Annual Events
At the Star-Splitter Academy, our traditions have emerged organically from our curriculum and community.
Throughout the year, we find ways to be generous with one another and with others. This is the essence of the culture of “yes and,” the principle that works within us whether we are giving our time and effort to a charitable organization, piping out Robert Burns’s “Willie Stewart” as members of the Star-Splitter All-Kazoo Marching band, devising hand-made gifts for fellow Star-Splitters for the annual gift exchange, or engaging in any other of the celebratory events that enliven our year.
For Star-Splitters, performance is a natural extension of education. Students sing Emily Dickinson to the tune of “The Star of the County Down,” perform The Outline Dance in Whoville’s Whopreme Court, give public readings of their own poetry and prose. Star-Splitters seek ways to dramatize and share all that they learn.
Ad Astra Adventure
At the end of our first week of school, parents and students embarked on our first annual Star-Splitter Academy Ad Astra Adventure, a start-of-the-year field trip in which, as with all our adventures, learning and wonder are one.
This year, we traveled to the Kansas Cosmosphere, where we learned about the science that propels our exploration of space: we saw actual spacecraft, hardware, and spacesuits used in exploratory missions; a hands-on demonstration of rocketry presented in the style of Michael Faraday by a wonderful local music student named Jasper; then headed to the planetarium theatre, where we were immersed in the night sky--the visible constellations and deep-space nebulae and galaxies that can be seen in each season.
When Orion, the constellation that figures prominently in the Frost poem that gives our school its name, emerged above us, we couldn't help but cheer!
Homecoming
In October we gather for homecoming. New students, continuing students, alumni, and their families come together around the bonfire for an evening of conversation, fun, and, of course, s’mores. At sunset, we settle down to listen to a reading of Poe’s “The Raven” by Mr. Coleman, supported by the Star-Splitter Raven Chorus.
The Star-Splitter Christmas Show
Every moment of the annual Star-Splitter Christmas show is inspired by something we studied or by an idea or a joke that we shared in class. This year we explored the cosmos, decoded the language of computers, considered mathematical concepts, examined the 1920s through its technological and
cultural advances; and once again took up poems to remind us of not just what we learn, but why we learn it.
All of these moments translated to an original parody of a Christmas classic, “It’s The Most Star-Splitter Time of the Year”; Henry leading us in Monty Python’s “The Galaxy Song”; a comic sketch inspired by a joke made in class: “The Monkey’s Pa(w); Oliver and Juan, as Robot and Costello, performing a logic-gate version of “Who’s On First,” entitled “Not’s On First”; a NASA-themed original parody of a Singin’ in the Rain number, “Make ’Em Math!”; and Lydia and Hadley’s Houdini-inspired mind-reading act, The Chromatic
Clairvoyants.
The Star-Splitter Gift Exchange
Before Christmas break begins, The Star-Splitters exchange hand-crafted gifts. From a dragon made of masking tape and clay to a mythologically accurate Thor’s hammer necklace made of two Jenga blocks, each present is thoughtfully and uniquely made for a fellow Star-Splitter.
Poetry Out Loud
Each year, our students take part in Poetry Out Loud, the nationwide poetry recitation program sponsored by The Poetry Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.
In 2023, Juan Garcia won the Regional Competition and was named First Runner-up at the State Competition in Topeka. In 2022, Star-Splitter Finn Frock won First Runner-Up at the Regional Competition.
Star-Splitter Juan Garcia won First Runner-up at the 2023 Poetry Out Loud State Competition in Topeka, KS.
Spring Garden Party
In April 2023, the Star-Splitters held their second annual Garden Party in the Friendship Garden. Star-Splitter families gathered under a banner hand-painted by Star-Splitter students in Amy Waliczek’s Friday yoga class. The students recited their own spring poems, performed original parodies of Chaucer and William Carlos Williams, created new versions of the Chicken Dance, and sang “Here Comes the Sun” and “Comedy Tonight.”
Spring Adventure
Star-Splitters learn—and apply their learning—everywhere. In May 2022 we inaugurated our annual spring field trip, A Star-Splitter Spring Adventure, by traveling together to Coronado Heights and to the Birger Sandzen Memorial Art Gallery in Lindsborg, Kansas.
As we explored the dramatic terrain and art, we explored and applied our understanding of what we've been learning about in class, including The Great Depression, the WPA, angle-of-elevation trigonometric problems, ekphrasis, dramatic monologues, and composition in visual art.
