➡ The article discusses the ongoing debate about the inclusion of DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) policies and critical race theory in school curriculums. Some states and schools are resisting President Trump’s executive order to remove these teachings from federally funded schools. Amidst this, Centner Academy stands out for its unique approach to education, focusing on resilience, critical thinking, and entrepreneurial spirit. The article ends with an interview with an educator from Centner Academy, discussing the school’s approach and its impact on students.
➡ Centner Academy focuses on fostering creativity and critical thinking in students, while also emphasizing the importance of nutrition and wellness. The school serves organic, non-GMO food from a local farm and incorporates a mindfulness program to enhance students’ emotional intelligence. The academy also encourages open dialogue and questioning, teaching students public speaking, marketing, and entrepreneurship. Field trips and project-based learning are integral parts of the curriculum, aiming to create well-rounded, critical thinkers.
➡ Centner Academy in Miami is a school that encourages students to think critically and develop lifelong skills. The school believes in teaching students how to think, not what to think, and promotes programs like mindfulness, entrepreneurship, and public speaking. The academy, which accepts students from pre-K to high school, has become a strong community and a model for education. It encourages parents and students to take action in their own communities and to not be afraid to speak out for change in education.

Policies in the federal government have no impact on the SNHU courses. An EO has been written by President Trump and it is unconstitutional. Yeah, and it is illegal. Secret audio and document evidence shows Southern New Hampshire University is teaching students ideas such as, quote, why white school districts have so much money. It’s illegal. It’s illegal. Well, as you can hear, the battle for the integrity of our education system continues as we’re seeing many woke teachers and administrators fighting back against Trump’s executive order demanding that federally funded schools remove DEI policies from their classrooms. New video footage revealed that New Hampshire schools are actively resisting compliance with the law.

Moreover, Colorado’s Education commissioner in Oregon’s governor have released statements that they’re refusing to comply with Trump’s executive order. These are just some of the left wing lunatics who are ignoring the law and desperately trying to keep DEI in our schools. The Democrats in power want to keep DEI in our classrooms because it’s an inherently Marxist ideology. We all know children are highly impressionable, so it’s no wonder that these culturally communist left wing administrators are trying desperately to keep the indoctrination in the classroom. In addition to DEI critical race theory and gender fluidity teachings, they’ve all dictated the curriculum in a way that threatens the foundational values we hold dear.

And that’s the key. This fight on wokeness in education isn’t just a disagreement over textbook. It’s a full blown culture war. And our children are the primary casualties. Parents have become outraged as they witness their kids being taught to view the world through a lens of division and victimhood. The urgency of this issue cannot possibly be overstated as we face a generation uniquely indoctrinated and ill prepared to navigate the complexities of life. And to make matters even worse, it’s not just an issue in left leaning states. I mean, recently deep red Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued a school district that openly refused to follow orders to stop teaching critical race theory.

And add insult to injury, as this shift toward leftist cultural Marxist ideology is occurring, academic achievement has only imploded. Shocking new reports have shown that many schools have zero students who are proficient in reading and math. It’s a problem that we’ve been seeing in schools around the country over the past several years. And declining academic proficiency seems to be the least of the administrators concerns. They keep prioritizing DEI policies over any actual attempt to help students regain basic competency. Well, the good news is that amid this crisis, we’ve seen many notable institutions rising up and standing out among all of these decaying Woke schools.

Now, one of the prominent schools that has a uniquely holistic approach to education is the Centner Academy. They’ve been a beacon of hope, showcasing a vibrant community that thrives on values of resilience, critical thinking, and true entrepreneurial spirit amid the surrounding chaotic educational landscape. Today we have Todd Kessler, an educator at Centner Academy, here to discuss the profound impact that this learning approach has on students and to the solutions it offers to our decaying schools. Todd, my friend, welcome. Thanks so much for being with us. Hi, Dr. Steve. Thank you so much for having me on your show.

