. It is, it is through education that we develop the mind and the heart and the soul. And so we need to, we need to put those things together. And a classical education, I think, does that really.
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Well, let me read a couple other things from the website. So this is called the American Faith Academy. You can enroll your students at any time. I'll make sure. I'll put the link in the show notes. You can go to american americanfaithacademy.com and you can just see all of the options there. So you talk about the grammar stage. This is K to 6. So, you know, this is something that the majority of parents, I would imagine, and you can kind of chime in here. I don't think they've thought about this because you don't know what the philosophy is of public school education. You may not know what the philosophy is of a private School education either. And so you may not have ever thought, you know, you just think, well, you go from second grade to third grade. But to honor the stage that the child is in makes a lot of sense. Okay, to six. Is this grammar stage, the foundational knowledge, the logic stage, seventh to eighth grade. And I just read a book by Dr. Dan Siegel where he was talking about then, in adolescence, this is when the brain starts to prune. It's a second pruning. There's a lot of pruning that happens in birth to three. Now, adolescence is the same so that the kids, their brains really work quickly. It's kind of shedding off the things they don't need. So then these high school years where they're cultivating persuasive and eloquent communication, obviously that's critically important, especially in today's day and age. And teaching students how to think, not simply what to think. And you just talk about how this is not a leap into the unknown similar to homeschool in general. It often feels, Jennifer, like homeschool is like, ah, this new thing, you know, it's growing, you know, so seems like it's this new growing thing, but really it's an old thing.
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Right, Right. We, the reality is, is that we know how to educate children. Right. Classical education has been around for thousands of years. It's produced really good fruit. The greatest thinkers of all of human history. We're educated in this way. We're using great works and primary sources and really asking them to think through things deeply and thoroughly. We know how to educate children. It's that our life has changed education to fit that industrial revolution kind of bell to bell, this is what, this is what we are educating. Not people to think, but to be good worker bees. And they've changed the purpose for education. And when I think about parents today who come to us often, they talk about what they're running away from. They know that the current education system is one that is teaching their students a whole bunch of things that they didn't want them to learn, especially at the stage their, their children are in. And they're recognizing that the system is doing a really poor job of teaching them the things that they know they need to know. And so parents are really clear about what they want to run away from. Now, since COVID you mentioned that, that really the scales were falling from a parent's eyes starting at Covid. Now we need to help them understand what they should run toward, because that's really the focus. Because even if the public schools you know, turn around it. It's still not going to be a kind of education that is truly worthy of our children.
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Get prepped for patio season for way less. Head to Wayfair.com right now to shop all things home. That's W-A-Y-F-A-I-R.com Wayfair Every style, every home. Okay, so this is where you come alongside with the American Faith Academy. So can you talk then about your hybrid school? So back when this was, you know, less popular, the Classical Consortium Academy. Now you've graduated your own children through this model of, of classical Christian school. Homeschool basically. But, but hybrid. So can you explain? You know, I think there are a lot of parents that in, you know, I, I relate and I especially relate in the fall when every, you know, you're kind of like the summer's ending and we're both kind of in the Midwest. It's like beautiful, you know, so you've got this sting of that wrapping up and the golden rod comes out and you're kind of sad. You know, the summer's coming, gone and, and you're ramping up to have a lot on your shoulders. And when our kids were younger, probably for the first five or six years I remember being feeling pretty overwhelmed in those years now. Now I'm like this great, you know, I mean, you can look back and see the growth of your child and that you have these solid relationships and you're so glad you made these decisions. But in those earlier years. So whether you're starting off at the very beginning or you're jumping in mid education, maybe your child is 8 or 12 or something like that, I think there are those feelings of overwhelm in the spring when you're trying to decide in the fall when it starts. You know, maybe in the spring at the end, if you've had a little bit of a rocky year and you just feel a little overwhelmed. So can you talk about how there for a long time, I think families just did this on their own because it was illegal. So, okay. Of course they're like, you can't even tell anybody that you're doing it. You've got to hide your kids away, you know, and then, you know, it starts to become more and more families. But I know people who homeschooled where they said, we didn't know anyone else, not one other person. But by 2000, it's legal in all of the states. You're starting to find some other families. Talk about the hybrid word. You know that there are a lot of resources today that can help you. And then in the case, you can maybe explain how American Faith Academy does it.
