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Jennifer Burns is a passionate advocate for classical Christian education and the Director of Academics at Turning Point Academy, a branch of Turning Point USA. Join us as we explore Turning Point Academy’s mission of building "Five-C Schools"—classical, Christian, conservative, collaborative, and cost-affordable. Learn how this initiative aims to counteract the cultural shift and educational deficiencies plaguing our society by equipping educators and empowering students with a solid foundation in virtue, truth, and American conservatism.
Ready to get inspired and network with fellow conservatives? Consider attending one of TPUSA’s upcoming conferences:
July 24-26 2024: Turning Point Academy Educators' Summit – West Palm Beach, FL.
December 19-22 2024: AmericaFest – Phoenix, AZ.
Episode Transcription
Note: This transcription may vary from the words used in the original episode for better readability.
Marlin Detweiler:
Welcome again to another episode of Veritas Vox, the voice of classical Christian education. Today, we have with us Jennifer Burns, who has been involved in starting a what we call a university model school. But we'll get into that a little bit in a few minutes. And she's also involved with an organization called Turning Point. I'm getting ahead of myself. Jennifer, tell us a little bit about yourself, your education, your family, and those things.
Jennifer Burns:
Excellent. It's so nice to be with you, Marlin. It's a great honor. As you said, my name is Jennifer Burns, and I am the wife of David for the past 27 years, the proud mom of three young men, ages 25, 21, and 15.
Marlin Detweiler:
But it keeps changing.
Jennifer Burns:
Times keep changing, right? And I keep getting older. It's the craziest thing! So, yes, I just love being their mom, and the proud mother-in-law of Catherine, so that's exciting. Gosh, I was just pricked by the Holy Spirit about 20 some years ago to start actually, a homeschool cooperative or enrichment program.
And then, the Lord called me to start a classical Christian hybrid school. Before there were such things, you know, it's right at the insurgence or resurgence of classical Christian education in the United States and then certainly new, kind of a new concept of this, as you call it, the university model school or something similar to that. And so that was, really, it's been a blessing to be at the helm of that ministry for the past 20 years.
Marlin Detweiler:
Wonderful. And where did you go to school?
Jennifer Burns:
So I've got an undergrad degree from the University of Kansas, a graduate degree from Northwestern.
Marlin Detweiler:
Very good. Good basketball program there, too.
Jennifer Burns:
I get you. Yes. That was fun!
Marlin Detweiler:
Yeah. It is. I enjoy college basketball, and they've had a wonderful program.
Jennifer Burns:
Yes.
Marlin Detweiler:
Well, so in 2006, you started the Classical Consortium Academy and you call it a hybrid school. You've agreed that it's like what people call a university model school. Tell us where it is and how it operates.
Jennifer Burns:
Great. It's based in Barrington, Illinois, a northwest suburb of Chicago. The way it operates is that our students are full-time students, but they're just part-time under our roof. So it's a real partnership between school and home. It's got the rigor and structure of a typical five-day-a-week school, but students are able to come to school one or two days a week and then accomplish the work. Kind of assigned by those courses that they're taking under their parents supervision the rest of the days of the week.
Marlin Detweiler:
Very good. How many students currently?
Jennifer Burns:
We have 236 for next year.
Marlin Detweiler:
Wonderful. That's excellent. Now, as if that wasn't enough, you have a second job.
Jennifer Burns:
Yes, I wear multiple hats.
Marlin Detweiler:
Yeah, I'm always impressed with people whose hat closet has more than a single hat in it. Tell us about the role as Director of Academics at Turning Point Academy.
Jennifer Burns:
Excellent. So, just as I believe I'm a better administrator of our school by also teaching a few classes. I feel like I'm a better administrator and Director of Academics for Turning Point USA by also leading a school. And I'll explain why. So Turning Point USA is Charlie Kirk's wonderful brainchild. If you're unfamiliar with who he is, he's a –
Marlin Detweiler:
Fox News contributor, and very much a conservative pundit in the marketplace and well worth listening to in my opinion.