It’s a real honor to be here. I’ve been following your show for several years, and despite how crazy everything has become over the last several years, one thing I love so much about watching your show is that you always end every single, every single episode with so much hope and just optimism for the future. So I’m really looking forward to being here. But, Todd, that’s easy because I got guys like you out there, so we’re trying. Well, I’m so glad to showcase what you guys are doing. I love what you’re doing. I mean, the battle against what most of all of us see as clearly indoctrination, not education, but indoctrination in schools, like the teaching of critical race theory, gender fluidity and the like, it’s clearly heating up, as you might have heard in that, in that recording earlier, with states like New Hampshire and even, even Texas, if you can believe it, seeing resistance to anti DEI laws.

So how do you see this culture war playing out in our education system? Well, Steve, one thing that I believe is really important for the people in this country to truly understand is that just because President Trump has returned to the White House, just because there are now executive orders being signed to eliminate CRT and other woke issues from our schools, and just because the Department of Education is being abolished, that doesn’t exactly mean everything’s going to disappear overnight. This battle for the, for the education of our children has to be won at the local level, which is why I believe parental involvement is so important.

So some of our core values here in Miami at Centner Academy, they center around the ideas of grit, of resiliency and of a growth mindset, because during all the COVID tyranny that took place during the Biden administration, this school, Centner Academy, came under heavy attacks by the media just for taking a stand to advocate health freedom and medical freedom. But at the end of the day, Steve Center Academy was able to stand its ground. And the end result was that this school was able to build a larger community of like minded individuals who share the same values.

Freedom loving patriots from not just all over the country, but from other countries as well, have joined us. And good people that just value their health, value their wellness, they love their children, they want their children to be educated and not indoctrinated. Our community is stronger than ever. And I think what happened a few years back when the media came after us, I mean, that was almost a blessing in disguise. Because that right there, that right there didn’t just bring our school together. It showed us the solution to winning this battle. And that solution is forming those communities on a local level.

So our school openly states, even on our website, that we oppose the teachings of crt. We, we oppose the teachings of gender fluidity. We openly state that we have been opposed to the COVID mainstream narrative. So parents who visit our website, parents that come and visit our schools with their children, they know exactly what they’re stepping into. This battle for our children’s education has to be won at the local level in order to be successful. It’s not something we can just wait for overnight changes to occur federally. It’s something that I believe everyone needs to take a part of in their local community.

I just, I, I never, I never tire in reveling on how all of you were so vindicated from what happened a few years back. I mean, it’s just, it’s so beautiful, the ironic justice that came out of that. Looking at who’s now the Director of Health and Human Services and who actually ended up having to get the preemptive pardons, you know, to keep them out of prison. I mean, it just, it’s so beautiful the way it all worked out. But it was rough at the time. We all felt it, we all know, we all in it together, all doing our part to try to resist that nonsense.

And you guys did it. Centner Academy did it. You position yourself really as a point of light in the midst of a very, very dark period. And you’ve been this beacon of educational transformation now for years. So can you walk us through how your school is different, how it’s embedded important principles into its culture and curriculum to create a very unique learning environment. Absolutely. So our school’s founder, Leila Sentner, you know, she came here with a vision. She was looking for a school that she could, she could get her daughters involved with a school that was going to focus on education.

And it was before all the craziness really began. But once everything began, I mean, one of our core principles here at Centner Academy is resiliency. And we are a school that believes that, you know, we can overcome, we can grow and we can even evolve from our setbacks, then so can students. Because just learning, learning things like how to fail, how to, how to, how to fail and learn from your mistakes and grow from that, we believe that is a core principle when it comes to education. So here at Centner Academy we have this three tier approach that Layla center has helped that’s set up to emphasize not just education, but also nutrition and wellness.

And we tie it all together to make well rounded students. So one of the big principles we hone in on is the whole entrepreneurial mindset comprising of a student centered education that utilizes project based learning, a lot of hands on activities and lessons. Students starting in elementary school take part in creating their own businesses through not just entrepreneurship classes, but they do Shark Tank presentations. They have open marketplaces where they sell their products not only to families, but just to the general community, to the public. We do them outside. We’ve done that at malls before. It’s a wonderful scene.