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Yes. So I believe there's such a good fruit that comes from a hybrid environment. So from in our perspective, what that means is that students are spending some time at the feet of wise teachers and then time under their parents supervision. And that has been a wonderful recipe to produce really amazing young men and young women. And that's really what we're trying to do. We don't want to fall in love with our tool. What we want to do is keep our eye on the prize that we are raising confident, capable, amazing young people who are going to make an impact in this world. And so then as a parent, our job is to figure out, okay, what tool helps us do that. And I think that there's a recipe for success. One is that, yes, as parents, we're pouring into our kids. We're taking on that responsibility of parenting them, loving them. No one cares more about your kids than you do. And so pouring into them in that way is really important. And I know some parents think that they're ill equipped to do it. And I want to say to them, no way. You can. You can do it. You are fully Equipped to. To do it. I want to tell a quick story. When I decided to come home and stayed home with my son, he had been in a Montessori school. It was always sunshine and roses when I dropped him off, right? They're just always a teacher beaming from ear to ear with a bright smile. And the place was all, you know, everyone's singing and it's just lovely, right? Every time I'd go in there, I thought, oh, this is a lovely place. So the I. I feel called to. To stay at home with my son, pull him from that Montessori school, and we're going to home school. And there is one day where neither one of us were acting our age. I'll just put it to you that way. It wasn't pretty. And I had my son in the car. We were running some errands. And we just so happened that we passed the Montessori school. And not in a snarky way, but in just a real and raw way. I looked at him and said, honey, do you wish you'd come? Go back there. Is that what you would prefer? And he looked at me and he said, no, Mommy, I want to be home with you. And I thought, if on our worst day, that's the response that my son has. I thought, I can do this.
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We.
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We can do this. And not every day is going to be perfect. Actually, there's going to be a whole slew of imperfect days because we are imperfect people. But one of the reason why I created the school that I did, and the reason why I've created American Faith Academy, is because we do need help. We need help and support to be the best parents we can be to our children. And we don't know every subject, and we shouldn't have to know every subject, but we can give our kids the thing that we were designed to give them, which is that love, care and attention, mentorship and discipleship. That's what we can do as parents. And I have such a heart for parents who say, oh, I feel insecure about giving them an education. And what we say is, it's okay, we got that. We got that piece. You provide the peace that only you can provide.
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Can you talk about being on the other side of it? Because now you're a grandma.
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I am. I am.
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Talk about that. You know, I think everybody relates to the conversation topic of how far the horizon seems. I don't even know if that makes sense, how far off graduation seems when they're seven, you know, and then it goes. It's not as long you don't. I think it seems like you're gonna have so much time. You just have less time than you think you thought you were gonna have. Yeah. And you're like, wait a minute. You know, I didn't do this, that, or the other thing I did a lot. But it goes quick. Can you talk about just the. The grandma stage? And, and really, I think the question people ask is, are you glad you did it? And are your children glad you did it?
