Jennifer Burns loved working for a small marketing consulting firm in Evanston nearly 20 years ago.

The Fortini-Campbell Company’s clients were large corporations, Hewlett-Packard among them, and Burns—with a master’s degree in integrated marketing communications from Northwestern University—thoroughly enjoyed helping clients understand their consumers’ needs.

But another love, her first child, Ryan, made Burns walk away from her cherished senior consultant position.

“I had a heart-to-heart conversation with my husband (David) when Ryan was 4,” Burns, now 50 and a Kildeer resident, recalls. “I wanted to be home with Ryan. He was my No. 1 priority.”

She would later homeschool Ryan and the couple’s other two children, Bradley and Nicholas, who was adopted 10 years ago.

Burns put her marketing acumen to good use again in 2004, when she launched H.E.A.R.T. (Homeschool Enrichment Achieved Respectively Together), a nine-month, weekly enrichment program for students that employs passionate, Christian instructors in the areas of art, science, Spanish, physical education, music, and more.

Based in the Village Church of Barrington, H.E.A.R.T. provides students with all the “extras” that round out the education parents provide at home.

“The homeschool community in Barrington was tiny at the time,” Burns says. “But I felt there was a need for a product that would meet the needs of such a community. So I developed one.”

In early 2005 Burns’ had a vision for something bigger for homeschoolers (kindergarten through 12th grade), and in 2006 Classical Consortium Academy (CCA) opened its doors at the Village Church of Barrington, introducing students to creative learning through classical methods and subjects.

CCA is a classical, Christian hybrid school that combines the expertise and accountability of a rigorous classical school and the flexibility and nurturing of homeschooling.

“The overall philosophy of Classical Consortium Academy is that kids are capable, so much more capable, than what the world thinks they can achieve,” Burns says. “Our kids are certainly doing some heavy lifting, intellectually. They have the downtime needed to thoroughly read Dante’s Inferno and The Federalist Papers. Our seventh-graders are reading college-level textbooks, and our juniors in high school are presenting 30-page theses before panels. That level of work, time and time again, produces really good kids.

If it sounds as if Burns has found her purpose in life, it’s because she has. Two Bible verses (Galatians 6: 9-10), she says, encapsulate her calling: “And let us not grow weary while doing good, for in due season we shall reap if we do not lose heart. Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all, especially to those who are of the household of faith.”

“We’re happy to provide Christian families with an education they want, and we’re more than pleased to have established a place that has a good reputation,” Burns says. “We’re cultivating a love of wisdom and learning in our students.”

Classical Consortium Academy is located at Village Church of Barrington, 1600 East Main Street. For more information, call 847-863-6867 or visit classicalconsortiumacademy.org.