And on top of this, we also emphasize that from the elementary grades all the way up through high school, you know, students are developing this mindset, this mindset that fosters creativity, it fosters creative thinking, critical thinking, and it just connects our community and makes it grow even stronger. So another key principle that our school offers here at Centner Academy deals around nutrition. And this isn’t exactly something you hear a lot of schools talk about, but we take nutrition at our school very seriously. So for lunch, our lunch ingredients, our food is all organic, it’s all non GMO ingredients, and it’s grown at a local farm that’s also connected to our school that’s also owned by Layla Sentner.

So we have field trips, the kids go to the farm and they get to experience, they get to see where their food actually comes from and they get to do some hands on activity when they go out there. And the third key principle here, Steve, on top of nutrition and on top of this entrepreneurial ship mindset, is wellness. We take wellness just as seriously. And this doesn’t just mean we’re offering PE classes from elementary, from pre K through elementary, middle school and high school. And of course we have outdoor recesses as well. We’re in sunny Miami, so plenty of vitamin D outside, but we also incorporate a mindfulness program.

A mindfulness program where students get to practice meditation through things like sound, healing and other means so they can better activate the Emotional intelligence of themselves, and this helps them grow and develop along the way. It’s all tied together. All of our coaches in physical education have been trained in what we call brain optimization. So when they’re doing activities, they’re doing different sports. They’re not just focusing on playing the game. They’re also focusing on that mind and body connection so that students are developing functional skills, not just physically, but mentally as well. So it really is a wholeness approach to wellness, to health, to into education here at Centner Academy.

Yeah, it’s wonderfully holistic. And you’ve had. You talked about the entrepreneurship classes, which I love, and you’ve had even guest speakers. You’ve had RFK Jr come and Ben Carson and Charlie Kirk, correct? That is correct, yes. And we do a speaker series every month, and we have a lot of parents who are entrepreneurs. They come and speak about their businesses, how they set themselves up for success, how they invest, how students can invest and learn how to do that. I mean, the students are becoming financially intelligent as well. So, I mean, it all ties together here.

The speaker series. When we had RFK Jr. Arrive, when we had Charlie Kirk arrive, we had conversations that were just so deep, and we had open dialogue, open discourse that you couldn’t even find anywhere else because the media wouldn’t allow it. You couldn’t find it on YouTube, you couldn’t find it on the news. It was just like being suppressed. Because, I mean, you remember it was pretty much the media telling everybody is our way, or you’re a dissenter, you’re a conspiracy theorist, and it’s going to be defamed and called names. But we pushed through all that.

We pushed through all that, and we weren’t shy about it. We weren’t afraid because we know real critical thinking comes from having real political discourse about issues of the day about what’s going on in society. And it’s okay to question things. Right. And that is something that not only people in general in America were afraid to do. It’s something that students were afraid to do in schools because they were thinking, oh, I questioned this from the teacher. I’m going to get a bad grade. I mean, that’s not what we’re. We’re like here at Center Academy. We’re all about.

We’re all about. You just question everything. It’s okay questions. And that is where the growth occurs. Yep, absolutely. I think it was Jordan Peterson who said, you know, the. The stifling of free speech is ultimately the stifling of free thought because we Think in terms of speech. We formulate our thoughts in sentences along with images. And so the attempt to clamp down on what we can say is an even more nefarious attempt to clamp down what we actually allowed to think. Right. It’s literally Orwellian. The wrong think notion. And what I love about what you’re doing too is, you know, it is.

It’s very ancient, like the ancient Greeks, they would focus on the two, the two verticals of gymnastic and music. So well, they’ll say it in the, in, in the new. In the academic Greek, gymnastiche and musicae. I’ve been around too many Greeks that always correct my pronunciation. But gymnastica, musicy, where you. The gymnasticy focuses on the well rounded body. So you’re teaching them sport as a means of virtue formation. And then the music key is anything, right? Anything involving the mind and cultivating the soul and so forth. So it could be mathematics and geometry and, and it could be music proper and reading and so on.