Jennifer Burns:
Thank you. Yes, he is a dynamic young man and has come up with a really wonderful organization. So Turning Point USA really started on college campuses. Charlie had a vision for that– helping, conservative young people find their tribe, if you will, in the sea of of liberal ideology on college campuses.
So turning point chapters started around the country, and then that grew to needing the same sort of bastion of community, education, and voice on high school campuses. And then it blossomed from there to go into churches and help pastors really understand what they can say from the pulpit and the stances that they can take.
Because often you hear that, “We can't get political from the pulpit.” And I think Charlie's argument would be that it's not political. It's biblical. You know, you've got to be standing up for truth. And so he kind of encompassed then the church life. And then most recently, he's talked about K through 12 education and how very important that is to get involved in spreading virtuous education throughout the country and doing that in K through 12 education.
And so that's how Turning Point Academy was birthed. We're about two years old, so we're fairly new. And although it sounds like we are a school being Turning Point Academy, we're not a physical school. What we are is really an initiative to spread that kind of virtuous education that you so believe in at Veritas throughout the country.
Marlin Detweiler:
Well, as you know, and as we agree, the idea of virtue divorced from biblical thinking, from Christian thinking is a bit of a nonsensical thing because it has to be sourced in something. And virtue is not something that, as I'm sometimes prone to say, lives in the apartment over the empty lot. It just can't be. Virtue has to come from somewhere.
And naturally, we believe that it comes from the very mind of God, that it is sourced that way. And we see it expressed biblically. We see it expressed in the life of Christ. And I know that you believe that, too. But do you get challenged on that? Does that even become, I don't know, enough about Turning Point to know if that becomes kind of a challenge on an internal basis for you?
Jennifer Burns:
It's a really good question. So, where Turning Point USA is not expressly a Christian organization, although Charlie Kirk is unabashedly a Christian. Turning Point USA is more of a conservative organization. It's founded in kind of Judeo-Christian values, of course, Turning Point Faith and Turning Point Academy, both divisions of TPUSA are expressly Christian organizations. So we also believe that virtue cannot be divorced from God, that all truth is God's truth. And as we are really spreading kind of our four initiatives under that k-through-12 umbrella, it is all to spread Christ and schooling Christian beliefs.
Marlin Detweiler:
Yeah. Very good. Yeah. If we could, before we leave the subject of Turning Point USA, what are its purposes? What is its mission? What would, you know, 20 years from now, looking back, what would the organizational, the organization's participants and leader, Charlie say, “This made it a success.” How would they define what success looks like?
Jennifer Burns:
Well, he's got a big, audacious goal of saving Western civilization.
Marlin Detweiler:
Sounds like a plan to me, I’m in!
Jennifer Burns:
Right. So, I would say that really it's about saving Western civilization. That sounds like hyperbole, but it's not. I mean, I believe we're at a real breaking point here at the precipice, if you will, that, we need we need to get this country back. We need to get its sanity back.
And really, what we need to do is point eyes toward Christ. Because that, as you said, virtue is not going to happen on its own. And we need to be a virtuous society, a moral society, a religious society, as Adam says, in order to follow the Constitution. And so we really need to get that back.
Marlin Detweiler:
What would be– I realize that this may be a broader question than your focus in one area, but give us some specifics. If we were to save Western civilization, if we were to recover, those things that would cause Western civilization to have been saved, what would be some maybe precise — It would mean that these things happened.
For example, it might mean that we would no longer have these things in the public schools or whatever. Are there some specific areas like that that would help us really get some good handles on what it means to have Western civilization retained, saved?
Jennifer Burns:
So I would say, from the broader sense, Turning Point USA is about true conservatism being returned. And by conservatism, I mean truly conserving what is good about this country. And so Charlie will.
