ABOUT DAWN TREADER ACADEMY
Our Story
Dawn Treader Academy was not the fulfillment of a lifelong plan to start a school. For years, the idea seemed a little crazy.
Our Head of School, Chris Ratliff, came to education almost by accident. An English Literature major with a particular love for C.S. Lewis and the great works of the Western tradition, he originally imagined pursuing graduate school and teaching at the college level. Instead, life led him into Christian education, where he spent more than fifteen years teaching, coaching, and serving in a variety of academic and administrative roles.
Those years taught him a great deal about how schools work: how to teach and manage a classroom, build courses and schedules, assess student learning, select curriculum, and organize the many systems that keep a school running. But they also raised a more fundamental question:
What is school actually for?
Over time, Chris became increasingly convinced that education should be about more than completing assignments, checking boxes, or simply looking like a successful school. Students need knowledge, but they also need wisdom. They need time to wrestle with difficult ideas, opportunities to pursue a subject deeply, and teachers who are willing to linger when something has not been understood and move forward when it has. And in a Christian school, faith should not be something added around the edges of an otherwise ordinary education. The pursuit of truth, wisdom, character, and Christ should belong together.
Still, starting a school wasn't the plan. Friends had suggested it over the years, and the suggestion was usually dismissed as unrealistic. That changed in 2026, when an unexpected career transition forced Chris and his wife to consider what education would look like for their own children. With few local options that matched what they were looking for, the crazy idea stopped seeming quite so crazy.
What followed was a summer of learning, planning, and more than a little uncertainty. A Christian-school startup workshop helped turn an idea into a possibility. Mentors helped turn that possibility into a plan. Curriculum was researched and purchased, courses were designed, partnerships were formed, and plans for accreditation began. A meeting with another small Christian school offered a glimpse of how a school built around grade bands and small classes could grow over time.
Then came the question of where this new school could actually meet.
Chris and his wife decided simply to ask their pastor whether their church might be willing to host it. What they did not know was that their pastor and his wife had already been praying about how their church might become involved in Christian education. What began as a conversation grew into a partnership, and First Southern Baptist Church of Buckeye ultimately welcomed Dawn Treader Academy into its church community and facilities.
Not everything unfolded according to plan. Early interest did not always become enrollment. Plans for larger grade bands and more teachers had to give way to a much smaller beginning. But by then, the question was no longer whether everything was in place. It was whether the school was worth beginning with what we had.
We believed it was.
The night before Dawn Treader Academy's first day of school, a powerful monsoon swept through the Valley, uprooting trees and leaving water inside the building. Early the next morning, Chris arrived to dry the floors, turn on the air conditioning, and lay out the books for the day.
Then the students arrived.
On August 10, 2026, with a roomful of curriculum, a very small group of students, and considerably more plans than people, Dawn Treader Academy began the same way we hope to continue: gathered together around a good book. Our first school day opened with Chapter One of C.S. Lewis's The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
The school is still in its first chapter. It is smaller than we originally imagined, and we do not know exactly what it will look like years from now. But perhaps that is fitting for a school named for a ship sailing into the unknown.
We may not know everything the voyage will hold. But we know the direction we are sailing.
And we hope that, years from now, the students and families who shared these early voyages will look back on their time at Dawn Treader Academy as something more than school—as part of their lives that changed them permanently for the better.
WHY DAWN TREADER?
A Name for the Journey
"And there were some standing on the quay who would have given all they had to come with us. It was thought a finer thing then to have a cabin boy's berth on the Dawn Treader than to wear a knight's belt."
— C. S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
The Dawn Treader is a ship sailing toward Aslan's Country. Its crew knows the direction they are traveling, but they do not know exactly what they will encounter along the way. The voyage takes them into unfamiliar places, brings unexpected challenges and discoveries, and changes the people who make it.
This is part of what drew us to the name.
When Dawn Treader Academy began, we did not know exactly what the school would become. In many ways, we still don't. We don't know every student who will join us, every opportunity or challenge ahead, or what DTA will look like years from now. But we know the direction we are sailing.
We want to move toward Christ--to pursue what is true, good, and beautiful, and to grow in knowledge, wisdom, character, and faith along the way. And like the travelers aboard the Dawn Treader, we hope the people who make this journey together will be changed by it. Eustace's transformation is the most dramatic example in the story, but none of the travelers return quite the same as when the voyage began.
That is our hope for Dawn Treader Academy. Not simply that students will complete courses, earn credits, and eventually graduate, but that the years they spend here will matter--that through good books, difficult questions, faithful teachers, friendships, challenges, discoveries, and encounters with truth, they will become different people than they would have been otherwise.
We don't know everything the voyage will hold.
But we know the direction we are sailing.
WHAT GUIDES US?
Our vision gives us a destination. Our mission describes how we pursue it together.
VISION
Dawn Treader Academy exists to honor Christ by forming students who carry His mission into the world as competent and faithful ambassadors of His Kingdom.
MISSION
We partner with families to build a community where every student belongs, educating them in the Great Books and the Western Christian tradition, so that biblical character and academic rigor are formed together as a single pursuit, and our graduates leave informed of the past, conversant with the present, and equipped for whatever lies ahead.
WHAT WE BELIEVE
Dawn Treader Academy is unapologetically Christian. Our faith is not an addition to the education we provide or a subject confined to Bible class. We believe that all truth belongs to God, and that every part of education--from literature and history to mathematics and science--should be understood in light of who He is and the world He has made.
We also believe that education is about the formation of the whole person. We want our students to grow not only in knowledge and academic ability, but in wisdom, character, discernment, and faithfulness. Our goal is not to shelter students from difficult ideas, but to equip them to encounter those ideas thoughtfully, evaluate them in light of Scripture, and engage the world with both conviction and grace.
Because this shared foundation shapes the life and direction of our school, families who join Dawn Treader Academy should understand our Christian commitments and be prepared to support the school as it teaches and lives consistently with them. Our Statement of Faith explains those commitments more fully.