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There's so much wrapped up in that. And I've got several. Several stories I'd love to tell you, but I'll take the first thing, the last thing first. Am I glad I did it? So I had a health scare maybe 10 years ago, and when you have those. When you. When you have those significant health scares you think you take, you immediately take an account of your life. And the first thing that popped into my head was, I am so glad I spent my time the way I did with my boys. I'm a mama of three boys that are now 27, 22, and 17. And I am so glad that I spent the time with them, pouring into them, building that relationship. And I just. I. I wouldn't have wanted to do it any other way. So that. That's first. The other is that you. You make such a significant impact in the lives of others when you help them raise up their children. And I consider it an absolute honor and privilege that I've gotten to be able to walk alongside parents, helping give them the encouragement and the tools that they need to be obedient to. To raise up their children and give them the confidence, really, to have the same experience that I did. Again, not all sunshine and roses, but when you step back and you think this was a life well lived because I was living it, building my family and. And pouring into these kids. And so I. I would love if. If the only thing your audience took from this conversation is that they should do whatever they can to orient their lives in a way to. To really pour into their children as much as humanly possible and take up whatever tools they need to in order to do that. And being a grandparent, yes, it's such a delight. I love being able to pour into that next generation and just being a mama and then a grandmother really matters. A fun story about parenting at different life stages. So I've got 10 years between my oldest and my youngest, adopted, our youngest, and so kind of got thrown back into a stage that we thought we had left, but it was delightful. None the same But I remember being in the throes of him being three, which any parent, I don't know why they call it the terrible twos. It is like the tremendously terrible threes. At least that's how I experienced it. And so he is in the throes of all the three, three year life. And I had a friend of mine who had children who were significantly older, and she was talking about how challenging it was to be the parent to young adult children and how it was even more difficult than the twos and the threes. And in my head, I thought, you're crazy. You just don't remember how difficult this stage is. When my oldest went off to college, I called that friend up and I said, you probably don't remember this conversation that we had. You shared with me how challenging it was to raise or parent young adult children. And I, in my head, called you crazy. I just want to apologize. You're absolutely right. This comes with its own set of challenges and, and, and, and troubles and, and actually the, the stakes are high. The stakes are high with young adult children. And so that it is, it is good to know that in their younger years, you were there pouring into them and helping them learn the right way to go. So that when they are young adults, you, they might make decisions that you don't necessarily approve of or that you wouldn't have, you would not have made yourself, but you've got that relationship that anchors you so that you, you've earned the right to pour into them even more and speak truth and, you know, be there for them.
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So, okay, so you have survived. Your youngest is 17, right here. You have survived. And it is a really cool story that your passion, the things that you learned when you were younger, before you, you know, stayed home as a mom, those have come back around. So you're now doing the same sort of thing that you were doing, but in, in probably a line of work that you're more passionate about. I mean, you talked about, you know, you're doing this for Jaguar cars, Hewlett Packard, like, that's great. You know, printers and cars and Kraft Mac and Cheese. You know, these are all great things. But, but now you get to take all those skills you have and they come back around. You don't lose them. You know, you don't, you survive. You don't lose them. And as the kids get older, often the things that you are passionate about, you don't lose yourself, is basically what I'm saying. And then you talked about that someone was in college. So Nobody ended up in jail. Like your kids turned out okay, you know, so you turned out okay. The kids are not okay. That's, I think those are the big questions people have have, you know, is, is it going to be okay? Yeah, it's a, it's a big leap. So it's good to hear from, from people who have been there and walked the road.
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It is a big leap and it's a significant decision. But you're never going to go wrong. You're never going to go wrong spending more time with your kids. I mean, that, that's just. If all you did, if all you did was cuddle on the couch, read good books to your children, you know, teach them basic math, it is, you're going to help them in a significant way and, and you're going to give to them more than what others could give to your children. And so what we want to do, because we know that parents and, and by the way, let me take a step back. You'd be crazy if you weren't nervous to make a significant life change like bringing your kids home and schooling them yourself. I mean, that's a huge life change. So if you didn't feel that weight, I would think you're crazy. You need to have that feeling that this is a significant job, the most significant job, and you need to take it with seriousness, but not so much that you, you freak yourself out and say, oh, I can't do this, I'm not capable. And I, and I personally am, am here to tell you that you absolutely are capable. And then what I'm also here to say is there are tools out there. And that's why we created American Faith Academy, so that you can go to that, that new stage with confidence and, and really the help that you need to give your child an education that's truly worthy of them.