Marlin Detweiler:
Sorry to interrupt just say we use those terms so flippantly, and I love having you define them that way. That's really good. Well, when we say conservatism, we're talking about conserving something. Conserving what? And I interrupted you. Now let's finish because I know you're going to answer that right.
Jennifer Burns:
Conserving what is good and true and when we're talking about the broader Turning Point USA, we're talking about conserving what is good and true about the founding of our country. So going back to our Constitution, conserving what is good and right that our founders laid out for this beautiful experiment. And so Charlie will often point to the metric of more young people are turning in conservative.
And I love that we're getting especially young men who are kind of waking up and saying, “No, what's been feed to me is not right.” And they're turning more conservative. And so, just helping young people understand what is good and true because it's shocking to me that we live in this upside down sort of world where we used to all, I think, know what was good and true and decide to either to turn toward it or turn away from it.
Now, I think it is the communication, the lexicon. It's gotten so confused that our young people don't even know what is good and true. And so we need to open their eyes, educate them. So, the more students that we can reach at TPUSA, the better with what is good and true. Open their eyes to that. Give them community so they feel like they're not alone.
Because right now, young people are turning to what's false because they think that's where the community lies and instead say, no, no, you've got a community and what is good and true. And that truthfulness of conserving what we know is good for America.
Marlin Detweiler:
Yeah, I have seen from a number of sources, candidly, including our own Self-Paced Omnibus courses. We do street interviews and we ask people questions and some of the ignorance and outlandish answers that are demonstrated by the people that we interviewed are truly remarkable. And some of it is incredibly basic, things that presumably went through an educational system in America.
And now I'll stay and the some of the silly areas here with the examples. But somebody thought that Europe was one of the bordering countries to America, or somebody that thought that there were 13 stars on the American flag. It's not very hard to know that those kinds of things are wrong and how people's education, presumably at least 13 years in kindergarten through 12th grade turned out people with that level of ignorance.
No wonder people are susceptible to ideologies that are trying to not conserve that which we know to be good and true and progressing into areas where there is simply no ability to understand how somebody thinks or reasons through things, and yet is loud enough about it to try and be convincing of others similarly.
Jennifer Burns:
Right. There's a tremendous ignorance and the Our Nations report card showcases that. Right. So it's not only ignorance in the way of our civics education, which is it is abysmally low. But you've got abysmally low numbers in literacy and mathematics, right? Comprehension and understanding. And so we're in a very bad situation when it comes to the education of our children.
And that's why one of our initiatives at Turning Point Academy is to spread what we call five C schools. So it's classical, Christian, conservative, collaborative, meaning collaborative between the parents, collaborative between churches, and cost affordability because it's so important to have that access to really high-quality education. And we can do that for pennies. It doesn't have to be out of reach for families. So that's one of the things we're doing.
We're also curating and creating curriculum. So we don't have to recreate the wheel. We know Veritas Press and others have amazing educational curricula out there. And so we don't want to recreate the wheel. We want to point people in the direction of Veritas Press, but we also want to help support and encourage civics education.
So we have supplementary material like, Constitution Kids, which are five-day unit studies on the Constitution for sixth-grade students, we've got a Junior Patriots kit that is for students who are kindergarten through second grade on the Declaration of Independence. We've got something called a Patriots Catechism, which is 52 questions and answers that all patriots should know.
So similar to what you were, or to address what you were talking about, the man on the street which are not difficult to find really. Yes, they might be laughable answers, but it makes my heart sad.
Marlin Detweiler:
Yeah, it is laughable in a very pathetic way.
Jennifer Burns:
Oh yes. It's not something you. This is not what I want. I want a very learned American society because that is a democracy. Well, a representative republic. We really need to have an electorate that is wise, that it is really engaged in the process. And when they're not engaged, then really what is, you know, what does it mean to be a free voter, right? You're doing it ignorantly, and that's not okay.
Marlin Detweiler:
Yeah. I think those initiatives are so important. How do you see each of the five C's playing out? What are the things that you're doing as Turning Point Academy in the area of education? To help make those five C's become a reality.
