The Highwire with Del Bigtree - MEET THE COUPLE REVOLUTIONIZING EDUCATION IN AMERICA

Episode Date: April 12, 2023

Del is joined in-studio by David and Leila Centner, the visionary founders of The Centner Academy in Florida, to discuss the remarkable growth of their school and how they’ve navigated media scrutiny with resilience and determination. Through their unwavering commitment to innovative education and personalized learning, the Centners have created a unique and dynamic educational experience that is cultivating leaders with heart and business savvy.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-highwire-with-del-bigtree--3620606/support.

Speaking of someone that is making a difference in the world, that isn't you're going to sit back and watch them contaminate the minds of her children or anyone else's children, for that matter. I'm talking about Layla Center, the powerhouse behind the Sentinel Academy. Her husband David Sentner has been in there. Well, we had her on the show back in the middle of COVID when she was pushing back, building a school that was going to stand for being the difference maker. And this is what that looked like.

We believe at Center Academy when a child is happy, And stress-free, the sky's the limit. So it's a lot easier for them to achieve academic excellence in a calm, peaceful state. This is the reason why at Center Academy, we don't have plexiglass. The kids are allowed to be with each other and be as normal as possible.

We were invited by the Center Academy here to come and do PPE and respiratory protection training for all the staff and the parent. This is not no science. The science is there. The studies are then. What was the response from those parents after you sort of had this meeting in your school? I didn't follow all of the crazy rules that were in place of the plexiglass and the socially

distancing the kids and mandating a mask for eight hours a day. All of the reports show the psychological damage that's being done to children are hurting them far greater than COVID will ever hurt them. America's most controversial school leader, Lila Centner. Why did you decide to send this letter out to the parents in your children? your school. So when we started getting wind that five to 11 year olds are next to be approved and it can happen any day now, we said, okay, let's get ahead of this. We're telling parents, look, our school is about natural immunity. We're about a holistic way of life. We're all

gluten-free, organic, non-processed foods. These kids have a 99.74% recovery rate. Why would we be supporting this when there's unknown adverse side effects. The more people that do this, the more we band together and do this, this will end. The power is in our hands and we need to just say no. Well, obviously, you know, the mainstream media wasn't too sighted about a school that was recommending not vaccinating kids coming into the school and teachers and really pushing back against the narrative. And we were seeing headlines like this, how a Miami school became a beacon for anti-vaccations. In the New York. York Times, a private school in Miami citing false claims, bars vaccinated teachers from contact

with students. Oh my God. And Miami private school Sentinel Academy won't employ vaccinated teachers, staff. Obviously, I love this idea. I think it's fantastic. And you know what? You can work somewhere else. Well, Layla Centner took all of that heat from the media.

And from there, things only exploded and got bigger, more and more people wanting to get to her school. is a look at where the Centiner Academy is at now. Sentinel Academy was one of the very few schools that went back to school in September 2020. We did not mandate masks. We did not separate our kids. We did not socially distance them.

But there was definitely a risk and a chance that I could be arrested for not mandating my kids to wear masks. It was great that I was actually able to be on the high wire because I had so many other school owners reach out to me. me and tell me I gave them strength and courage to stand up and say no. They're not going to mandate masks for their kids either. There was a media frenzy in April of 2021 when my email got leaked that I didn't want our teachers to get the shot.

Controversy on a South Florida campus. A new school year, a new controversy at Setner Academy. A new vaccine rule for students enrolled at Setner Academy in Miami. That's now getting worldwide attention for its controversial beliefs about COVID vaccines. media camped outside our doors, CNN, NBC, all of them. Outside our doors, stalking parents, talking to parents. But the exact thing that the media tried to do, which was shut me down, silenced me, and basically cancel me.

They did the opposite because they gave me worldwide media coverage that went all the way from here to Egypt, to Russia. These families moved to Miami just to come to our school, to come to our school because they saw us on the media. We have more kids to date than we did in April of 2021. But more important than that, it's quality of the community, of families that are just in sync.

When the pandemic started and we eventually ran out of toilet paper or lettuce or just the craziest things that you would think we should have an abundance of, I realized that they need to build a completely sustainable community. That's when the idea of the farm was born. And we found a beautiful 34-acre lot that was available for sale. And we've since been growing food, and we have a 12,000 square foot greenhouse. Our farm is completely organic.

We spray no pesticides whatsoever. And it is the food that our kids eat during lunch. Just yesterday, they were pulling carrots from the ground, and today they're eating them in their salad bar. We do field trips at the farm, and we do field trips at the farm, and we do it. at the farm and we teach these kids, look, this is how hard it is to make food. So that way they can have an appreciation for what's going into their body. We're here at Regenerate Farm, welcoming the Sentinel Academy Middle School students,

getting them out of the classroom and into the farm so that they can really experience where their food comes from, direct from the farm to their table at the cafeteria. All right, so today we're going to be breaking off into groups. Let's have some fun and get our hands dirty. Today we're going to be taking some baby pineapples from a smaller pot that have outgrown that smaller pot and we're going to be transferring it over to a larger pot so that their roots can have room to grow.

