The NEXT BIG THING with Keith D. Terry

More Than a Diploma: What Public Schools Can’t Teach—and Faith-Based Schools Can Episode

• Keith D. Terry • Season 1 • Episode 40

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What if school weren’t just about earning a diploma, but becoming a whole person? In this episode of The NEXT BIG THING, I sit down with Dr. Ernest Duplessis—Founder & Chancellor of STUDYSS Ministries Christian Academy and Senior Pastor of STUDYSS. Ministry—to explore the power of faith-based education. A 21-year Navy veteran and former Fortune 500 exec, Dr. Duplessis shares how mission, leadership, and spiritual grounding are reshaping how we teach our children. If you’re rethinking what school should be, this conversation is for you.

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Keith D. Terry:

Welcome to the podcast the Next Big Thing. I'm your host, keith D Terry, a consultant, a coach and a serial entrepreneur. The mission here is to teach, inspire and to motivate. Today's episode is bold and thought-provoking because we're diving into a conversation as old as education itself, but much more urgent the role of faith, mission and purpose in shaping the hearts and minds of the next generation of kids. Now, before we jump into the conversation, let me level set, like I always do, but for this discussion, because I've lived it on both sides. I'm a formerly publicly elected school board member. I've worked inside the public school system. I've seen the power that it can have when it works well, but I've also seen it when it falls short, especially when it comes to preparing students for the future. That demand more than just test scores. Today, I'm also the president of the board at Studies Ministry Christian Academy, a school grounded in mission, character and spiritual development. And I'm not alone.

Keith D. Terry:

Across the country, more and more families are turning to faith based schools, not as an escape, but as a path towards something more aligned with their values. Path towards something more aligned with their values. Now here's what most people don't realize Religious institutions were some of the first educational providers in history. Long before state-run school systems existed, it was the church Christian, jewish, islamic and others that offered literacy, moral instruction and community leadership. In America, many of the oldest universities, like Harvard and Yale and Princeton, were founded to train ministers to uphold religious thought, even after slavery. It was the Black church that birthed schools that educated generations locked out of access. But today we're at a crossroads. Parents are asking is my child getting a diploma or becoming a whole person? Educators are wondering can we teach excellence without losing our values? And communities are debating what's school really like for the 21st century. So let's get into it To help us unpack this.

Keith D. Terry:

I'm honored to have a wonderful, powerful person, dr Ernest DuPlessis, but let me introduce you to who he is. Dr Ernest DuPlessis is the founder and chancellor of Studies Ministry, christian Academy, and he's the senior pastor at Studies Ministry, which stands for Spending Time Usefully Developing Yourself Spiritually. He served 21 years in the US Navy, retiring at the rank of commander. From there, he transitioned into the corporate world, holding senior, very senior roles at companies like WW, granger, kraft Foods and I believe I'm going to say it right Melinda's International, and in 2014, he co-founded Studies Ministry along with his wife, and that ministry soon became expanded into a full academy focused on academic excellence, character formation and spiritual development. Today, dr DuPlessis also serves as professor of integrated marketing and communication at Northwestern University. He holds multiple degrees, including a PhD in pastoral ministry.

Keith D. Terry:

But beyond all the titles, here's what I personally know of Dr DePlessis I've had a front row seat to how he leads, not just from the pulpit but with principle. His leadership is deliberate, transformational and deeply rooted in purpose, and, I might add, he's my pastor. Dr DuPlessis, welcome to the next Best Thing. How are you?

Dr. Ernest Duplessis:

Dr DuPlessis. Good good, keith, and thank you so much for having us. We're excited to be here today.

Keith D. Terry:

Okay, tell my audience a little bit about you.

Dr. Ernest Duplessis:

Dr DuPlessis, we're originally from Philadelphia, pennsylvania, so we're living at large now that the Eagles have won the Super Bowl again. And we grew up in northern Philadelphia, so Germantown of Philadelphia, and then, when I became a high school student, we transitioned right outside of Philadelphia to Willingboro, new Jersey, where it was the same city where Carl Lewis the Olympian lived, so that's our claim your name dropped from all the sports?

Keith D. Terry:

Yes, absolutely so. As we get into this conversation, you know let's start here. What inspired you to launch a ministry? You've had such a remarkable career, from 21 years as a navigator to some of the highest echelons in corporate America to a ministry. Tell us about that transformation.

