OUR STORY

Headline: The Retired Professors Who Sold Everything for a Country They Couldn't Find on a Map

Dr. Tim Slater and Dr. Stephanie Slater spent decades in higher education before they ever set foot in the Dominican Republic. Tim had built a career studying how schools work; Stephanie, a cognitive scientist, had spent hers studying how people learn. When they left the university world, they didn't exactly slow down. They bought a farm in Hilo, Hawaii, cows, horses, pigs, and all, and went on to run statewide education programs from there. Then, in early 2021, that work evaporated almost overnight when COVID-19 shut it down.

What happened next didn't come with a plan attached. Tim describes it simply as a compelling, unexplainable pull toward a country neither of them had ever visited and whose language neither of them spoke. He had to look up where the Dominican Republic was. In January 2021, in the middle of the pandemic, the Slaters sold the farm and moved there anyway, still not knowing why.

“I don't know how God talked to Jonah, but I did not want to get inside a whale,” Tim says of the decision. “So I said, okay, where's the Dominican Republic anyway?”

For nine months, they waited. Then, separately, two families in Cabrera approached them and asked if they knew anything about starting a school. Both families had been recruited internationally to work in middle management at a nearby resort hotel, part of the town's small, transient community of expatriate professionals. Neither family lives in Cabrera anymore, both moved on to jobs elsewhere long ago, but the question they asked stuck.

The Slaters said no twice. God had sent them to the Dominican Republic, they reasoned, not to a classroom. A third conversation changed their minds. In September 2022, Cabrera Christian Classical Academy opened with six students. Today it enrolls more than 40, holds its first U.S. accreditation, and is entering its fifth school year.

“We still didn't know why we were there,” Tim says. “And then, at some point, the two-by-four hit, and we realized we needed to start a school so children could come to know God and their families could begin to know Christ.”

Fast facts for reference

•  Arrived in the Dominican Republic: January 2021, having never visited and not speaking Spanish

•  Waited approximately 9 months before the first request to start a school

•  School founded: September 2022, with six students

•  Today: more than 40 students, first comprehensive U.S. accreditation awarded May 2026

•  Both Slaters previously worked in higher education; left the university world for a farm in Hilo, Hawaii, and statewide education programs, before moving to the Dominican Republic in January 2021

About Cabrera Christian Classical Academy

Cabrera Christian Classical Academy is a K-12 classical Christian school in Cabrera, Dominican Republic, educating roughly 40 students from Dominican, Haitian, and international families. Instruction is in English, delivered by missionary teachers, and grounded in a classical curriculum built to raise up wise and virtuous leaders. The school was founded by Dr. Tim Slater and Dr. Stephanie Slater, both retired university professors, and operates as a US 501(c)(3) nonprofit. Learn more at cabrerachristian.org.