How many pounds do you think we get out of all of these trays? Two? On the stop. So this is the stuff that ends up in your salad at school. Try a little piece. Straight fresh from the soil. We're here at the traveling chicken coop. We have about 300 chicken.

200 chickens. Every day we get about 260 eggs. Every two months we move them so that they can graze, they can have all the weeds, grasses, and bugs that they can't normally get. So this is a really great example of pasture raised chickens. Where are our eggs at? Let's see. Over here. Whatever eggs we can, we don't wash them because we can actually keep them. They have like a nice protective coat and then they We don't need to be refrigerated. These eggs, I'm telling you, are the best eggs I've ever had. We provide about 720 eggs a week to the cafeteria.

Amazing. Yeah. Like we're also changing the whole feed industry. You know, we got to get our feed from farmers and these small production of feed that's made here in the United States, of course. But we need to make that change, you know, and we're starting here and we're making it here. And we hope other farms and other people will follow. from this blank canvas to this incredible design that we've created here, full of life, full of

pounds and pounds, like thousands of pounds of food that we're producing now. You know, I really hope that this inspires some, you know, budding farmers. Future farmers. Future farmers, because we need them, you know. We need young people to get excited about farming and producing our food. We're doing it here with no pesticides, no chemicals. No, and constantly sustainable. Constantly feeding the soil.

Constantly feeding the soil. We're going to have this for a very, very long time, and it's only going to get better and better every day. Now when I buy my food, you know, all this work is put into it, and I just feel better about the food that I'm buying now. I feel most satisfied with eating it. Well, I know you're jealous, as many around the world right now watching that are thinking, can you imagine having your kid an experience where they have their own farms?

So not only can they not poison your kids to inject? They can't even poison your food. Well, it's my honor and pleasure to be joined right now by the brains and the brawn, and I suppose the beauty behind this incredible educational experiment. Layla Centner, welcome. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. So, Layla, let's just take it back because, you know, we've sort of been tracking with you through this experience. COVID really changed the face of education where they wanted to socially distance, people learning people. people learning computers. We sort of turned to a homeschool co-op with a group of families here. But you got right up in front of the media

and says, no, I'm not having teachers that are vaccinating in here. We're not, I'm worried about shedding all these things. What was that like? Could it mean, you know, it's one thing I know because I've been in the middle of it where you make statements, you expect some pressure.

What was it like to actually the level of attack that came upon you? I mean, it was insane. We had CNN, all of the major outlets were standing outside our school, both schools at the time we had two buildings. They were camped out. They were harassing parents. They were harassing teachers. They were calling all of our teachers.

Every day. Every day. It was intense. Wow. You know, I tell people every day, I'm not born in this world right here, right now. It's a plain neutral. I'm here to make a stance and make a stance on what I truly believe is the right path for our kids. David, I mean, I know one of the hard things, in some ways it's easier to take the attacks ourselves and to watch our spouse or children or loved ones go through something. What was it like to see that sort of level of pressure being brought on Layla just as a partner in this? Well, it was a little intense.

I was dragged into it as well, to be honest. Yeah, yeah. But it was very intense, but we leaned back on our training and we meditated quite a bit. We got our gurus on the phone and we knew that we need to stay in our most peaceful state so that we can navigate this. as beautifully as we could. And I think we did a really good job. And we're able to, we learned who was playing nice and who was playing naughty.

You know, I'm not surprised. Leila has a huge amount of gumption. And she's not going to roll over for anybody. At one point, she's like, I'm ready to be handcuffed to the front of the school if I have to. They can take me to jail. I don't care. And I support her.

You know, if it was me, I don't know if I would, have you know wherewithal to do what she has done and and will continue to do so so she says she's got a tremendous amount of courage and I just support her whatever it takes my job is to help keep us all peaceful so we can operate in the right part of our brain and make smart decisions was there an attrition I mean was there I mean you know you started the school you know with some ideals and then you really it felt like you sort of got more secure and more demanding as you understood the playing field and you know slowly teachers might want to start vaccinating did you did you lose some people through that process yeah in april 2021 i voided out a million

dollars worth of contracts for parents who were irate that i even had the audacity to not want the teachers to be vaccinated they were irate yeah screaming in my face you name it but the end result of that is we attracted families that were just way more aligned, families that move from across the world to come to our schools. We have three schools now. And it's just, it's really an honor and a privilege. And at the end of the day, I feel like light attracts light. And we have freedom of choice. And that's why it's a great thing at this moment where people can't choose where they want to send their kids to school. And it's something that we need to continue to fight for. I love that. You know, Laila, one of the things that I think I've been saying on this show is in some ways, you know, I say we, people say,

are we supposed to, like, protect our children, make sure that they live in a fantasy space as children. And I've been saying, I think that that's great under certain circumstances, but in many ways, we are living in a war now. This is a wartime period to be alive. Our children are under threat. There are threats all the times of laws where teachers might be able to take your kid. get them to agree to a vaccine without you in there. There's a lot of different, you know, teaching practices where they are saying your parents don't know what they're talking about, don't listen to them.