Dr. Ernest Duplessis:

Yeah, so I gave my life to Christ early in my life and so ministry and service and kind of spirituality was always a part of what we did. And so when I got out of the military and we came here to the Great Lakes area, actually one of my professors that I had at Northwestern when I was still in the military hired me many years later to come work in corporate America. But when we got here, it was about 2011 that we really started to feel this tug that we're going to do something different than just go to a church and be a part of a church. We're always leaders at a church. My wife and I, since we've been married, have been in service within ministry, but in 2011, we really felt a tugging to kind of pull away for a while, and that pulling away lasted for about three years. We call it our detox period, where we essentially learned some new things, but we unlearned a lot of things about what traditional church is, what ministry has to be specifically moving forward.

Dr. Ernest Duplessis:

And then I happened to read a book in that time. It's called the Church in an Age of Crisis. It's by James Emery White, and in this book there were just some compelling statistics that he brought forward about where ministry is going in the future. And then I felt the tug. My wife and I both felt that tug to kind of okay, this is where God is calling us. And so in 2014, we set out to establish Studies Ministries with kind of some of these core values and the notion of it just can't be about where we've come from. It's got to be about where we're going.

Keith D. Terry:

Wow, wow. Now was that a long process. You said it took three years, For three years.

Dr. Ernest Duplessis:

Okay. And the process was challenging because, like I said, when the Lord called us kind of unto himself, we were part of a church for eight years, we had served well there and we'd still continue to go in fellowship at church. But what was made clear to us was that we were not going to go join someone else's church, that the Lord had a work for us to do, and so, you know, the Lord challenged us. So why do you do X? And we would say, well, because we always done X. And they would challenge us to think about a way that's different.

Dr. Ernest Duplessis:

For instance, when you read that book, one of the things that you realize is that the church in general is over-indexed in facilities. We have a whole bunch of facilities that are not used well. So real estate is one of those things, and there's this model of build it and they will come, and so our model is not that. Our model is find the need, build it, serve the need. And so that is the segue as well into the school. It was not that we're saying, oh, we want to build a school, but rather find the need, build it, serve the need. And along with that model came some other different thinking, for instance, around the financial funding of a ministry. Normally, ministries are based on t to continue to find the need, build it and serve the need, and so there's some fundamental differences with our ministry.

Keith D. Terry:

And so you know we can keep along the path of the church. At what point did you decide to go into to open a school?

Dr. Ernest Duplessis:

So we the ministry was birthed in 2014. We decided to open the school in 2020. I had a watershed moment with my oldest daughter, who came to me and we had been toying with the idea of potentially starting a school but that's a lot of work, as you can imagine and my oldest daughter came to me she said Dad, I don't know whether you're going to start the school or not, but I want you to know that I'm not sending my kids back to public school. So you know you'd make a decision on your own. But that got us really thinking. And then, just essentially, I'll tell you, a miracle happened A woman that we knew from 25 years ago, who we worshiped with here in the Chicago area when I was stationed here and we worked in the base ministry.

Dr. Ernest Duplessis:

They had since moved back to the Virginia area. She calls us and says I've started a school before. Have you ever thought about starting a school? And so then we collaborated and literally she moved here for two years to help us get that school off the ground and for us to get an accreditation from the state within one year. That's unheard of. That is unheard of. It's like the holy grail of getting the state certification. But it was important for us because we wanted people to know that we're going to operate in excellence, that academics were in the forefront, but that there were so many other benefits that we could offer in our particular niche.

Keith D. Terry:

Well, let's stay there for a second because I'm curious now. I've seen the students there and I've seen the results. These kids are brilliant. You guys are doing some really good work. In the beginning, when you were centered around mission, you've come. You know, you spent 21 years in the military. Was it military training that helped? Was it the corporate training that helped? Or was it your doctoral degree or connection with the church that helped to set the school up?

Dr. Ernest Duplessis:

Yes, it was all of the above.

