Since 2016 Chronos Academy has been creating education the hard way, from scratch. The founders of San Anselmo's new K-8 micro-school, Daniel and Celeste Ezell set out to create a curriculum in their lab school in the same fashion Elon Musk engineered an orbital rocket: from first principles. “We have this great timeline of history we wanted to give to our students… and a bunch of other subjects we know they need to succeed…” Was there a way to bring those together into a seamless whole? The inspiration they needed appeared on the bookshelf at an AirBNB weekend in Guerneville. Daniel flipped through the pages of The Timetables of History. “Everything is in here! Why not teach everything like this—in order.“
Each week, Chronos curriculum consists of lessons in each subject integrated to a time and place. These week-long lessons add up to a four-year tour through the history of humanity and our innovations over the past 10,000 years. “We’ve implemented the best of our neighboring pedagogues: narrative from Waldorf, individual concrete exploration from Montessori, unit studies from public classrooms, memory work from classical models—and focused on grit, curiosity and maturity as our motivation. We are helping to grow wonderful people,” Celeste beamed.