A real division on the family. And under those circumstances, I feel like we've got to start preparing our children at a younger age because we can't be there all the time and can't, you know. And one of the things that was amazing about what you're doing there and what, you know, David is this idea of really bringing sort of in some ways the adult out of the child through marketplace ideas and businesses, which is why when we were there I was really psyched to see that you sort of put this marketplace for the children together. So for those of you that want to think, you know, where does education go? Take a look at, you know, business. Imagine if your

kids knew how to run a business in third grade. Watch this. I'm here with Layla Centner and David Centner. This is the Center Academy Be Happy Marketplace. What does that mean? This is an outgrowth of our school's very comprehensive entrepreneurial initiative. So what we have here today is third graders through eighth graders have all conceived their own entrepreneurial initiatives. Well, my business name is Plantastic. I love it.

And are selling plant arrangements that I've made with my mom. So we sell popsicles. Yeah. sell them it's fresh fruit it's organic we don't use any sugar we use monk fruit extract instead they've done projections they've done PowerPoint presentations they've raised money in a shark tank type environment for funding of their of their ventures so a lot of us have equity in some of these projects and here we are today where they're actually selling their wares with great success so this is

something that all the kids really really enjoy both me and Levi have a passion for 3D printing 3D printing okay we just love to this and we love to create objects that we can play with throughout the day. So we transform this passion into a business. This school is very organic. They love, like, food with plants and everything like that. We have a farm at this school, and I thought, well, why wouldn't they want plants at their homes?

Now tell me, what's the name of your business? Love crystals. Love crystals. How'd you come up with that name? Because when the crystals have very good energy, and they heal people. Oh, and they heal people. So that's why we call it Love Crystals. Why a marketplace, I mean everyone else at this age group really, the kids are just studying their math and doing their, you know, their reading.

Why make them think about businesses at this younger age? This gives them an opportunity to apply those skills. It's a real life, real world situation. When you have a business, you really are forced to critically think. You're forced to problem solve. You're forced to think outside the box. And those are valuable skills that we want to give our kids. So it's called Sarin's Surprise Boxes.

Yes. Do I get to know what's inside the box? No. Not until I get it. Let's see if I can tell what it is. I just can't figure it out. Yeah, because you have to open it when you get home. So what types of things won't we find?

You will find some hair accessories, stripets, magnets, building dogs, and string games. What are we serving today? What dishes do we have available? Well, over here we have quesadillas. Okay. They're gluten-free, dairy-free, and sugar-free. How long does something like this take? 18 hours.

18 hours. So then how long did it take to make up your whole product line? Probably over 300. Wow. They wake up at like 5.36 in the morning before school. They're chatting about the business. They're making prints. They get home from school.

They're hopping on calls. They're chatting ideas. We're having so much fun with them doing. with them doing this and then the school is so incredibly supportive it's we're so thankful it's been such a pleasure to have our kids be in this environment what was it was the best part what'd you learn the most while doing this I learned a lot about numbers ROI and we had like a little shark tank what does ROI mean return on investment oh okay if you sell everything here what would be your total

profit I'd say yeah around a thousand dollars our total like gross profit will be about $300. The place we made $577. $1,175. And then do you pay your investor back? We gave them a percentage in our business for the amount of money they gave us. I'm going to probably invest it back into the company. So for our next part, it can be bigger and better.

Now, so many other kids in school are just doing math and reading and you guys are running a business. Do you think that's a good idea? Yes. Why? Because when you sell stuff, you could make money and help your life. your life. How about for you? What do you like best about running a business? Give it a charity. Oh you're gonna give it to charity. All right. So Abuela's Kitchen, how did you come up with that name? We came up with the name. Our

grandmas, they like make really good food and most of them like come from Spanish heritage and like they made these food a lot so we wanted to share this with other people too. I like making everybody happy. Seeing the looks on their face when they when they buy my surprise boxes this is something she bought from one of the stores let's see what you bought my love this is our five-year-old it looks like there there is a table that sells recycled artwork they clean up the beach and they've turned it into art and so it's our way to support their efforts of cleaning up the beach love it everybody seems to be having such a great time all these

smiling faces. You know what? Don't get angry about what's happening in the world. Do something. Yeah. Build your own system. Build your own community. We're building the community.