Jennifer Burns:
Excellent. Well, we call it seeding five C schools. And so there's kind of two aspects to this one is that we want to open people's eyes to a different kind of education. Right. It doesn't have to be five days a week, eight hours a day behind the desk. It can be far more dynamic than that.
And so we just want to open people's eyes up to a different kind of education that I actually think yields better results. One that really students can be at the feet of a teacher, really soak in that information, but then have time to digest it the way that you have, you know, you go to a lovely banquet meal and it's rich and wonderful, but then you also need to kind of sit back and let the food digest.
And having that rhythm where you're sitting at the feet of a teacher for a little bit and then digesting it on your own, I think, produces really good thinkers. And so we're wanting to cast that vision. And the other thing that we mean by seed is that really, we want people who are leading schools to truly feel called to do so.
That this is a ministry of God. And so we want to give them the flexibility and the freedom to do what it is that they feel like God has called them to do, but then prepare them with as much as we can. So what we're doing is we're walking alongside people who say, “Okay, I feel called to start a school now what?”
And so we're walking them through very methodically of how to start a school, and I'm holding their hand along the way, consulting with them about their particular situation, whether rural or urban or, you know, what God's called them to do. And then equip them with as much as we can from our model school so that they don't have to recreate the wheel. You know, they don't have to come up with their own handbook from scratch or do all of the things that honestly, 20 years ago I had help from ACCS. But it still, if there was so much that.
Marlin Detweiler:
Trust me, I know I think I'm the only person crazy enough to have started three.
Jennifer Burns:
Yes, It's hard work! It's heavy lifting and actually, we helped a group in Texas start a school and this vintage Christian Academy, actually, down in, Texas. And this pastor had started many churches, and he looked at me, and he said, “Oh, my goodness, starting a school is so much harder.”
Marlin Detweiler:
I don't know if I'd agree with that. Maybe so. I've been involved in two church starts as well, and I guess, yeah, I think that's probably true. Churches are probably easier to start than schools.
Jennifer Burns:
Well, resurrecting anything is tough, but the Lord equips you for every good work. And what we're really excited about doing is walking alongside really such great people across the country who are saying, “Okay, I'm willing to roll up my sleeves and do the really hard work because I love my neighborhood, I love my city, I love these kids.”
And there are people who have such a heart for kids around the country and all we want to do is help support them. And so we do that freely. And it's because we've got wonderful, generous donors who recognize how very important it is that we do start schools around the country.
Marlin Detweiler:
You've also taken on the role of implementing conferences too in 2024. I'm aware of two that are being done. I think those are under Turning Point Academy specifically. Or are they broader and more inclusive in terms of the work of Turning Point? One is going to be an, and this by the time this is seen, it may have occurred already, but in West Palm Beach in the summer of 2024, and then one in December.
Also, tell us about what the conferences will be doing and what a win looks like for those conferences. What makes those conferences successful?
Jennifer Burns:
Sure. So in the broader Turning Point USA camp, we do lots of conferences around the country. The big one that you're talking about is in December, I hope everyone will come and join us for AmFest, at mid-December in Phoenix, Arizona.
Marlin Detweiler:
It's a nice place to be in December.
Jennifer Burns:
It is the largest, I believe it's the largest conference of conservative people across the country. So it is 50,000 people plus every year. It is incredible speakers and it's really amazing to go to, to be around like-minded folks and hear from incredible people who are leading the movement. It's really a blast.
So Turning Point USA really believes that when we come together we're locking arms. We can be more powerful. And so bringing people together for these outstanding conferences, getting them better educated, giving them the tools that they need to go into their communities to speak that truth, and give them the courage to do it.
It's just really important for Turning Point Academy, we feel one of our initiatives, I said first is seeding these schools. A second initiative is really to educate educators. And we feel that that's really important because if you're going to change the face of education, what do we need to do? We need to change how we educate educators.