So it sounds to me like you’ve got this, you’re forming the full person. And the end result is a very creative and critical thinker and precisely the kind of citizen we would want in a thriving nation. Absolutely. And some of our other key programs center around this idea as well. It’s not just entrepreneurship classes that students are taking. They’re also taking things like my classes. I teach public speaking at every middle school grade because public speaking is something that so many people fear in society because they just don’t practice it. They just don’t learn the skills, the fundamentals, how to connect with people, how to look them in the eye when they talk to them, how to persuade an audience that your voice matters when you’re given a platform.

That is something that we teach that is key here. And it carries over because we also have a very successful speech and debate program as well. But it carries over when they’re doing their Shark Tank presentations. They know how to present with confidence, with poise. They know how to walk with a purpose. So they keep their presentation moving the same time they’re walking across the floor. And they’re not just randomly pacing. So we focus on the little things like that. As young as fifth and sixth grade, we get them going in, in this area, in this discipline.

On top of that we have marketing classes. We teach them how to not only develop products, but how to sell their products, how to market their products. We have, we have a nice robotics program as well to just spark that curiosity. And we, you know, we’ll take them to robotic events on field trips. We just went to one at the University of Miami. Fantastic. Some of the best robotic schools and teams in the country coming down here. So we keep things active. The students go on a lot of field trips as well. We have grades going off to New York city, to Washington D.C.

to Boston, to see what our real history looks like, to feel it and not just learn about it in the classrooms. So we really are project heavy in terms of our curriculum. We still have all the core classes as well. But if you walked around our school, I mean, you would see projects going on in just about every single classroom here. You see students being engaged, you would see creativity in action, you would see them growing, you would see that critical thinking just developing. And that’s mainly what we focus in on here. What you’re not going to see is that indoctrination that, you know, you see and that you hear about in the media or you might see in public schools.

We just, we just don’t do that. And we don’t even think about it because we’re so honed in on what really matters. The skills that will lead to ultimate success is what we truly focus in on. And, and that’s just something that we pride ourselves in. And if the media wants to come after us, let them come after us. Because Badge of Honor, that’s the type of publicity that we thrive off of. That’s right. That’s right. You’re all about human flourishing, so bring it on. Right? Yeah. Not, not ideological conformity, but human flourishing. So, I mean, lastly, Todd, I mean, you’re seeing the same sort of wasteland picture that I’m seeing with education and the prioritizing of DEI over just even basic academic skills.

I mean, you’re at a whole nother level with what you’re doing there. How do you think we can turn it around as a nation? What will it take for schools to get back on track? And do you foresee this happen? I mean, we’ve got the Department of Education now, at least at the executive branch level, starting to get dismantled here, which looks like it’s going to start bringing much, much more power to the States. Do you see that as sort of the silver lining in this? What do you see going on here? Yeah, so I think as we talked about earlier on, I think it really does come down to just, just getting the community involved.

And, you know, we’ve seen this during the COVID years. We saw this at the school board meetings in places like Northern Virginia. You know, we’ve seen it across the country, and it is a continuous fight. Because, again, changes aren’t just going to happen overnight because they come from our president or they come from an executive order. I mean, the people still need. People still need to act and make those changes happen. We have to flip the script and either establish or modify our schools so that schools can teach students how to overcome their fears, show them it’s okay to fail at times, because that is where a lot of the learning and growth occurs.

That is where resiliency is given a chance to thrive. And when that happens, students become more confident in themselves. They start thinking more critically. They become better connected with their peers, their teacher, and just society as a whole. And when you add in programs like mindfulness and entrepreneurship and public speaking, students develop the lifelong skills that are necessary to succeed in this world. So, Steve, here at Center Academy, the media could just not cancel us. In fact, the only thing they did, they made us grow stronger as a community. They turned us into a prime example, a prime example of how to win this battle for our children’s education.

Because it’s not something that is going to be done at one time in every school across the country here. But when parents do get involved, when they do make the phone calls, when they do send the emails, when they do show up to their school board meetings, when they have a voice and those students have a voice and they learn how to use that voice, when it becomes so overwhelming that the. Those making the decision to maintain certain policies in our schools, they’re just not going to stand a chance once the majority understands that the power really does reside in the students, in the parents, in the families, because that is the key basis.