We're building our tribe. You know, being there and watching how excited those kids were, and I just thought probably the biggest question I had, you know, in my ADD, ADHD space. I mean, I was never diagnosed with that, but it had trouble paying attention because I was like, where am I going to use this? Like, how am I using this information? And here at a very young age, you've really got kids thinking about how they're going to use their math, how they're going to, you know, present ideas.

What do the parents think of this experience with the kids? They love it. I mean, did you have any idea what ROI meant at 12 years old? No, definitely not. The fact that these kids understand revenue, they understand growth profit. They're being empowered because we don't know what's going to happen six years from now, seven years from now. And so if these kids can take care of themselves when they're adults to navigate the world

if it gets crazier and crazier, you know, we're just empowering them to be able to be anything that they want to be. And so we start these skills at a very young age. And it's fun. It's fun watching them. It's fun seeing the sparkle in their eyes. You know, we sold our company over five years ago now.

And to me, this is just, it's so enjoyable to see how it feels to empower a child with, such knowledge and I wish I had that as a child. Yeah, I mean, so many of the kids were talking about how now when they see products, they were talking about in the store, it made them think how long it take to make that? What are they charging for it? And then that they start guessing at what the cost might have been to make that.

I mean, you know, David, obviously, is successful. You both had a very successful business. When you think about children starting out there, does this, you know, and think about America exceptionalism, right? Something that I think is, I think we've all but kissed goodbye. Do you think this is a way to sort of bring our nation back around? You know, I think we've kind of lost touch with just everything that's happened around us. We live in a service society where everything's taken care of for us.

We have very little thought into how things are made. When we're at the farm and I see a kid pull a carrot out of the ground, I know that we've changed a life right there in front of us, that forevermore, whenever they, whenever they consume food, for example, then they'll put some thought into how was this made, how did he get here, how is it stored, you know, what other ingredients and additives were put into this. So I, you know, I really think that I think we're on the right track, you know, I think these patterns and trends are only going to persist with big farmer, big food, big ag, big oil, big tech, you know, so what we're trying to do is just open people's eyes, open these children's eyes,

and so they can navigate the world. in a better way with alternative perspectives. I'm curious when we see this incredible farm that you've built and now it's sort of moving through the kitchen and the food. Are all the kids on a meal program through that food or do some people bring their own food? No, we, all the kids at our school eat the food that we serve and mainly because we're trying to teach the kids

how to eat as well. Unfortunately, schools all over the country are feeding kids with processed food, food that's filled with glyphosate, all these different people. pesticides, gluten, just carbs. And so when they're at school, you can't focus if your body is being fueled with just contaminants.

And we're teaching the kids. So if kids bring food from home, unfortunately there are a lot of homes that parents don't have this knowledge. And so we want them to be clear, we want them to be focused, we make them the snacks at school, and we also have classes where they learn about nutrition, they learn about healthy choices,

and they understand why. we don't give them anything processed. Why we source all of our food organically? Why we want to make sure that, you know, they're not eating Roundup in their vegetables. Yeah. Well, I think one of the things that's neat is sort of that, in many ways, the fact that all of your children are on a total equal footing.

There's not one kid that's eating a different meal than someone else, which, and I think, you know, I had a very granola mom. So the homemade bread with the homemade mayonnaise soaking through the bread, the whole thing. It would have been nice if everybody else was starting the same thing instead of sort of being ridiculed for it. You're, I mean, is my understanding you also do uniforms? Is that a part of the process? Yeah, we actually make our uniforms in India because I want pesticide-free cotton as well. Okay. So we make our, but going back to what you were saying about the food, we actually have the opposite effect because everybody is eating healthy. The few kids that aren't

eating are being encouraged by their friends to eat the food. Right. They're saying, hey, the food is delicious. Try it. Because some kids go home and all they eat is pizza or pasta or whatnot. But by the end of the school year, many of those kids have been converted to kids that are now trying vegetables. I've had so many parents tell me, my kid has never eaten broccoli before. They eat it now.

We have a full service bar of only salads and vegetables. And so it really, it's the peer pressure in a good way, where now the kids are saying, wait minute all my friends are eating this salad. Maybe I should try it. Right. Or you know that broccoli doesn't look so bad anymore because all my friends are chowing down on all these different beautiful vegetables. And then they go to the farm and they're able to pull it from the soil. And so they say, hmm, I saw exactly where this came. You know, I want to see what it tastes like. And so the first time we had vegetables delivered from the farm, we had a big table and we just lined up the table with all the vegetables that we received that day. And we cut it up and we told the kids, okay, as you're

going to the recess, just try it. And so kids were trying vegetables that they had never even seen before. I would imagine, I mean, in so many schools, you go and audition the school, but I would think you have a pretty strong, if not heavy-handed vetting process for how you choose families that are going to come into school.