You know, if you're at all a reader of Milton or you know that it first has to start with the teacher and how very important it is that our teachers are grounded in God and their subjects and really pour into themselves. And so that's really it. We also understand that. We understand that whether you are an educator in the public school, private school, or homeschool, you need to make sure that you're being well educated in order to educate properly.
And so, hopefully you'll hear this before, but if not, July 24th through the 26th, we have, a conference in West Palm Beach, Florida. Our title of that conference is Cultivating Well-educated Minds in the Miseducated World. So, if you happen to hear this after that has already happened, it's likely that we'll have videos up on our website, https://www.turningpointacademy.com/ . So you can catch a glimpse of it even if you were unable to be there.
Marlin Detweiler:
Very good. And in the broader conference, what role does Turning Point Academy play? What will it play in December?
Jennifer Burns:
So we are always at every Turning point USA conference because we're eager to talk to people who are conservative, who, again, really feel called to do something in the face of education. And so we just love the opportunity to speak with people about what we're doing and really talk to them about starting schools, see if that's on their heart.
Many, many of them are educators in some way or know educators. And so to talk about our training of educators and then we love getting the curriculum that we produce in people's hands, they get all of this is free. So our conferences are free, our training is free. Our consultation for schools is free. And the curriculum.
And so we love getting that in people's hands and talking to people about it. Our fourth initiative actually is something called our Association. It is really this idea that we can do more when we are locking arms with like-minded education advocates. And there are people again across the country who are using their gifts and talents in a way that helps really positively affect education.
Marlin Detweiler:
And that that is so true. And one of the things is it safe to say that Turning Point Academy focuses on K-12?
Jennifer Burns:
Yes. Well we would say K through 13 or launching launching leaders. And so one of our newest initiatives is a Prep Year Program. So this idea that students who have graduated high school have a prep year or nine-month program where they're really, entrenched in the biblical worldview, understanding the philosophy.
Marlin Detweiler:
Preparation for life or college or whatever next.
Jennifer Burns:
Exactly.
Marlin Detweiler:
Yeah. One of the things, all of those things are so important that I, like you, have focused in that realm in my life, the K-12 or K-13 world, as you described it, because one of the things I've observed, we talked earlier about some of the foolish answers that have come out of street interviews and things like that, and that's only a topical form of evidence of a really deep-seated problem.
And it is in almost every respect now, not with every person, this is a broad generalization, but it is almost with every person too late once a student is done with their K-12 education. There's been a lot of emphasis at a collegiate level to turn things around. And it can be done, but it doesn't fully appreciate how much damage, how much loss, there has been because of what's happened prior to that in their K-12 education. Would you agree with that?
Jennifer Burns:
I would totally agree. And what's interesting, I don't know if you've heard this quote and forget. I can't remember who said it, but they were talking about what was going on on college campuses. Right? All of this, this craziness and you know, good Christian families sending their children off and their kids become radicalized through college and this professor was talking about how what he's seeing now is kids might come in and then be radicalized through college.
But now what he's seeing is pre-kind of radicalized kids coming in. And it's just ratcheting up then in college. And you know that's scary as well. I think everyone's recognizing the power of K through 12 education. All education is transformative, just what are we transforming them into?
Marlin Detweiler:
Yeah!
Jennifer Burns:
So we want to transform these young people into ones who know Christ, right? And glorify him and truly see their purpose being played out in their lives. And so that's so very important to start young.
Marlin Detweiler:
Well, Jennifer, thank you so much. At Veritas we are so thrilled to be joining and locking arms with you and with Turning Point Academy and Turning Point USA to see from our vantage point. Our mission, of course, is restoring culture to Christ, one young heart and mind at a time. That's our verbiage, but it's essentially the same thing that you're doing. Thank you for what you're doing.
Jennifer Burns:
Oh thank you, Marlin, I appreciate it.
Marlin Detweiler:
Folks. Thanks again for joining us on another episode of Veritas Vox, the voice of classical Christian Education. We hope to see you next time. Bye bye.