Dr. Ernest Duplessis:

And this is what I tell people when I talk to them about leadership and career development. First of all, no two careers are ever developed the same. But what you're trying to think about is, I think about a career as building blocks that ultimately help you shape something that you ultimately one day look back and go, oh, I've had a career right. And so all of the above the military really brought into focus for me mission and vision, because remember, it's not a for-profit organization. You learn the altruistic side of service, you learn the discipline, I learned the leadership, but that was an essential building block that then I parlayed into corporate America, into executive roles, where I then learned the business side of organizations. We can try to deeply spiritualize a lot of things or you could, you know, have the just altruistic passion for school or whatever, but there's a business side to it that has to be tended to. So my corporate career helped me really tend to that, and then what my kind of spiritual development and roles helped me to do within the church then helped set the framework for the culture in which all of this would happen.

Dr. Ernest Duplessis:

Look, when you're talking about a school and you know I'm a professor at a large university here. Number one it's about academic excellence, right, we're talking about. We have a mission to make sure that our kids are learning and that they're retaining and that they have serviceable skills academically. But we have the opportunity. I mean, look, we're three-part beings. We're body, soul, spirit, and most organizations would tend to or academic institutions certainly the mind they're going to help craft the mind and develop the mind. The body, they have sports and athletics. We add the third dimension. The third dimension is the spiritual aspect of who you are and, by the way, that's where your well-being resides. So when we think about all of the challenges that we have in social, emotional learning that we're trying to inculcate into public schools today, that's already embedded in how we think about, how to educate people, gotcha.

Keith D. Terry:

And so what was the most challenging? Let's stay on the early parts of starting the school. It's one thing to say it, it's another thing to create it. You've done two things you started a church a thriving church and you started a school. So I would assume the paths for both are different a little bit, but let's take each one individually. What's the most challenging part about? Got an additional certification with the National Associations of Private Schools.

Dr. Ernest Duplessis:

That's just massive administration, yeah, and getting all of the wickets kind of set up, and in many ways I think it's set up that way to be a barrier to entry, because if you're not serious about doing this you can get discouraged very quickly. But then to try to craft the scope of what you're doing so that you don't overwhelm yourself, right, you could say, well, I'm going to go in, I'm going to offer, from kindergarten through, you know, doctoral thesis, right, and then so trying to scope it in a way that is true to the mission, your vision, it's true to your capability. Do you have the capability to do what you're doing and then to align people around the vision so that they can see? They can see what is the school supposed to mean, what is it going to mean and why is that?

Keith D. Terry:

important, and so how did you develop those values? I mean, that's a monumental task. Did you sit around with your team or did God tell you what the values are going to be?

Dr. Ernest Duplessis:

I think it was collaborative like with anything right?

Dr. Ernest Duplessis:

I think that there are. As a Christian school, there's certain I just pull Christian values right, like we're going to try to be good people and we're going to try to develop good people and we're not going to be stealing things and we're not going to be lying about things. So there's some natural values, but I think a lot of the values come over from the culture of our ministry. In other words, we have seven values in our ministry that I really think set the stage to do something like a school. I mean, you're talking about love unconditionally. Right, I'll meet you where you are. I'm not here to judge you and try to find fault in you. There's the notion of we need to abide in his word, we need to pray. Those are fundamental values of Christians and part of our disciplines.

Dr. Ernest Duplessis:

But then we get down to things like serving urgently right. If you don't see what we're doing with the school as necessary and urgent, you don't get what we do. Because we talk to parents week in, week out. We get parents that come in and interview and they're telling us about the challenges that they have. 70% of our students that we have came from an environment where they were bullied right and severe. Another 50% probably had social emotional challenges within school. So that's, whether it's a social interaction or whatever those things are, and then some of our students have they learn differently. So so, as we think about, every child does not learn the same way. Yes, we had to think about. What should we be to serve, find the need, build it?

Keith D. Terry:

serve the need, and so you know. Let me ask this question Is it difficult publicizing where you are getting people to come over? Is that a challenge?

Dr. Ernest Duplessis:

It is. Awareness is always a key challenge and um a lot of different avenues. I think we have a lot more runway in the social media space, but we have a marketing that we do. We have an agency that we work with. But remember, we launched a school in 2020, which was when COVID really kicked off.