Has that changed over time? Well, what's interesting, and I tell people this all the time, when we got into education, I didn't know anything about critical race theory, or I didn't even know who BLM was. I didn't know that there were drag queens out there that were going to schools. I had no idea.

I was completely clueless as a mom. I just knew the education system was broken. Well, fortunately, COVID has highlighted the fact that schools are doing all of these things. They are encouraging five-year-olds to choose their gender, of course, not happening at our school. We are firmly against any of this. We want to teach our kids,

hey, you continue being a child. play with your barbies, play with your toys. You do not need to be choosing your gender. We don't even approach the topic. We stay clear away from anything that's sexualizing our children. In fact, we tell parents all the time, look, it's your job to teach your kids sex ed. These kids are young. They're between two years old to eighth grade.

Next year we're opening high school. They don't need to be having a conversation of boy, boy, boy, sex, girl, girl sex. Or boy, girl sex. They need to be focused on education. So we're very clear when we're interviewing our teachers. We ask them, what are you views on critical race theory? Because our views are, we're all one. We follow Martin Luther King's philosophy of no one is to be judged by the color of their skin.

Our kids look into each other's eyes. They look at the soul of the other child. And they look at us as one. These are some of the activities that they do, where they do eye gazing. You know, where they look into each other's eyes and they say, the beauty I see in you is this. And they're not talking about the outside beauty. They're talking about the inside beauty.

And that's really what we need to get back to. Let's get back to looking at the inside beauty of one another. Let's stare into each other's eyes. Let's see our souls. Let's stop talking about the color of our skin. Because that's not what Martin Luther King fought for. Right. You know, and then also the confusion, right?

There are many private schools near our school where they were bringing in 15-year-olds that were dressed up in drag, twerking on a stage in front of other sixth graders, seventh graders, eight graders. Is that inappropriate? Is that appropriate for another child to see? We want to protect them as much as possible, let them be kids and not cloud their brain with such gender confusion and sexualization. One of the things that, you know, when we were, there's things we always go out to shoot, we're like, oh, we definitely wanted to catch the marketplace. But our, our, our, our, Our camera person and producer happened to be going by a room where a kid was getting hooked up to, I think it was like a biofeedback machine.

And honestly, this is taking education to a whole other level of folks. Get a little of what they're doing at the Sintner Academy when it comes to, you know, stress and anger management. I mean, this is something that, you know, we're talking a lot about in my family. Like, how can we get this across our children? Take a look at this. science demonstration, right, that we are going to use the what? EM WAIFROW, right? To do what? To do that brain to heart connection, okay? I have Sasha that is going to wear the device to show his

heart to brain connection. This device under here, okay? So while we're getting Sasha ready, okay, what are we going to focus on while we connect them, what are we working on what's that that heart what heart rate what right right right to the B we can remember V or B right or variability this device is calibrating his heart rate through his ear okay it's going to read his heart rate now it's picking it up it's picking up your pulse okay your heart rate right now is currently at up 75 speed 72 9 b per minute okay ready to do this mr gillerman all right let's close our eyes okay now we're gonna put ourselves in a stadium, it's really dark in the stadium, okay?

Then all of a sudden the lights turn on, big bright lights and you find yourself standing in the middle of the stadium and as you look up and you look around, you notice the stadium is full, 100,000 people are in there and cheering and as you start looking around, you realize it's the final match of the World Cup. And you guys are now, it's in the 80th minute and the 82nd minute and the 84th minute, you guys take a break first and you're looking. And you realize the score is tied. All right.

And so as the time clicks and clicks away, you're now approaching the 90th minute. 2-2. And so the ball is passed to you and you're running. You're coming around the side and you got an open shot and you see that net, the goalie's looking nervous, you're getting there, you're charging full speed and all of a sudden you stop and you kick and the ball flies and it goes all the way over the net, over the net, and you missed as it hits the 90th minute. But wait, there's a call.

It's a handball. You get an opportunity at a free kick to win the game. Close your eyes and you envision yourself making this goal. So you walk up, you point to the sky, you look down at the ball, you charge. And as you strike, it's a perfect kick, perfect velocity, right to the left hand side of the upper net. And it goes in and the crowd goes wild. You win the World Cup, it's all on you! You run with your hands in the air, you slide.

Everybody's crying and cheering. How do you feel? Good. Let's look at the patterns, right? How did he start? His heart weight pattern was at a nice calm, right? Pattern. Then Coach Josh just started getting in his head and saying,

and started what, making his heart rate, saying things to make his heart rate go wet? Faster. So it looks like, right, if we notice, look at his executive state of mind after he's bringing himself back to that coherent level, right? Causing him to come back and come back to which state of state of minds?

