What do you remember of your middle and high school education?

Our Story

The Star-Splitter Academy was born of a need to create a joyful, inclusive, progressive, and connective learning environment for COVID-conscious members of the community.

Learning how to learn, learning how to fail meaningfully, learning how to integrate all that one learns, learning how wonder and creativity and analysis are connected--all of these became central to our form of education.

What do you remember of your middle and high school education?

What We Discovered

The Star-Splitter approach to education creates a tight-knit, inclusive community where students learn to write and think clearly, where they learn the tools of critical thinking and apply those tools to a range of interrelated subjects—from science to history, drama to literature—and where they come to understand that education is cumulative, and that true understanding comes from an integration of such academic disciplines.

Because our enrollment is limited to fifteen, we face one another in the classroom daily. We learn to discuss and disagree. We learn how to “Yes, and” one another in improv games. In other words, we come to know one other in a safe environment, where mistakes are avenues for exploration, rather than shame, and respect for others, rather than gossip, is the rule of law.

The Star-Splitters take Deep Dives into Deep Time within particular subjects—constitutional law, sleep studies, 3D printing, and cancer research, among others—in which the class spends four hours of concentrated study daily for approximately three weeks.

Dives are led by Star-Splitter head Bill Coleman, often in collaboration with other experts and professionals currently working in their fields. Because our classroom is small, we are able to know each student's strengths and challenges and to suit tasks and expectations to individual needs.

As a result of what we learned, we developed a new approach to education, one that emphasizes inclusiveness, connection, and respect.

  • Makers / Mentors

    The Star-Splitters learn from current, dynamic makers in their fields who connect concepts to the present moment and inspire students to know that they, too, can be innovative makers in whatever field in which they choose to work.

    Recent co-teachers have included former Harvard teaching fellow Sanda Moore Coleman (winner of Poets and Writers Magazine’s Maureen Egen Award); attorney Chris Yoder, who, as part of Baron & Budd’s Opioid Litigation Group, has been instrumental in bringing about the recent settlements that will provide community support throughout the country; 3D maker and speculative fiction writer Joel Ewy, who regularly publishes in Boundary Shock Quarterly; and Rachel Yoder, a leading cancer researcher.

  • Makers / Making

    Creativity. Clarity. Wonder.

    The Star-Splitters learn the designs of well-made things, from paragraphs to poems; 3D printed inventions to scientific studies; songs that follow the circle of fifths to the circle of the hero's journey; the structure of the Constitution to the structure of a chromosome.

    At the end of each three-week deep-dive, students demonstrate their understanding of the subject at hand by making something of their inquiry: orreries; zoetropes; a model of the human brain; a hand-made mosaic of the moon’s phases; clay sculptures of Plato and Aristotle in their poses from the center of Raphael’s The School of Athens; legal arguments; a rap dramatizing Hobbes’ and Bergson’s theories of comedy; poems; stories; paintings; Shakespearean monologues; a sequel to Aristophanes’s The Clouds.

  • Education is Personal

    Because our enrollment is limited to fifteen, we face one another in the classroom daily. We learn to discuss and disagree. We learn Rappoport's Rules and how to “Yes, and” one another in improv games. In other words, we come to know one other in a safe environment, where “wrong” is an avenue for exploration, rather than shame, and respect for others, rather than gossip, is the rule of law.

    The Star-Splitter approach to education creates a tight-knit community where students learn to write and think clearly, where they learn the tools of critical thinking and apply those tools to a range of interrelated subjects—from science to history, drama to literature—, and where they come to understand that education is cumulative, and that true understanding comes from an integration of such academic disciplines.

  • Wake to Wonder

    Before we meet in-person each day, we Wake to Wonder on Zoom, via short videos made just for us by poets, writers, filmmakers, musicians, actors, entrepreneurs, and community-makers from throughout the country. A kind of intellectual amuse-bouche, this time together provides a taste of something great that whets the appetite and expands the palette. It sets the tone for the day, sets synapses firing. By the time we all arrive on campus an hour later, we are ready to connect further.

    Guests have included Grammy Award-winning singer/songwriter Lucinda Williams, New York Times bestselling author Grant Snider, actor David Snell (The Shield, Silicon Valley), advertising executive Lars Larsen (Kraft, Nabisco, Kellogg’s), and producer/writer/director Susan Lyles, the founder of And Toto Too, a non-profit theatre in Denver that showcases new work by women writers.

  • Deep Time

    Our form of education is designed to allow students to gain a felt understanding of the integration of knowledge, even as they learn to build constructive conversations and grow together into a trusting, joyful, generative learning community.