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Okay, so let's talk about some of the specifics. I think one of the things that throws people off is if they have multiple kids. So you have multiple kids and you say this 10 year age range. And I have, occasionally I'll speak at homeschool conferences and I have a session called Teaching Across Many Grade Levels. Because I do think that's something that people are really confused about, which is how do you deal with it? Well, first of all, you've got a toddler. Steve Demi says the toddler is the hardest part about homeschooling. So you know that is that those are tricky years. And then, you know, what do you do when you've got a fifth grader and a ninth grader or a second grader and a seventh grader, you want to have this close family. So something specific about the American Faith Academy is that you have student pacing for math and language arts, which makes a lot of sense. Right. So a ninth grader is in algebra, you know, or they're, you know, they're in a different, you can do your read alouds together, but there's definitely different, you know, levels. And you talked about that at the beginning, the K to 6 grammar stage and then the logic stage. So there are certain things where you, you want to be at that child's level and helping them move through, you know, in a somewhat linear fashion. But then a lot of things you can do together, science and history, you know, you can spend all of that together. And, and that's what you want, right? You want to be able to spend a lot of time together with your siblings if you, if you're a homeschooling family with more than one home. So can you talk about that sort of shared. There's community learning and then also there's student, a specific learning for just a few subjects. And, and those are the subjects that a lot of times students don't like.
- [35:31]
B
Right, Right. So, yes. So let me take a step back and, and just share with you how we thought through creating this platform because it really is fueled by me being a, a homeschool mom and understanding what home life looks like as well as being ahead of school and what, what school life looks like and really thoughtfully created it with both of those things in mind. So first we've got this structure that we wanted to make sure was at its foundation. The first thing is that it is from a biblical worldview. So every subject is taught from that Christ centered perspective. The second thing is this classical pedagogy. So we talked about how unique that is and how effective that is, and that's important. So that's at its core as well. And then the third element that we take advantage of is technology. So right now we're in a really interesting age with technology. And I think when used wisely, sometimes we hear the word technology, we get a little triggered. We think, oh, you know, nope, not for me, not at all. And I would encourage people to, to just have a bit more of a tempered view of that to say, all right, we want to use technology. So it kind of bends to our will, not that we get soaked up and have it lead us. And what we have done is taken technology so that we can mimic really the most effective Ways to teach our children, which is one on one tutoring. See, this is why homeschooling is so effective, because we're able as parents to meet our children where they are, give them the instruction that they need and move them along. But especially when we have really large families, or again, maybe we don't understand that particular subject ourselves, that's challenging to do. But we know that one on one sort of mentorship tutoring works so good.
- [37:40]
A
So, yeah, there's a, there's a statistic, and I had read this toward the beginning of my homeschool journey that said that homeschooled students and I, you know, I, I'm on the side that I'm not. I don't care too much about scores or tests or things like that. But for kids that are testing, and in some states or in Michigan, so certain states, you have to test and they have this data where they'll say homeschool kids score on average 30 to 35% better on some of these different standardized tests, regardless of the parent's education level.
- [38:12]
B
Right.
- [38:13]
A
So that the parent maybe didn't graduate from high school themselves. And the, the whole point of the conversation is that it's, it's so much more one on one attention and a continuum of care. Right? A continuum of care where it's like, well, yeah, my third grade teacher was Mrs. Gosh Horn, then I had Ms. Sullivan, then I had Ms. McGregor, then I had, you know, so you have these different. And then in, by the time you hit middle school, you got six different teachers and then six the next semester. So, you know, that continuum of care, I think matters a lot as well.
- [38:41]
B
I do too. And I think if we were to kind of even turn back our conversation a little bit to say, well, how did we get here? Right. How did we get to be the society that we're in right now where students are underperforming in a significant way? I mean, the nation's report card shows us that I believe it's two or three out of 10 students in reading, math and civics are proficient. Two or three out of 10. That means that seven or eight out of 10 students are underperforming in math, reading and civics. That is awful.