Jake's state. Well, Jake is the what? Executive state. The executive state. Honestly, like this idea of hooking child up and then, you know, some of it was very stressful for them. They watched how the heart rate went up and some of it was exciting.

And then discussions on like what types of thoughts you'd have to have to bring that energy down. Where did you even think to do this with children? I mean. So it's interesting because when we sold our company, we decided to go on a spiritual, journey and we went off to India. And when we went to India, we started to learn how to master our own breath. And we started to learn how to understand our own emotions and how to bring

awareness to that. And we started to learn tools on how to bring ourselves from a stressful, anxious place down to a calm, peaceful place. And I had the biggest aha moments there where I thought, oh my goodness, I'm 41 and I'm learning this. How more powerful would I have been as a leader if I would have learned this as a child? How to master my own emotions. How to pull tools out of my own pocket and say, okay, I'm very anxious right now.

I'm going to take myself to a calm and peaceful place and I'm going to breathe through this. And I'm never going to be a victim. And I'm not going to blame others for my emotions. And that aha moment I was so excited. I remember going up to David and I go, look, this is exciting. Because I know we're on this venture to start this new school, but I've got a foundation that I think is going to give our kids the strongest mindset ever possible

by teaching this at a very young age. And so our kids start to learn breathing techniques starting at two years old. Wow. And as they get older, they actually learn about the brain. So they learn if you're in the survival state, where is that at in the brain? And what does that mean? When you're in your survival state,

you shouldn't be trying to problem solve. Okay, how do we get from survival state to executive state? Because when you're in that executive state, that's when you can problem solve. That's when you can think creative. And that's when you can be your very best. And so to teach kids how to navigate through their emotions, which, as we know, can be a roller coaster ride, right?

And we saw during COVID, there was a substantial increase in suicides and kids with anxiety issues and kids having to lean to medication. But at Settner Academy, that's not going to happen because we're teaching them the skills and the tools that they need so when the next crisis hits

or when their own internal crisis hits. I mean, we know how teenagers are. They go through crisis, internal crisis all the time. How can they breathe through that? How can they be calm through that? And how can they navigate with good quality choices as well-being in their executive state instead of their survival state.

And I'll tell you, my third grader, she was able to come home one day and say, Mom, you're in your survival state right now. And she reminded me to breathe. Yeah. And I thought, you know what? I love this. Because I want my kids to tell me, to teach me the things that I had no clue about at her age. And I looked at her and said, you know what, my love, you were right.

Mommy is absolutely in her survival state and I need about five minutes to calm down. And many parents have shared similar stories with us. For you, David, I mean, obviously, you know, you're a business person. Do you think you would have done things differently? I mean, is this a tool you had as you were running your business to be able to calm down? I wish, I only wish. I did it the old-fashioned way. Both Laila and I grew up in fairly dysfunctional households.

And, you know, I just put my head down. and ran through walls, whatever it took, I grinded it out, and in the hopes that eventually one day, maybe I'd have something, and then maybe happiness would appear. And it didn't work, I had some medical issues, I had a heart attack at 41,

and ultimately I did have a successful exit, but I was really unfulfilled, and I had no shortage of other business opportunities, but none of it was doing anything for us. So like Layla said, we embarked on a spiritual journey, And then we learned there's another way to navigate through life. You know, and not only is there another way to do this, but this can be taught. And if this can be taught at a young age, gosh, we could really change a lot of lives here.

So that was a big aha moment. We had conceived and started the school before we started our spiritual journey. But if we hadn't done that, the products that you see today, the Center Academy that you see today, would be probably much different and probably would not be resonating as powerfully as it is with people from all over the world. And I don't know if we'd be successful. So it's such a foundational element of our school to teach these kids how to be happy, peaceful, loving, connected human beings.

And then that's the platform from which we want them to operate. And then arguably they can learn much more intensively, faster, and it's proven because our test results that are taking, you're showing these kids are achieving at a very high level academically. Yeah, I think that's the big key that when we sold our company, we kept saying, okay, we'll be happy when, we'll be happy when, right? And so going to India, learning everything, no, no, no, happiness is right here, right now, always.

It's at your fingertips. Do you want it? If you want it, it's easy. And so teaching the kids, happiness is right here, right now. It's attainable. It's in your hands, and it's your choice. And that, I think, is a big aha for many of our kids. I mean, we've had kids come to us, especially from COVID.

