Montessori Makers Institute
Develop your leadership through live case work, sustained counsel, or independent study, with Montessori as the reasoning framework.
New leadership programs
Independent study, a middle leadership cohort, and private board learning. Each has its own format and price, alongside the seasonal Workshop, Intensive, and Systems Cohort catalog.
New heads and directors
Turn the first months of leadership into a workable entry plan. Read, consider authored cases, compare model responses, and build your plan in the companion workbook.
Self-paced · Seven modules
Coordinators and team leads
Lead adults with clear authority and the backing of your head of school. Develop coaching conversations, useful accountability, and a shared understanding of your role.
Live cohort · Three 3-hour sessions
One school’s board and head
Build a clearer working relationship between the board and head. A standard governance curriculum, delivered privately to your school, with time to work through roles, decisions, and accountability.
Private school delivery · Zoom or onsite
$5,500 / $7,500
USD per school · Zoom / onsite, plus agreed travel for onsite
Inquire about private delivery
Explore the programGraduates of our existing Institute programs receive six months of Leadership Meridian free, so the practice continues after the cohort ends. Existing participant benefits remain unchanged. The new leadership programs above have their own inclusions; Meridian access is not included in those listings.
Why it exists
Most leadership training prepares people for leadership. This builds capacity while you're already in it.
In our live work with school leaders, we work with your actual situation, your team, your constraints, your community, using Montessori as the framework for real decisions. First Ninety Days offers a different route: independent study with authored fictional cases, model responses, and a workbook.
“Usually I leave with ideas. This time I left with next steps.”
Who it’s for
Heads of school navigating the full complexity of the role, the organizational decisions, the adult culture challenges, the moments no training addressed.
Directors, associate heads, and emerging leaders building the capacity to lead before stepping fully into it.
Leadership teams that need to think and work together more effectively, across the full range of decisions a Montessori school demands.
Heads of School
Navigating the full organizational and cultural complexity of school leadership.
Emerging Leaders
Building leadership capacity before stepping fully into a head role.
Leadership Teams
Developing shared language and alignment across the full leadership function.
Programs
Each format represents a different depth of engagement, from the flagship program down to a single session. All built for people actively in leadership, not preparing for it.
Full academic year · Charter Cohort begins Fall 2027
$9,500 · September 2027–June 2028
Six modules in one academic year for Montessori heads of school. Nine monthly online cohort sessions, six individual coaching conversations, and a two-day Chicago capstone, with guided reading and applied work in your own school. The first Charter Cohort runs September 2027–June 2028. Application-based and personally reviewed.
1:1, sustained, application-based
By application · limited availability
The Institute's highest-commitment 1:1 offering. A sustained, one-to-one engagement built around a single leader navigating significant transition, elevated responsibility, or a critical period of organizational change. Application-based. Limited availability.
Team-based, on-site or residential
Custom, per leadership team
For leadership teams, not individuals. A structured retreat that surfaces misalignment, works through shared challenges, and builds the shared language teams need to actually function.
Monthly, ongoing cohort
$1,500 for the year · 2026–27 enrollment closed · 8 to 12 seats
A standing peer cohort for active leaders. Monthly sessions, structured reflection, and shared problem-solving with peers who understand the work. Not a course, a practice.
Multi-day, cohort-based
$900 · paused, Summer 2027 waitlist
A multi-day immersion into Montessori leadership practice. Works through real cases, team dynamics, and the specific demands of leading adults in a Montessori school.
Half-day & full-day sessions
From $200 · new sessions monthly
Focused sessions on specific leadership challenges, difficult conversations, strategic communication, adult culture, decision-making under pressure. Immediately applicable. No prerequisites.
Teacher Preparation
The Institute develops school leaders. The Residency is a separate, planned teacher preparation program. It is not enrolling and awaits Illinois state authorization. A start date has not been announced.