- [39:22]
A
Yes. And they're giving up so much of their childhood.
- [39:25]
B
Right, right. And so, so, and, and what's happening then is we are underestimating our students. So the public school system is essentially lowering the bar. And, and every time these test scores come out, they're just lowering it that much further. But this is Doing our children a disservice, right? It is affecting their psyche, Jenny. It's kind of like if, if we were, say we were at a, at a health club together, right? You, you're in front of me on a circuit, you're bench pressing and you've got your weight and maybe you're doing that at £50. You look at me and you're like, and you lower the weight to 25. Well, what does that say to me? You might think you're trying to help me by lowering the weight for me, but just by you kind of sizing me up and thinking, oh, she probably can't handle it, I'm going to lower the expectation, I'm going to lower the weight that she has to carry. And then all of a sudden what I'm saying to myself by you doing that one action, oh, I must not be able to do very much. I must only be able to lift this amount of weight.
- [40:47]
A
And it's hard to shed those labels, right? It's hard to shed labels. And especially you brought up at the very, you know, toward the beginning that these different stages of development, you know, you're very focused on the presentation of self, you know, for these certain ages. And you're not going to change that. That's what's happening in the wiring of the brain. So if there are labels that are put on you or people that say things like, oh, I taught high school math and they were. There was another teacher that was, would occasionally tell the kids that they couldn't do math, they weren't good at it, they were never going to get it. In those high school years where presentation of self matters and how the world perceives you, it really sticks. So these things can have some long lasting effects, that's for sure.
- [41:30]
B
Absolutely. And so when we keep lowering the bar that implicitly says to our students, you can't hack it. And so they start then believing, well, I guess I can't hack it. And the same thing happened to me in math. And my third grade teacher told me I just wasn't a math kid. So my whole life then I thought, every time it felt a little difficult, instead of me persevering, I just said, well, I guess I'm never going to get it. I'm not a math kid. And so these things matter. And when we keep lowering the bar, it does not help our kids. Instead, what we need to do is put things in tiptoes reach. You recently had some guests on that talked about building resilient kids. I thought that was Such a fabulous interview. We need to have them do hard things, harder, more difficult things than they think they can do. We need to put that in front of them and we need to say, listen, we're going to be your Sherpas climbing up Mount Everest. We're going to be right there with you. You can do it, you can do it. And then they do it. And they look back and go, that's great. So the next hard thing that comes their way, they're like, okay, I can do that. I've done hard things in the past. I can keep doing difficult things. And that's another thing that I love that technology has allowed us to do. Because in our platform, we aren't just teaching students to a test. We aren't giving them multiple guess answers. What I like to say, they are having a dialogue with the platform. They're learning in little bits. They are being asked to then synthesize that information and then articulate what it is they know. And they're forced to do that over and over and over again. So guess what happens. These kids who think these big ideas are too challenging for them, they learn them in bite sized chunks along the way. They're articulating what they know and they're being affirmed like, yeah, you know it, that's great. And so then they feel confident not only that they know it, but that they can articulate what they know. So what we're finding is that these students now are more apt to raise their hand when they are in, in an environment where they're around other peers. They feel more confident about what they know because they've already articulated that they know what it is they're talking about. And so it's very fun to be able to see technology be used in this way.
- [44:21]
A
So that is a definitely a different interesting approach as well. So you say instead of guessing answers, this is dialogue based learning. One of the things that I think that I didn't think about at the very beginning, that you start to think about as you hit those grandma years or you're close to those grammar years, you think about, is this a sustainable generational model that I've set my child up for? Do they feel like they could home educate if they wanted to make that choice? And there's a lot of reasons why people might want to make that that choice. The big one is freedom. And I had read this book, Jennifer, it was talking about freedom and it was like, for a country that's so focused on freedom. I read it actually in two books this past year. Where the people were like, America, you know, United States is freedom, Freedom. You know, everything's freedom. And they're like, and yet our kids are like the least free that they could possibly be. I mean, they have to ask to go to the bathroom, you know, and so if you want this flexibility in your life, or maybe you end up having a job that requires travel or there's all sorts of things that could happen. You want, when you're in the age of like, close to being a grandparent, you want your child to feel confident that they could home educate. And I think what's wild is that a lot of people don't feel that way coming out of a public school system. Right.
