ARE you LOOKING FOR SOMETHING MORE FOR YOUR CHILD?
The Sanctuary Academy may be for you.
ARE you LOOKING FOR SOMETHING MORE FOR YOUR CHILD?
The Sanctuary Academy may be for you.
The Sanctuary Academy's mission is to guide every child and parent who joins our homeschool co-op to answer the call, enter the story and change the world.
DO YOU WANT YOUR CHILD TO SEE LIFE AS AN ENDLESS STREAM OF POSSIBILITIES?
The Sanctuary Academy will Launch Your Hero's Journey!
DO YOU WANT YOUR CHILD TO SEE LIFE AS AN ENDLESS STREAM OF POSSIBILITIES?
The Sanctuary Academy will Launch Your Hero's Journey!
Our Promises to Your Child
He or she will:
Begin a Hero's Journey
Learn to be a curious, independent, lifelong learner.
DEVELOP a transforming relationship with God & become a sacrament in the world.
Discover the great adventure and enter the story.
experience and value economic, political and religious freedoms.
Cherish the arts, wonders of the physical world and the mysteries of life on Earth.
Discover his or her most precious gifts and learn to use them to solve difficult problems.
discover & JOURNEY upon the way of beauty.
DO YOU BELIEVE THAT BEAUTY WILL SAVE THE WORLD?
We do.
DO YOU BELIEVE THAT BEAUTY WILL SAVE THE WORLD?
We do.
Our Beliefs
We believe each child has a gift that can change the world in a profound way
We believe in a closely connected family of lifelong learners.
We believe in learning by being, learning by doing and learning by knowing.
We believe in religious, economic and political freedom.
We believe that the goal of education is to raise up World Changers.
A World Changer is a person transformed by an intimate relationship with Jesus Christ and the communion of His Body. A World Changer is one awakened to their particular calling and is equipped to pursue it within the Great Story.
We believe that the means of education is to provide an environment that inspires independent life-LIFELONG learning.
We believe that a child who enters an ecology of love, ordered freedom and a culture of inspired learning will awaken the seed of genius within them. We create this environment using proven processes, systems, and tools that tailor learning to your child's pace and interests while inspiring and inviting them into real-world challenges. We use the Socratic Method to activate the child's power to learn. We use adaptive software to form their core skills. We use quests to develop real-world skills. We use the Hero's Journey and intentional covenants to develop character, accountability, and virtue.
We believe that the matter of education is the Way of Beauty.
The Way of Beauty is an integrative approach to the Seven Liberal Arts (grammar, logic, rhetoric, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music) that emphasizes the radiant unity of all knowledge through liturgy, cosmos, and the Trinity. The Way of Beauty focuses on the contemplation of pattern, harmony, symmetry, and order in nature and mathematics, viewed as a reflection of the Divine Order, and recognized as such by its Beauty.
Catechesis of the Good shepherd
Do you believe in ENCOUNTERING Jesus, and ABIDING with Him?
Catechesis of the Good shepherd
Do you believe in ENCOUNTERING Jesus, and ABIDING with Him?
Forming Intentional Disciples through The Catechesis of the Good Shepherd
Jesus said, "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life." We believe that encountering Jesus as "The Way" will lead to a hunger to know Him as "The Truth" which launches them into a great adventure, a hero's journey, which is to know Him and walk with Him as "The Life." Our method is the Montessori based approach called The Catechesis of the Good Shepherd along with a culture of Beauty.
Our Founders
Our Founders
The Sanctuary Academy Founders
Kelly & Michael Sullivan have a calling to transformation - serving people, families and communities to be transformed into the world changers they are called to be. They do this primarily through their family and their businesses and organizations. They are mother and father to seven world changers.
As homeschoolers, they have experimented with a number of educational approaches and have helped to start new educational initiatives, however, they recognized gaps in what they were able to provide their children and hungered to see a more dynamic experience for them. Being involved with the Acton Institute in Grand Rapids, MI for more than 15 years, they became aware of what Jeff and Laura Sandefer were doing with the Acton Academy in Austin, TX from the beginning.
Being selected to start an Acton Academy is a dream come true and they hope to make a unique contribution by being the first intentionally Catholic expression of the model through the use of Catechesis of the Good Shepherd (a Montessori based encounter approach to faith formation) and The Way of Beauty (an approach to enculturation that amplifies the Hero’s Journey as a quest that makes the hero’s life a Beautiful work of art that gives the world a transforming Beauty). Their goal is to build this uniquely Catholic model in such a way that it can be duplicated and scale to transform Catholic education in America and beyond.
The Sanctuary Academy is deploying the Acton model as a three day homeschool-hybrid co-op with a group of committed families who are seeking this extra-ordinary way to awaken wonder in their children.