Dr. Ernest Duplessis:

You did yeah, no, and anybody's opinion would be kind of insane because the first time I thought about it, you know, from a business aspect, you know we're going to launch it and we're in COVID it didn't make business sense. But as God started to put the pieces together and we get this woman who's done a school, willing to come here for two years and live here in our home and help us develop the school, get our certifications and all that, it becomes clear that you know you have the resources and you go after it. But yeah, it is challenging for awareness and year to year, we're battling with the same things, and legislation also has a large part to play as it relates to that, because if they cut off funding for private schools, that says you can't offer someone who will donate to the school a benefit of having tax deductions and things like that. So there's a lot of things that go into that.

Keith D. Terry:

OK. Are there misconceptions that people have over Christian schools or religious-based schools versus public schools?

Dr. Ernest Duplessis:

Yes, and I'll mention the number one item. There are people who are told and taught and it's not true that if we allow the state, for instance, to subsidize private schools Nowhere you're going that it will take money away from public schools. That is just false. And oh, by the way, the amount of money that goes to subsidizing scholarships for a private school is minuscule. It's a rounding error as it relates to what public schools might get OK.

Dr. Ernest Duplessis:

And then when you look at and there's a great debate right now about the the efficacy of education For someone being educated in Chicago City public school system, they're getting between $17,000 and $20,000, $27,000 a year to educate that child. Our tuition is around $8,000. You can't tell me where, economically, what we're able to do for the monies that we're able to garner from that does not provide efficient, effective alternatives for what we currently have. And remember, we're not trying to replace the public school system, right, but there's a notion that everybody does not learn the same. Yes, some need smaller sizes, some need more tailored curriculum to help them learn and experiences, and those are the sorts of things that we can offer.

Keith D. Terry:

And so you know. This next question that I have is talking about ensuring academic excellence. Is there a conflict between academic excellence and spiritual development?

Dr. Ernest Duplessis:

No, those cannot be mutually exclusive. I would argue that they're mutually inclusive. In other words, if you look at the life of the young man, Daniel, or his three friends, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, who were taken to Egypt and they were the scripture records, they were 10 times more excellent than their peers. And so what I would argue to you is that they're not in conflict, they rest together, and as we're able to develop people and give them a better sense of wellbeing and who they are in those three components of their lives, then we can help properly put the importance of education in that context. But really, what helps drive our academic excellence is, number one, our teacher to student ratio. We can give more attention to our students because we're smaller. So if and I'm not faulting if you're in a public school and you've got 30 or 40 kids in there, it's hard for you to give them the attention that they need. But we have ratios that are less than 10 to 1. That's phenomenal. It allows us to really cater and tailor. Secondly, we get to develop our curriculum. Now our curriculum has to be accepted by the state. Obviously, we have our certification, so you're getting the education that you think you're getting and or you're probably getting a lot more. But then we have the opportunity to bring it together in three powerful ways.

Dr. Ernest Duplessis:

Number one individual learning. Most of what happens in a public school is teacher-centric training Teachers in front, they're giving you the lesson, you do some homework. We have a portion that's like that where it's teacher-centric, We'll teach you a concept. But then we have individual learning, where you go back and you are now plotting and setting objectives on how much you want to cover what you're learning. You're spending time and disciplining yourself about how you set goals. How do I comprehend material? And then the third type of learning that we use is then in the group. How do we bring a group together and leverage the thinking of all of those around the circle to solve the issues and the problems that our students ultimately will face in life? So we're able to bring curriculum together in a very powerful and relevant way, and for my listeners, the school is K through 12?

Keith D. Terry:

K through 12. Pretty impressive and I can tell you seeing some of the results. It was a young lady I think your valedictorian at graduation who was reading three grades below when she walked in the door to reading a grade above where she is now. Maybe I have that incorrect, but it was fun.

Dr. Ernest Duplessis:

Well, our valedictorian, when she came she was not reading because she came in pre-kindergarten, so part of the kind of preschool and when she left kindergarten she was reading at the second grade level. That young lady happened to be my granddaughter and my grandchildren go to our school and so there's going to be academic excellence, trust me, because I have an investment and there's going to be a safe environment and we're going to tend to their needs and we're going to provide kind of the leading edge things for them to think about. I have a vested interest, but also I care very much about all of our student population that are there.

Keith D. Terry:

And so let's switch a little bit now and talk about the state. Has the state made it more difficult for you to sustain yourself and grow yourself, or is it easier? I mean, the Trump administration is trying to. You know, I don't know if they're trying to make it easier for people to go to private institutions, or let's talk a little bit about that.

