Meaningful Learning, Mindfully Designed
Join Meridian Learning for a grassroots microschool meetup in Chicagoland! Established microschools, microschools in progress, inspired teachers and parents are all welcome.
When: Thursday, July 25, 2024 at 1-2:30 pm Where: Michigan City Public Library
RSVP via email by July 15th: Join@Meridian-Learning.org
The microschool movement is focused on sustainability, not “school choice.” “School choice” is largely being funded by billionaires with a goal to privatize public schools. The grassroots microschool movement, which evolved from the desire to incorporate the freedom and flexibility of homeschooling with the benefits of traditional schooling, operates outside of any movement to privatize public schools or shift funding to private schools. We have never needed public schools to “fail” in order for grassroots microschools to succeed, and we never will.
Meridian Learning supports educational options and continues to advocate for long-standing microschools, as well as new and aspiring alternatives with a focus on sustainability.
Visit our grassroots microschools directory to discover microschool options near you or join our network of grassroots microschools — of the people, by the people, for the people.
Meridian Learning is excited to announce our adolescent program, Meridian Micro Farm, launching in 2024. This student-run micro business, learning lab and urban Erdkinder completes our family of lab schools and extends our commitment to meaningful, whole-student learning in the 21st century. Follow along here and on social media as we prepare to open enrollment in Spring 2024.
Meridian Learning is seeking presenters for this summer’s online grassroots microschools conference. Presenters with direct experience leading or teaching in a grassroots microschool are preferred. We are especially seeking leaders and teachers from microschools that serve underserved communities, international microschools, secondary microschools and specialized microschools ie arts, technology etc. Presenters will be paid for their time.
Our previous conference in 2016 (the first ever microschools conference!) was focused on the administrative, marketing, legal and financial aspects of building a microschool (check our community resources page for this recording). While these continue to be areas of interest, this conference will be focused on sustaining a microschool. What do you wish you knew two, five, 10 years ago that would have made today easier or better?
Inquiries should be sent to info@meridian-learning.org before February 15th.
It has become apparent that the definition and purpose of microschools has become muddled in this transitional time. Recent news reports cite microschools as “tiny enemies” of teachers unions and public schools.
As microschoolers and microschool advocates since 2008, we have direct insight into the priorities and positioning of microschools, and we would like to make clear the following.
Authentic microschools care very little about what the National Education Association or the public schools are doing. They do not wish to extract profit from the public system. What microschools aim to accomplish—a meaningful learning space truly of the people, by the people and for the people—cannot be achieved within the current system. The grassroots microschool community knew this long ago. Microschooling evolved from homeschooling, not from the desire to disrupt anything already in existence. If disruption is ever a priority, we may set our eyes upon the entrenched yet increasingly fragile private sector, which in exchange for 20, 30, 50 thousand dollars per year in tuition, promises always flashy new facilities and dangles the carrot of a high-price-tag college that will inevitably set students right on track in their “race to nowhere.”
In many ways, authentic microschools exist in a learned-centered vacuum. To accomplish meaningful, child-centered learning while worrying about what the masses are doing is pretty much impossible. Any effort to paint microschools as the enemy is deeply misguided. If there is an enemy clamoring outside the public school gates, it is perhaps the ubiquitous corporations, ed tech start-ups and random education “reformers” who have never served in any capacity in a microschool once again attempting to hijack public schools by hijacking the microschool model.