- [45:51]
B
Well, Jenny, can I share this with you? The, the people who come to me who are the least confident in their ability to homeschool their children are public school educators.
- [46:08]
A
That's interesting too, because people always say, and I think this is an important thing to talk about, they'll say, because you were, I was a public school educator, right? I taught high school math. And people would say, well, you have an advantage. And you know, there, there are def. I think there's different advantages in life no matter what sort of path you've taken. There were a couple advantages. Like, I learned to keep my cool, and I do think that that actually is an advantage. But there's a lot of places where you could learn to keep your cool. Were you an ICU nurse? You know, I mean, there's a lot of places where, you know, were you in a courtroom or whatever, did you work in a daycare? Like, you got to kind of get, keep your cool. So I did learn that. And then obviously I, I do know how to do some of the higher level math and, and that kind of helps in community if you're like, we haven't actually done that, but like, you know, whatever, you come together. But it, it taught me nothing about like reading or phonetics or you know, third grade science or, or, or any of that. Any. I didn't know about the, like, we talked about the very beginning when people are like, what's your philosophy of education? I was an educator and had no philosophy of education and didn't even know that there were different philosophies of education. So there's something to be said about a system that doesn't set you up to even teach your own children.
- [47:24]
B
Right. So it really has been mind boggling to me that I will sit across from an educator and they will say to me, I just don't know if I can actually homeschool my children. Like you had like 30 kids in the one room. Like, that's certainly you can educate your one child. But it is, I think that's a fascinating phenomenon. That it is. What it is teaching these, these teachers how to do is to follow formula. Right? And it's really not focused on the purpose of education. You know, we're, we're trying to equip these children to make an impact. And who better to do that than the ones who know them well? And, and we can walk alongside these parents, arming them with, I don't, the math knowledge they might need or the grammar knowledge they need or the, the history knowledge that they forgot that they need to teach their children. Sure, we can walk alongside of them, them, but no one's going to know your children better than you do. No one's going to love them more than you do. And, and as a result, help them be successful, capable adults. And that's what we're trying to do. We're raising adults who can impact this world. Success.
- [48:50]
A
Talk about the time, the time factor. So that was our initial reason for homeschooling. It was solely the time factor because the, the kids are gone for eight hours. I, not all eight hours is school day, but it was an 8:30 to 4:30 bus to bus. You know, start to finish was eight hours. That's a really long time when you're five years old, it's a really long time. When you're 40 years old, it's a long time, eight hours. So, you know, and it just kind of never ends right. You, you step in and you're there for 13 years. A big piece for us was just to have more free time and more play time and more downtime and more time for hobbies and time for passions. So can the timepiece here, how does this work and what are you hearing from families as the head of school?
- [49:35]
B
Well, we're talking about autonomy. Right. And this goes back to the freedom element that you talked about. We are designed to, to want to be free and we should be teaching our children how to use their time wisely and how to have that autonomy. And when we teach them very early on that they, they are the masters of their time and time is finite and we need to use it as well as we would explain to our children how to use their money. Well, right. That's a finite resource. And unfortunately, sometimes we think that, oh, time is infinite and you can waste it. I would argue that we need to help our student, our children, from early on, learn that time is. Is this precious resource. How do you use it well? And using our time well really is a recipe. We want to use that time so that we can get knowledgeable about things and learn things so that we can think deeply about them. And it is through that learning that we become men and women of virtue and understand how we can. Could look at the world and solve problems as we get older and how we should live our lives with. With great intentionality and great impact. And so we need to learn those things as we're younger. But part of that is being efficient with our learning. You know, our kids do not need eight hours a day, five days a week to learn plus homework in a. Right. Plus homework in a. In a formal setting. And so what I appreciate about American Faith Academy and what we've built is that it's been thoughtfully built on an idea of mastery. Children need to master the material so that it impacts who they are. Right. We, it's not about what algebra will do for you, but it's about what it does to you. Right. The actual learning does to you and to your soul. So we, we want to focus on that. We want them to master the material and then we want them to be agents of their own time to go and explore a hobby that they enjoy. Go explore outside, go be a musician, be an athlete, be an artist, and really lean in into those activities that round out who you are as a human. I mean, we want to build men and women, pour into them to be renaissance men and women. Right? We want them to have lots of different interests.