They were depressed at their previous school. They were having all sorts of emotional issues because of the lockdowns and everything else. And we taught them how to come back to their happy place, how to breathe through it and how to know that, you know what, things can be tough. But if we can bring ourselves to a place where we're in a calm, peaceful, just our own joy, nothing else on the outside really matters. You know, you started out in some ways under attack,

but when we're out there, you know, David, you were just, David, you were discussing how you're working now with the, is it the city to put a sports complex in on public lands that you're going to go in and sort of in a sort of joint, you know, effort, you know, really statly, you know, build this new sports complex. And Lely, you were talking about you're putting in, I think, dorms in the future, expanding in really massive ways. So what is the dream now? Like when you look to the future, how many grades do you have in the school right now? So right now, we go from pre-k-2 to eighth grade. And this school year in 2023, we're going to be opening high school. So we start our freshman year. But we have plans that we've submitted with the city where we're going to be building an eight-story

high school slash dorms. We'll have 120 dorm rooms for international students. And there'll be 12 high school classrooms there. And on the roof, there will be a very cool vertical farming garden area and a tennis court. and other fun things. So we really, really want our kids when they graduate from high school to be ready, prepared, critical thinkers,

kids that aren't going to be sheep. We want them to be our future lines that are going to be able to look at things that aren't right and say, wait a minute. That's not right. And I know that I'm here to question everything and not just do as I'm told. And so we tell our kids, question everything.

Question everything we tell you. We want you to do that. Yeah. We want you to challenge us. We've had so many kids come. up, schedule meetings with me. They schedule meetings with the principals. They want to know, hey, can we do this? Can we do that? They're not shy. They're already taking classes with public speaking. They're out there doing tournaments. I mean, we want these kids to be ready and prepared.

Fantastic. What is the, you know, at this point, you know, you've really got a groove on, you've found your space. But it's not all, you know, it's not all like silver lining and easy roads ahead. What are the real difficulties right now that you're facing in your expansion, in your growth? I think the hardest part is recruiting. This year we had three grades that had waiting lists because, you know, we're looking for a very special type of teacher. We're looking for teachers who are very passionate about education and who are against all the indoctrination that's happening today. Unfortunately, there's a lot of it. And there's a lot of teachers that are supporting the indoctrination that's happening. So we have a very strict recruiting process

where we are looking for teachers who are fostering medical freedom is obviously number one. Yeah. And supporting these kids to be kids. And we don't want teachers that are teaching from a teacher's perspective. We want them teaching from a student's perspective. What do these students need? We don't want them standing in front of the classroom talking at them.

We want them to understand how to give kids a hands-on experiential feeling because they know when they touch and feel things, That's how they're going to learn. And most traditional teaching is just the teachers standing up there and telling the kids what they need to know. That's not how we teach. And so it's a very, very special teacher. And it's actually many teachers that quit because of COVID.

You know, we call out to those teachers, come back, we're here. We didn't do any of that craziness. You know, we continued hugging our kids. We continued doing all the things that to foster that love and connection. And so, you know, we've been able to bring a few teachers. out of retirement and say, hey, you know, don't worry. We will never. If there's another, you know, COVID-24 coming around. We're never going to do that. We're going to really nurture our children and let them be kids. And so the teachers that love teaching, come on back.

You know, as long as you're against critical race theory and sexualizing our kids and you want to teach them how to critically think and you don't want them to just be yes-mapping and yes-sering you, this is the right place. You know, we're opening a third building that will be K through fifth grade because of our expansion because we've got so many amazing families wanting to come to our school

and just the toughest part is really, like I said, finding amazing teachers. Let's see if I can help with that then. So if you're out there and you're watching right now and watching this incredible Sentinel Academy, you know, it's a proof of concept that is really proving to be changing children's lives. So if you're a teacher out there, you want to get involved with the Centiner Academy.

This is all you have to do. Go to sentneracademy.com slash careers and apply and get ready to be grilled because I know Layla's not playing around. So you better be serious if you're going to get involved here. Also, that website's great. If you are in the Florida area, planning to move there, certainly this is a school that you should be looking into. But as we sort of close this up, in some ways, you know,

you're really, you know, really leading into education at a time where I think we're watching politicians being decided, you know, whether or not they believe in the power of the parents and in children. As you do this work, David, you know, is part of the goal to sort of prove this concept so that we can start seeing schools like this all over the country. We are getting a lot of interest from everywhere. Like when you're going to open up another Center Academy in our area, which we, you know, when we really get our blueprint down, then we would certainly explore that. I think the end goal is we're building, creating the next generation of leaders. You know, these kids are going to go on

to be spectacular human beings in every which way. And, you know, we kind of got ourselves into a jam right now in so many ways. So maybe in the next, in the coming decades, you'll see a graduate of Center Academy hoping, hopefully leading the way and making things making this world a better place. Is there any concern, Layla, that if you teach kids to be able to make their own money to be entrepreneurs, that maybe they don't go to college, do they get out and say, look, I have these tools now, found my passion. I mean, is there a concern there, or is that the goal?

Well, it's interesting because I look at my husband and I said, if our kids were graduating from high school right now, I wouldn't want them to go to 99% of these colleges. Right. I wouldn't want them to go in there, you know, being indoctrinated. coming out, hating us, you know, thinking that capitalism sucks, right? This is a college thing that you're hearing young men and women saying. I mean, you're enjoying that Starbucks.