Our adventure not only connected us to our learning (allowing us to see and feel again how everything we learn is connected), it also connected us more deeply to members of our Star-Splitter community:
Lydia's great-grandfather helped build Coronado Heights in the 1930s as part of a Works Progress Administration project in the Great Depression. (We reenacted a photo that he had shared with us from his time.)
Ian, Oliver, and Henry's grandfather, Dr. Brock McKay, an expert on Birger Sandzen, led us to see the remarkable changes in Sandzen's style over the course of his career and how devoted he was to making great art available to all, especially during the Great Depression.
Arora and West's father, artist Eric Schmidt, spoke to us about the deeply playful, metaphorical work on display at the Sandzen gallery by family friends and fellow-artists Connie and John Ernatt.
We recited Chaucer in the great stone room at Coronado Heights; we sang Emily Dickinson's poem about hope being heard in the strongest gales as we walked though the plains' great winds; Finn calculated the height of Coronado Heights with a hand-made inclinometer and an understanding of trigonometry; and we wrote ekphrastic poems that led us deeper into the works of art before us.
In 2023, we traveled to Topeka for the annual Kansas Silent Film Festival, which this year was celebrating films from the 1920s, which the Star-Splitters explored during our deep dive into that decade, including the thrilling comedy Safety Last, starring Harold Lloyd.
Our adventure also included a guided tour of the Topeka Civic Theatre, the oldest continuously running community dinner theatre in the country, and a tour of the Brown v. Board of Education museum.
Kansas Voices
Each year, our students compete in the annual Kansas Voices Writing Contest, sponsored by the Winfield Arts and Humanities Council.
Star-Splitters Oliver, Hadley, Lydia, and Chessie won six out of the eight youth division prizes at the 2023 Kansas Voices Writing Contest, including first place in poetry and in prose. The competition received over 400 entries from across the state. The four Star-Splitters received their awards and gave a public reading of their work at a ceremony held at the Marquee Performing Arts Center in Winfield.
Last year, at the 2022 Kansas Voices Writing Contest, Star-Splitters Lydia, Arora, and Ian together won five of the seven youth division prizes in poetry and prose.
Community Service
Community service is central to a Star-Splitter education.
The Star-Splitters regularly stock a community refrigerator for the ICT Community Fridge Project and have taken part in community service art projects, in which the students decoratively paint windows at Alzheimer's care facilities.
Star-Splitter Game Show!
For the last day before summer break, Star-Splitters Arora and Finn prepared a Jeopardy-style game incorporating the year's curriculum. We quickly decided that it would be an end-of-the-year tradition.
Categories included "The History of Comedy and Some Shakespeare," "Law and Science," "Design and Machinery," "Monsters and Cinderella," and "Allusions and More Allusions."
Sample questions included the following:
Who said, "Euclid alone has looked on beauty bare"?
What are two reasons the witches' dialogue in Macbeth is so scary?
"How easy is a bush supposed a bear" is an example of which perceptual phenomenon? (Extra credit if you can name three parts of the brain that are involved.)
Subtly create confusion by utilizing polysemy in a conversation with one of the hosts.
Mr. Hyde trampling a child is an example of which case law?
What is the title for the people Eratosthenes employed to pace out the distance between Syene and Alexandria so that he could conduct an experiment to determine the circumference of the Earth?
In Robert Frost's poem "The Star-Splitter," how much did the "good glass" cost?
Name two conditions that must be met for a scientific study to be ethical.
In a conversation with one of the hosts, name all of the six simple machines of physics without making it seem like you are doing so.
In which version of Cinderella does she flee to a dovecote?.
The Call to Adventure
A Star-Splitter Graduation / Bindle Ceremony
One of the pleasures of starting a new school is discovering new traditions, ones that emerge organically from what we’ve learned together.
In May 2023, we held our second annual Call to Adventure, a ceremony in which our seniors enact the shape of the hero’s journey to commemorate their completion of one part of their education: having been called to adventure, they entered the unknown, gained life-affirming knowledge, and brought it back with them to the community.
One journey’s end is another’s beginning. In order to prepare them for their next hero’s journey beyond The Star-Splitter Academy, their classmates presented each graduate with small, meaningful gifts to pack in their
bindles (a practice we derived from our study of folktales and fairy tales).
The ceremony also featured Sanda Moore Coleman, who gave a talk on the power of saying “yes and,” and Anna Christensen, who had led the Star-Splitters in a master class on jazz vocal improvisation earlier in the year, singing “Pomp and Circumstance” and “On the Sunny Side of the Street” a cappella.