- [52:26]
A
Right? Yeah. Yeah. We are in a day and age where demand is surging. My friend Rachel just wrote a book about homeschooling through high school. It's called Their Future is Shining Bright. And she had read the research that, that home education is the fastest growing model of education in the United States. More than public, more than private, more than charter. It is the fastest growing. And so this a great time to jump in. You know, when you and I jumped in, it was a little bit more like, you're odd. You know, why are you doing that? You're judging me. I think a lot of people didn't even want to hear you talk about it because they would say that you were judging them even though you're not. You're just saying this to great life. It's working, you know, that type of thing. It is a great time to jump in. And you also talk about there's expanded school choice funding. So depending on what state you're in because educate home education is growing and there's just a lot of needs that are showing up and it is, is proving to be an exceptional educational model with exceptional outcomes. There are a lot of options out there as well, different scholarships and things like that. So people can go on the website american faith academy.com to learn more. Go on today. Go on and check it out. Out. This is about empowering the family unit. It's a parent centered model and this will help to empower you. If you are interested in classical education for your kids or you don't know what it is and you want to go learn what that is after listening in today what that and how that might look in your family. And then there is a, there's an offshoot which we didn't get to talk about. Maybe, maybe at some point you can come back and tell us. But this is a growing thing and you are the president of a company called Accelera which is helping these hybrid schools pop up all over the country. So you're working with entrepreneurs. They're education entrepreneurs. That's the new thing, an education entrepreneur. Because there are alternatives. And so people are coming out of the woodworks, maybe they're going to open their church building, maybe they're going to find maybe they got a cool big barn in their backyard. They're going to bring people together for all of these different ways for kids to learn to build community and to have this expansive, beautiful, free, freedom filled growth in their childhood. And I am so thankful to get a chance to talk with you, to hear what you're doing, to be able to share that there are other options out there. It really helps to expand people's minds, you know, especially if you're just kicking around the idea for the first time. You're like, you don't really know what's out there and, and how have other people dealt with it and what do they think? And there's just a lot, there's a lot of options for you.
- [54:54]
B
You.
- [54:54]
A
So Jennifer, this has been such an honor. American Faith Academy.com go check it out and I'll make sure I'll put the link in the show notes. We always end our show with the same question. What's a favorite memory from your childhood? That was outside.
- [55:08]
B
I was talking to people about this the other day. Hopscotch. I know that sounds so silly.
- [55:15]
A
Oh, no one has ever said hopscotch. It's been like 800 people. Jennifer. No one has said scotch. Hopscotch.
- [55:21]
B
I, I know that seems so silly, but I have just such fondness of surrounding hopscotch. The, you know, being able to take our take chalk draw on the, the sidewalk and just hours and hours playing with my friends, talking and just hopping along. It's just, it seems so silly and, and kids today don't play it and that entertained us for hours and so hopscotch.
- [55:56]
A
Simple beauties of childhood. I love the answer. Hopscotch. Jennifer, you're doing incredible work. Thank you so much for sharing your story, for sharing what you have going on, for letting people know about this option that is out there. I so appreciate it. Thanks for being here today.
- [56:11]
B
Thank you so much.
- [56:15]
A
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B
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A
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B
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