Dr. Ernest Duplessis:

I think well, there's a movement right now at the national level to make it easier for parents to get funding or schools to get funding for people who want to use private schools as an alternative for public schools. The state has made it harder, and that's because I've talked to some state officials and they bought into this concept that somehow we'll be taking away money from the public school, and it simply is not true. And so, from a state standpoint, the state could do a better job in helping us realizing that it doesn't have to be a zero-sum game. Somebody doesn't have to lose for somebody else to win. We can all win if our objective is to educate our children, the state's children. How do we get educated? Very rarely does one answer ever solve every problem.

Keith D. Terry:

Now what can my listeners do to help correct that level of ignorance at our city?

Dr. Ernest Duplessis:

They can talk to their legislators. They can leave a voicemail, send them a text, their legislators. They can leave a voicemail, send them a text to the legislators in our area, in their area, and tell them guess what? This notion of funding allowing private schools to receive state funding, as it relates to if a donation is given by an individual in the state, they can then deduct that on their taxes that's important to me. That's what you would say. That's important to me. We need those alternatives. And oh, by the way, those guys want to get elected, so they will listen.

Keith D. Terry:

And you know I, you know, having been on the school board, that was a, that was an argument at least maybe it's the issue down in Chicago that they always took roll call because it was dependent on. You know, if I have 100 or 10,000 or 500 kids, times X, that's how much money I get. But you know, public education needs to be, to me, revamped and how they, how they fund all of it, because the goal, if the goal is to educate the kids, and the money's there, let's appropriate it, appropriately Agreed, you know. I want to shift now a little bit to you. You wear a lot of hats. You're the chancellor, you're the pastor. Do you wearing both hats get a little confusing? How do you wear both hats?

Dr. Ernest Duplessis:

Well, I wear a lot more hats than that, as you know, right. So I'm a professor, right. I have my own consultancy, okay. So, ceo, professor, pastor, chancellor, husband, father, grandfather, all those sorts of things. I don't think they become confusing, but I do think that it requires me to be deliberate about what hat I'm wearing at any one time.

Dr. Ernest Duplessis:

So, for instance, I have a daughter who's on the school board, and so if I'm talking about school matters, am I dad or am I chancellor, or am I board member? That's very important, right, and so for a lot of people they can't. That's why I always say they say, well, what do you want me to call you? I say call me Ernest, because that at least will center me in who I am. Those other things are what I do, and so it allows me then to say which hat am I talking to you in? There's sometimes I talk to people. They come to me as their papster and I end up talking to them as a friend. That's different, and so I have to kind of disseminate that way, and so I have to kind of disseminate that way.

Keith D. Terry:

And so what advice would you give those folks? Because you know, I don't know of anyone who wears just one hat, right. And so let's talk a little bit more, because I'm interested in how you center yourself. Is it the deliberate, is it being deliberate, or is it centering yourself that drives you towards excellence in each of those hats that you wear?

Dr. Ernest Duplessis:

It's, it's. It takes time. In other words, you have to be making sure out of what resource am I showing up here, right, like today is a little nebulous, only because I'm talking about so many different roles. Yeah, you are Right, and primarily, and that's why, even as we were talking in preparation for this, I said to you okay, are we going to focus on school, are we going to talk about ministry things? Because that gives me then deliberate and then I can come back to you and at least be very candid and transparent about how I'm answering you those earlier questions about the state helping or whatever.

Dr. Ernest Duplessis:

That is, my chancellor of the school hat, right, because these are the battles that I fight as the chancellor of the school. And then there are times when I'll answer out of, kind of my ministry perspective, sometimes out of a business perspective. Somebody called me the other day it was a member and they were like look, I've got this potential real estate thing going on, and then I had to put on my MBA hat, right, my business hat. That relates to that. As long as the two parties understand, kind of where we're coming from and what hat we're speaking from, it's when they don't that I get the misalignments. Okay, you know, because somebody says pastor said now they're saying I'm in my pastor hat, I may have been talking to you as a business person. That's a terrible idea and you need to rethink it. And then it comes across as well. Why would you say something mean like that to me in your hat? So yeah, those are the sorts of things I think.