Why is capitalism so bad, right? And so I don't know if I'd want them to go to college. Now, there are many families that, of course, want their kids to go to college. So our school is, hey, you have the path to choose. We're going to have an amazing college advisor at our school. So if you want to get into the best college, no problem. But there might be some kids and some families at our school that say, you know what? I want my kids to start their own business.

Many of our families are entrepreneurs. So some of them might want their kids to go straight into their business. That's their choice. And so we want to be able to give them the whole range. We actually are hiring a really great college advisor. And we want to be able to help parents and say, look, these are the few schools out there that are not indoctrinating your kids. And then we're going to form alliances with those colleges. to help them get into colleges that fit with their values.

Instead of going to a school where they're forcing their values on their kids that you might not want, right? We're going to try and help them navigate the schools out there that are just more aligned with what they're looking for. We were presenting the high school to some of the parents, and we had a Q&A portion, and one of the parents said, what if our kid doesn't want to go to college, how are you going to help prepare our kid for college?

And a few years ago, you would never heard this question. You know, parents were all about, I want my kid to go to college. I want a kid to go to college. Now they're thinking, you know, how is the school going to support our kid and our family if we decide that we don't want our child to go to college? Yeah. Unheard of. Yeah.

Yeah, there really are different times. Now when we're seeing, I mean, so much depression. And frankly, mostly college is just putting children in debt, which, you know, I guess now we're all going to bail them out. you know whether or not we went to college ourselves or not I mean you know all of it's just costing more and more first final words though because I mean obviously we have a huge audience not everyone can get to Florida and you don't want you can't fit everyone in this school so what is your recommendation to parents out there that are really struggling to find a way forward with their kids I think

you're right they're looking at there's nothing I can do I know the books in my library are teaching my kids things they may even be having drag queen you know reading time. What is a parent supposed to do? I tell parents form a pod with other parents, even if it's five other parents, you want to protect your child's soul. They're living once in this world. They're fragile, they're delicate, and they're very easily influenced. And so if you've got a five-year-old in kindergarten and there's a drag queen reading to your five-year-old, which unfortunately is happening in schools all across the country, that child is going to think that that's real life. And that child is going to start to question their own gender. And that's not what you want

your five-year-old doing. You want your five-year-old learning how to read, learning ABCs. And so I tell parents, I know it's difficult. I know it's not easy. But do anything and everything you can to look and explore options. That's what I would do. I mean, look, it's the reason why we built the school is because I wanted to protect our kids. And I know everybody doesn't have the resources that we have. but people are crafty. They can figure things out. I know one pod where every each family member takes one day. And so there's five people in the group,

and they each have one day of teaching the kids, and they each teach different things. And then they come together and they meet, and they discuss all the things that they're doing, and they do their lesson plans together. And so they're really giving their kids what their kids need to be successful, happy future adults. And I do know a lot of these pods are also incorporating, you know, understanding how to breathe,

giving the tools to really master your emotions. Because I tell people all the time, we want our kids to be emotional ninjas. We don't want them to be what this generation is right now, which is, oh, my God, he called me a name. I'm going to go in a corner and cry. Yeah. That's not how we build a strong country with people who are so fragile that they break just at the smallest, word that they're being called. Actually, on the way here, I was having a meeting with our eighth grade parents and one of our counselors about conflict resolution and how conflict resolution is an opportunity

to grow. It's an opportunity to look within. It's an opportunity to see, okay, how am I in, what am I doing here? And how can I not be a victim, take control, and learn from whatever conflict I just experienced. Most schools run away from conflict. They hide from conflict or they just dish out consequences for conflict. So we don't want to do that. Otherwise, we're going to have a very, very wimpy generation, which I feel like it's kind of what's happening already. And we're going to have a future where our soldiers don't want to fight because it's too cold or it's too hot, you know, or they're not giving the right amount of food. And that's not how we're going to sustain a strong country. We need strong people. I agree. Well, Layla, David, you truly are a spectacular

individuals. It was so exciting to get to see people who are bringing a dream into fruition and reality. Really, really exciting touring around the school. I think people should go and check it out, even if they're just sort of stopping through to see what you have going on there. And you know, we're here to support you all the way through in any way we can help. I want to thank you for sharing your story and continue to keep us abreast. All the great work. Thanks for having us. Thank you.

Thank you for having us and thank you for doing everything that you're doing for a community. It's absolutely a pleasure. Really good. Really great to see you. And remember, if you want to know anything about the Sentinel Academy, just go to their website.

If you want to be a teacher or you want to look into it for your own child, there it is one more time, senteneracademy.com. So we have an Instagram also. Here's the Instagram, Sentenor Academy. You can check that out too

and get involved and interact with this amazing group of people.