That’s the fundamentals of education right there. It’s not about teaching kids what to think. It’s about teaching them how to think. And when you teach students how to think, that can become very scary to those that are running the show because they want a certain agenda passed. They’re not going to get that agenda passed because students will understand. And, you know, we’re going to see the movement, I think, start to spread rapidly here in the next few years, especially under President Trump, and hopefully years to come after that. Absolutely. Todd, we’ve got some links down below that people can go to to get some more information.

But give us a little bit if you, if you want. Where do you want people to learn more about Centner Academy and the like. So we have a fantastic website at www.centneracademy.com. that’s C-E N T N E R academy.com you will find links where you can apply. We are accepting students from pre K, elementary school, middle school in a high school, high school that’s only in its second year, its second year of infancy here. So right now we’re only up to 10th grade, but next year we’ll be up to 11th grade and then we’ll finally have our first graduating class after that.

We are located in the heart of Miami. Sunny Miami. It is fantastic. It is sunny almost every day I’ve been here, you know, we have. It’s just so beautiful, Very close to Miami beach and there’s just so much to do in this city. So if anyone is interested, anyone in Florida wants to move down to Miami or people across the country and maybe just people in other countries as well. We have students from all over the place. We have students from Brazil, from Colombia, from Argentina, we have students from Canada, we have students from the uk.

It is just a lovely sight to see because all these students that come here, all these families that gather, they all have, they all have the same values, they all have the same drive, they all have the same goals and they just want their children to be educated and not indoctrinated. And that’s exactly what they get here at Centner Academy. But if you can’t make the move to Miami, see if you can maybe take action in your own community, you know, make a difference. Don’t just wait for the change to come. Make that change, come, you know, find some other parents that are like minded, get together, go to a school board meeting, you know, write some letters, write some emails, you know, make a difference.

If something’s going on at your schools, in your schools, if there’s something going on you don’t agree with, speak out, don’t be afraid, and don’t live your life in fear. And I think there’s, if there’s one thing that we learned from the pandemic, from all the COVID years, all that tyranny, is that you cannot live your life in fear, expecting things to get better. You have to take a stand. You got to make a change because ultimately you hold the power. And you might not be able to change the whole world, but you can change your world that you’re living in.

And that’s something we believe and that’s something we teach the students and that’s what we pride ourselves in here at Centner Academy. Steve? Yeah. I love it. I love it. And if everyone does that, we’ll never see that tyranny again, it cowers in fear of the rising up of the people, particularly who can think critically. So gang, as grandparents, parents, you name it, concerned citizens, I mean, it’s imperative for all of us to join the charge in reclaiming our children’s education. Whatever’s going on in that classroom is going to transfer into the kind of culture that we have.

The classroom is a place of enculturation. So whatever’s going on in there, that’s. If you think things are crazy in our culture, it’s because of what’s been happening in the classroom. And what I love about Centner Academy is it stands as a model of resilience and community against the torrent of left wing indoctrination that we see in our country. So if you want to be a part of this empowering movement, focus on truth and freedom, head on over to the link in the description below and learn how you can make a difference today. It’s absolutely awesome.

Todd, you’re awesome. Thank you so much for what you’re doing. Not just in your wonderful academic community of learning, but how you’re impacting Florida, which is great state. I mean, you guys are just, I mean you’re, when I’m listening to you talk about the weather, I’m just, I’m in the Northeast and you’re just showing off at that point, man, I almost, I’m almost like, oh, this is terrible. But you guys are awesome. Thank you for everything that you’re doing. Just keep up the great work. And you, you always have a home on this channel. We love what you guys are doing.

Thank you, Dr. Dr. Steven, same to you. I love every single episode you guys post. And again, every single time I watch your videos, it always leaves me feeling so optimistic, so full of hope and it’s just the most inspiring thing in the world, especially when, when times aren’t that great. I always know I can just tune in, watch one of your videos and I’m going to feel so much better about my situation, about what’s going on in the world. So thank you. It’s because I know guys like you are out there, so you make it easy.

Love you, Todd. Thanks so much, man. You too. Thank you, Dr. Steve.
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See more of Dr. Steve Turley on their Public Channel and the MPN Dr. Steve Turley channel.