Keith D. Terry:

Well, let's talk a little bit about leadership, because I know this podcast is all about excellence and game changers. As a leader, are you wearing these hats? What leadership principles guide you? And I want to talk about the school. Really, are there leadership principles that drive you with the school, with the students versus the staff, versus the administration? Let's just talk a little bit about that.

Dr. Ernest Duplessis:

Well, I just taught a leadership seminar for our leaders at our ministry and we're going to be cascading that down to other leaders and members. But trying to help them understand, I introduced them to kind of here are the 10 leadership styles that you could have them to kind of. Here are the 10 leadership styles that you could have, and my whole ethos was, even though one or two may be dominant, what we should be going for is more of a golf bag approach, and I have a picture of a guy with his golf bag and saying look, we should all have a golf bag filled with all these clubs and those clubs represent different leadership styles and, depending on the shot you got to make, you take out the right club. Too many of the leaders are kind of one. You know, when I first learned how to play golf and I use that loosely because I still don't know how to play that well, but I was good with the driver, so I would take the driver out and I would whack the ball. It would go far. It wouldn't go straight, it would go far.

Dr. Ernest Duplessis:

But what I learned is that I couldn't use the driver on every shot. At some point I had to learn how to use the pitching wedge, and it's the same thing with leadership. There are times where, in leading the school, it has to be more of the soft touch. I'm not trying to drive it 150 yards, I'm trying to pitch it onto the green. And so how do I then collaborate with my staff more than being a more of a laissez-faire type leadership model where, okay, I trust you guys and you can handle it on your own. So for me, it's about the versatility, and I learned a lot about leadership from the military. It's about the versatility of which style is benefiting me best in this situation.

Keith D. Terry:

And you know that's interesting because that you bring the military in, and this is going to show my lack of education there. I always thought it was that there was one type of leadership style in the military. Is that true or not true? It's not true, absolutely not true.

Dr. Ernest Duplessis:

I mean you think of it as autocratic, right? Yeah, I do. I'm the general and you do what I say.

Keith D. Terry:

Right, right In the order. Get it done, right yeah yeah, and all right away.

Dr. Ernest Duplessis:

there is a hierarchy and there is a strong sense of the autocratic leadership, and I think it fits the military because, for instance, when we're in battle and we give an order, there's no time to say, well, let's have a democratic style. Do we fire the missile, do we not? No, that's not the time for you know more of that collaborative style, and so I think it fits. But if you look at our top leaders in the military and that's why some of the leadership that we're seeing today is so frustrating for me, because they lack basic leadership skills Even people who are leading departments and they're leading large branches of our government lack such basic leadership. And then you juxtapose them against a seasoned military leader, like if you've ever sat down with an admiral or a general, uh, I visited my admiral's house.

Dr. Ernest Duplessis:

There were some emergency things going on, some crises going on, and I had to go to his house to get some paper signed, talk over some issues, and he was there in his bathrobe, right A couple of coffee in his bathrobe, but you knew he was an admiral. He had a presence and he collaborated and he wasn't as Admiral. He had a presence and he collaborated and he wasn't as and this is what you'll do he understood how to talk, he understood how to bring people in, to get buy-in, and so, no, it's not one leadership style. It is reflective as heavily autocratic, but it's a lot lot more, a lot more, okay.

Keith D. Terry:

So what surprised you the most in running a school versus running a corporation? I'm curious about that. What surprised you the most in running a school versus running a corporation? I'm curious about that. What surprised you the most? Well, what surprised me most?

Dr. Ernest Duplessis:

recently is how much influence children have over their education.

Keith D. Terry:

Like I used to.

Dr. Ernest Duplessis:

It used to be, and this is the, this is the issue of agency. Okay yeah, and so it used to be. You know, it's like you won't go to this school because this is the best place for you. And mama said, or daddy said, and now what I hear is well, we don't know if Johnny's going to come to school. Johnny wants to do X or Y, and so the kids have so much more latitude as well as decision-making ability when it comes to their education, which, honestly and transparently, to me is a little bit scary because they're in the formative years. How much do you really know to make that level of a decision?

Keith D. Terry:

Yeah, wow, wow. Well, as an educator, how do you stop that?