What makes this different
Montessori as a reasoning framework
Not just a pedagogy. Montessori offers a principled way of thinking about adult development, organizational design, and human environments. Every program applies it to real leadership decisions.
Practice matched to the format
Live case work draws on the situations leaders bring. First Ninety Days uses authored fictional cases, model responses, and a workbook for independent study.
Formation, not information
The goal isn’t to give you more to read or implement. It’s to change how you think, how you reason, and how you hold the complexity of leading a Montessori school.
Across the arc of leadership
From a first seminar to months of direct counsel, every format is calibrated to a specific depth and kind of need. You don’t have to do it all, you start where it makes sense.
Outcomes
Not a credential. Not a model to roll out. A different way of seeing the work, and the people you lead.
In the ecosystem
Advisory
Strategic consulting for Montessori schools navigating organizational decisions, governance challenges, and structural change. Advisory addresses the systems; the Institute develops the leaders who run them.
Explore Advisory →Toolbox
Practical tools, frameworks, and resources built for Montessori school leaders. What you’re developing in the Institute, you can put to work with Toolbox resources.
Explore Toolbox →About Montessori Makers Group
Montessori Makers Group is the organization behind the Institute, Advisory, and Toolbox. Learn about the mission, the founder, and the thinking behind the work.
About Montessori Makers Group →Frequently Asked
The Montessori Makers Institute is the leadership-formation arm of Montessori Makers Group. It offers applied seminars, the multi-day Leadership Intensive, the year-long Leadership Circle cohort, and Direct Counsel one-to-one advising, all built specifically around the actual work of Montessori heads of school, directors, and senior leaders.
The Leadership Circle is a year-long Montessori leadership cohort for heads of school, owners, and senior directors. It runs September through May with 9 monthly 90-minute live online sessions (not recorded), capped at 8 to 12 members. Tuition is $1,500 for the full cohort. Enrollment is closed to new participants for 2026–27. Sessions are case-based: members bring real, current leadership challenges and work them in confidence with peers and Hannah Richardson.
The Leadership Intensive is a focused 3-day Montessori leadership program for heads of school and senior leaders who need to compress strategic leadership development into a short, immersive cohort. The Summer 2026 cohort is paused; the next cohort is planned for Summer 2027 with dates to be announced. Tuition is $900. Join the waitlist to be notified when registration opens.
A Montessori leadership seminar is a structured professional development format for school leaders that combines applied case work, frameworks specific to Montessori organizational design, and peer learning. Unlike generic education leadership programs, Montessori leadership seminars address the specific tensions of running a Montessori school, staff culture, parent education, equity, the prepared environment, and financial sustainability inside a developmental philosophy.
Montessori heads of school typically develop through a combination of: cohort-based leadership programs (such as the Montessori Makers Institute Leadership Circle), applied seminars on specific operational topics, one-to-one advising, peer learning groups, and ongoing reading. Generic K, 12 leadership programs rarely fit because they do not engage the developmental philosophy that defines Montessori practice. Programs like the Montessori Makers Institute exist to fill that gap.
The Montessori Makers Institute is for heads of school, owners, executive directors, and senior leaders inside Montessori schools, both AMS- and AMI-trained leaders, public charter and independent schools, founders and successors, and leaders new to the role as well as veterans. Most participants lead schools of 30 to 400 students.
The Montessori Makers Institute is independent. It is not an AMI- or AMS-credentialing body and does not issue Montessori teacher credentials. It works alongside both, most participants come from one or the other lineage. Our Residency program is a separate, planned teacher preparation offering. It is not enrolling and awaits Illinois state authorization.
Because children experience the organization adults create.
You're already carrying it, the decisions, the team tensions, the situations no one fully prepared you for.
The quality of adult leadership shapes everything children experience in a Montessori school. This is not professional development. It's the work.
Advisory addresses systems · The Institute develops the leaders who run them
The Makers Network
Free. No noise. Just what matters to people doing this work.
