Totality

April 12, 2024

Barnstormers,

The “T” in Thaden stands for Totality. 

On August 21, 2017, during the first week of our founding year, our entire school headed north to the Show Me State to experience the first Great American Eclipse since 1918. We had hoped to find our best opportunity near Kansas City, but shifting weather conditions quickly sent us on a meandering path in search of blue skies elsewhere along the line the totality. We finally found our golden moment in the tiny town of California, Missouri. The ethereal ring of fire crowning that August moon marked the birth of Thaden as a school that finds its inspiration on the move and in the moment. 

Over the last seven years, our first totality has continued to float in my imagination as a symbol of a Thaden education. We serve families and students from all walks of life. We take a wholistic approach to education, inside and outside of the classroom, as we engage students in many modes of multidisciplinary inquiry. Our faculty, made of educators from all parts of the United States, invite our students to explore complex issues and questions from all angles. And our first graduates are embracing all of our United States as a land of opportunity as they pursue new educational opportunities at more than 40 different colleges from coast to coast. Of course, the opening of our lower school in the fall brings yet another layer of meaning to our aspirations as a school for totality that will serve grades K-12.      

Monday’s gathering for our second totality at Hendrix College was not quite so movable as our first, but it was equally inspiring as an expression of what our school has become after seven circuits around the sun. We launched a high-altitude balloon (that soared to elevations of more than 80,000 feet). We enjoyed a performance of Dark Side of the Moon as a musical prelude to the main event. And then we removed our solar glasses to experience Totality in the company of friends, family, and colleagues. Monday’s corona announced the arrival of Thaden School as a community of star gazers and blue-sky thinkers who are all in!  

Together we celebrate our Totality.

Clayton K. Marsh

Founding Head of School