Dr. Ernest Duplessis:

You don't stop it, you try to influence it. There's nothing you can do about how people raise their children or the agency that they give their children. You try to help the parents. Look, our school is built around the partnership with parents. Many parents have come to us and said we feel like the school is trying not our school, but public school is trying to take away our rights as parents. The kids they get to do what they want, get called what they want and they can do things and never tell that. The parents have been given essentially guardianship over these children, stewardship over the children, and we work together with them.

Keith D. Terry:

I know they love hearing that part.

Dr. Ernest Duplessis:

They do and for some of them it has been kind of such a painful visceral experience and it works. A painful visceral experience and it works Like, for instance, we had a student that was having some issues in school and we went and talked to the parents and it's like, hey, we noticed that Johnny was kind of off, you know, these last couple of days or whatever, and they said that correlates to. You know this was happening at home or whatever, and so together we're able to formulate kind of a plan of attack and get Johnny back on the right track. That's the collaboration that we believe is most effective and it's positive, it's healthy and at the end of the day, it helped the child.

Keith D. Terry:

It really is, cause I can tell you that the family, the home, is part of the educational process and system. It really is. So how important is the community buy-in in launching a mission-driven school?

Dr. Ernest Duplessis:

Community is important and you know, we were set, we developed.

Keith D. Terry:

And I know community can be a number of different ways. It could be the church community, it could be the local community. I guess I'm more thinking. I would assume that the church community was already bought in. What about the physical community of the school? Because you have to get the kids from that community.

Dr. Ernest Duplessis:

You don't have to. We have probably about 50% of our population are not what you would call Lindenhurst community Gotcha, and so I think of community as all of our surrounding areas. So whether that's Antioch, zion, north Chicago, waukegan, lindenhurst, lake, villa, gurnee, that's our community Gotcha, and obviously we'd like buy-in. But remember, it's so highly competitive education-wise and we're out in Lindenhurst the public school system is very sound, they have a very good system, and so where we tend to pull from are places where the school system is not that good, where their kids are experiencing challenges and the education's not that good, and those sorts of things. And so, once again, I don't think that starting the school depends on the community and all right away, our demographics in our community are shifting very rapidly and so what is today predominantly a white community and predominantly retirees is shifting very quickly to be multicultural and to be younger, as it relates to that.

Dr. Ernest Duplessis:

All that favors us where we are. It's kind of like we were pre-positioned here because the community that we moved into Now I'll tell you that community in general has been very supportive. In other words, when I went to the village and we talked about the vision that we have for the ministry as well as for our school. Every variance that I applied for everything that I needed to get to help us bring this to fruition, even when it came to zoning requirements, and all they were fully supportive, and so I have nothing but good things to say about our village, our community, our police department, our servants that are here, public planner those guys have been phenomenal.

Keith D. Terry:

That's great. That's really great to hear that, because you need that support. I don't have many more questions, but I do have one. Many of my listeners dream of probably starting a school, and businesses, and especially schools, value-based organizations. What one piece of advice would you give them?

Dr. Ernest Duplessis:

I would say first and foremost and here's the beauty of what I get to do my daughter chided me. I retired three times now. I retired from the US Navy. I retired from corporate America. I retired from academia. I still do academic work, but I did a retirement from doing full-time there and she goes you're the busiest retired guy that.

Keith D. Terry:

I know.

Dr. Ernest Duplessis:

I said well, I don't use the word retire, I'm just rebranding. But the thing about all the things that I do, I have a passion right, so it gets me up in the morning and it gets me going when I get up. So I would say for those that to start a business or an organization just for the money, that can be tenuous and that might not take you over, but when you have a passion for what it is that you're doing and when you're truly trying to drive greater impact, for me and my wife that's our life's work.

Keith D. Terry:

So your passions have driven you to where you your career.

Dr. Ernest Duplessis:

Yes, everything I do today I have a passion for. I was just down teaching at Northwestern yesterday for a group matter of fact, an educational group trying to help them deal with change, understand how to effectively communicate change to their organization. I have a passion to do that, so I ramble on for three hours and I engage them. Ministry I have a passion for seeing people's lives change. We were tasked with creating community, with connecting with people and serving them and then ultimately getting out of those chairs and making a difference. I have a passion to do that In my own agency in terms of helping organizations and their leaders grow, and because I have a passion to do that, so I live a great life, because everything that I do in terms of endeavor, I have a passion to do.

Keith D. Terry:

And you do it well, and you do it well and you really do it well. You know just a couple more. Where do you see the biggest innovation in private education?

