Our Story
The Star-Splitter cohort arose in response to the pandemic, as a way to serve Covid-conscious members of the Northfield community. We threw out our preconceived notions of what a school should look like, and focused on what actually worked best for students, individually and as a group. At an age when it is most important to be mentored through the difficulties of adolescence, many teenagers are thrown into large institutions where they become one of a crush of young people; students spend perhaps fifty minutes with a teacher and then move on to the next; subjects are often isolated, without a sense of connection or wholeness. 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 become more difficult to attain. What We Discovered
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. 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-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 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. However, the required concentration for these four-hour days is not suited to everyone, and students should consider whether they learn better in a constantly changing environment before making an application.
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"I’ve An Eyeful of Fish-Scale and Star" (Annie Dillard, “Intricacy”)
Perhaps the most important distinctions of a Star-Splitter education are the idea that we can understand the macro by examining the micro--and the micro by exploring the macro--and the realization that education is a lifelong pursuit, aided by the application of the fundamental tools of learning. As a result of what we learned as a cohort, we developed a new approach to education, one that emphasizes inclusiveness, connection, and respect. Now we move forward as our own school, The Star-Splitter Academy.
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"The Star-Splitter"
We call ourselves The Star-Splitters, after the Robert Frost poem we read our first morning together, and to which we often return, in which two very different people in the same community come together to direct their thoughts through the brass barrel of a telescope, and, "standing at our leisure till the day broke, / Said some of the best things we ever said."