Kelly Sullivan, Founder
Kelly is married to Michael and has homeschooled their seven children prior to the founding of the Sanctuary Academy. She is a classically trained ballerina with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Texas Christian University. She was a member of the Storling Dance Company for a number of years and worked at the Culture House in Kansas City. She has taught dance for many years at all levels. Kelly is also a trained Catechist in the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd method and has started three CGS programs in the Chicagoland area. She is also a Wellness Advocate with dōTERRA Essential Oils, and leads and coaches a team of people on how to be a healer in the home and become financially free.
Michael Sullivan, Founder
Michael is married to Kelly and the father to seven children who attend The Sanctuary Academy. He is an attorney and businessman focusing on social entrepreneurship. He grew up in an entrepreneurial home where starting and working in family businesses (and wearing many hats) was just normal life. He studied philosophy and Irish literature at the University College Dublin in Ireland. He has studied Business Studies at the University of Limerick, and Theology at the Augustine Institute in Colorado. He has a juris doctorate from Ave Maria School of Law where he served on the editorial board of the law review and developed an interest in the spiritual and practical principles of a healthy human ecology in law and business. He was awarded a Jordan Peterson Fellowship at the Acton School of Business and studied for an MBA there. He is an investor in various initiatives and businesses that have a common theme of making a positive impact to transform lives and culture.
jocelyn o’Leary, Co-Founder
Jocelyn is a classically trained musician with a Bachelor of Science in Music Education from Xavier University. Upon graduating from Xavier, Jocelyn received her Commission into the United States Army as an Adjutant General Officer and served for 8 years, including an apprenticeship under the Commander of the U.S. Army Band Europe. Since beginning her journey into homeschooling her six sons, Jocelyn has also become a trained Catechist in the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd method and has helped to start a CGS program in the Chicago area. In 2019, Jocelyn fulfilled a long held dream of co-founding the Cadence Youth Orchestra on the northside of Chicago. When she is not working to support the Sanctuary Academy or Cadence, you will likely find Jocelyn running with her boys, baking sourdough bread or reading one of the half dozen books on her nightstand.
Laura Sandefer, ADVISOR
Laura lived on both US coasts and in between as a child, then settled into Vanderbilt University for her undergraduate studies in the College of Arts and Science.
After being awarded the highly competitive Walter Wattles Fellowship at Lloyd’s of London, Laura worked in the aviation insurance industry in New York City. Deciding to follow her calling into the world of education, Laura returned to Nashville and earned her Master of Education at Peabody College. This led her to her work at the Oklahoma Arts Institute, creating fine arts education programs for teachers and talented high school students.
Laura married Jeff Sandefer and is the happy mother of Sam and Charlie and step-mother to Taite. It is the inspiration of these children that led Laura and Jeff to co-found Acton Academy.
Her greatest hero is her mother who was a Master Teacher. Her wisest mentor is her father who sent her off to college with two words of advice: "Be curious".
David Clayton, Advisor
David is an Englishman living in New Hampshire, USA. He is an artist, teacher, published writer and broadcaster who holds a permanent post as Artist-in-Residence and Lecturer in Liberal Arts at the Thomas More College of Liberal Arts. The Way of Beauty program, which is offered at TMC, focuses on the link between Catholic culture, with a special emphasis on art, and the liturgy. David was received into the Church in London in 1993.
Joseph o’leary, co-founder
Joe is a classically trained musician who double majored in violin performance and accounting, earning his Bachelor of Science in Accounting from Xavier University. Joe began working for PricewaterhouseCoopers as a Certified Public Accountant in 2001. After marrying Jocelyn, Joe moved to Germany, learned the German language in an immersion school and began work for PricewaterhouseCoopers in Karlsruhe, Germany. Upon returning to the United States in 2006, Joe worked for Alvarez and Marsal in its forensic accounting practice. In 2008 Joe accepted a position with JPMorgan Chase and is still working there, now as an Executive Director. As a lifelong learner, Joe eagerly accepted the opportunity to join the leadership team of the Sanctuary Academy. On weekends you will find him tending the family garden, playing a raucous game of ball with his boys or playing his violin.
Jeff Sandefer, ADVISOR
Jeff Sandefer lives a dual life as an entrepreneur and a Socratic Guide.
As an entrepreneur, he founded his first company at age 16 and went on to found or co-found seven successful businesses.
As a Socratic teacher at the University of Texas, Jeff's students five times voted him the school's Outstanding Teacher and Businessweek named him one of the top Entrepeneurship professors in America. Jeff went on to co-found the Acton School of Business, an MBA program perennially ranked by the Princeton Review among the best in the nation. In 2012 The Economist honored him as one of the top fifteen Business School professors in the world.
Jeff is a graduate of the Harvard Business School, where he served for over twenty years on the school's governing committees. He was a longtime director of the Philanthropy Roundtable and National Review magazine and one of the youngest members ever elected to the Texas Business Hall of Fame.