Dr. Ernest Duplessis:

I think who's going to win. There's a there's a scripture in the Hebrew Bible. It's over in first Corinthians. It talks about a group of strategists. So in this particular passage is talking about they're taking a census of all the military might that they have. So I've got 50,000 people that could throw a spear. I've got 8,000 people that could do this. They get down to the small group of 200. And it describes them by saying they understand the times and they know what to do. I think in education we're going to have to be playing the long ball. Those that are going to win in education are going to understand the times that we live in and have to be playing the long ball. Those that are going to win in education are going to understand the times that we live in and how to deliver an effective education to, as the group I worked with yesterday articulated, to help these young people meet the demands of life into the future, and right now our educational system's not doing that Right.

Dr. Ernest Duplessis:

They're graduating and they don't know how to meet life's challenges, and so that's why we take a very practical stand. So we have classes like, we have electives like personal finance. I need you to understand that, as my daughter, she calls me up when she first left home and she's like dad, this letter came and it's got my name on it and they say I owe them, you know, $50 for using water. Does water cost money, right? So this notion of what are the things that are practical for them to understand, what are the academics that they need, but then how are they going to meet the demands of life and that those that figure that out and I think we are uniquely positioned to do that, because we can tailor our education to meet those needs.

Keith D. Terry:

You know, I think you're you're you're spot on, because you know I debate this with some of my friends as well, but it's at a higher level, I think. Universities. There was one point where universities, the value of a university, was kind of going down, you know, and it still might be. I still think, I still believe in education. But I do believe that there is a shift going on right now connecting. You know, in the past I'm old enough that I go to school for X and my career is A, b, you know, I think, and I owe $100,000 for X. I can only get, you know, $2,000 for A and B. So do you see a shift? I mean, I still think where study SMCA is placed is so critical because it's the early years from K to 12. You have to get those formative educational years inside. But then when you connect that to higher education, how do you think about it, dr DuPlessis, from a totality standpoint, the value of education at the higher level, right?

Dr. Ernest Duplessis:

But here's the way we essentially speak to parents and to families. What we want to do, and position the academy to be able to do, is that there are four major areas that we think about your life track could take. For some that are leaving our institution, it will be for higher education, and that's good, but that's not the only answer, because there's entrepreneurship, there's public service, there's potentially trades that are there. All of those are valid as it relates. When I worked for WW Granger 20 years ago, they said in 20 years there's going to be a shortage of those in the trades and they're right.

Dr. Ernest Duplessis:

And oh, by the way, have you had a plumber come out to your house? The guy had $150 of my money before he ever stepped foot in my house. And so there are. What we want to do at the academy is saying, look, we not only want to give you the academics so that if you want to go into college, but college is not the end, all be all. Now, look, I'm a college professor and I'm telling you it's not the end, all be all.

Dr. Ernest Duplessis:

Yes, today we have students who they're qualifying in the fifth grade to begin to take college credits at CLC, get dual credits in high school, get an exposure to that. They're going to graduate with that. We're also partnering where they have these other certificates that you could get. So say, for instance, you were interested in nail care, you could go get a certificate. We could provide the time during the day or the academic week and by the time you could earn a certificate, you could be working a part-time job professionally doing nails right. And so it's got to be this concept of we got to understand the time that there's not some one linear track, linear track. We hope to open up the aperture for them to experience all of these various things and for them, ultimately, to be able to build those building blocks to make a career.

Keith D. Terry:

Brilliant. Last question, I want you to complete this sentence the future of education belongs to those who understand the times and they know what to do.

Keith D. Terry:

Brilliantly said. Brilliantly said, dr DuPlessis. Thank you for being a part of the Next Big Thing. I think this has been a wonderful conversation, a masterpiece in purpose-driven leadership built on conviction, courage and a refusal to let tradition limit your vision. So thank you for being a part of the show. Thanks for listening to the Next Big Thing. I'm your host, keith D Terry. If you've enjoyed this episode and you'd like to support this podcast, please share it with others, post about it on social media or leave a rating and a review. To catch all the latest from me, you can follow me on my YouTube channel at Keith D Terry. If you want to recommend a guest, please email me at info at TerryPerformanceGroupcom. This has been produced by your host and Jade Productions.