Meridian Learning offers the first grassroots microschool mentorship built on relationship rather than replication. Designed for founders who want to grow with integrity, this mentorship centers authentic guidance instead of acceleration, incubation, or franchising.
This experience isn’t a toolkit or a step-by-step launch plan. It’s a personalized, relationship-driven mentorship for thoughtful founders who are already shaping their vision and want deeper clarity, refinement, and sustainability.
Over a nine-month journey, you’ll receive steady, personalized support shaped by your mission, your context, and the real-world questions that emerge as you build or strengthen your microschool. Rooted in relationship, reflection, and responsiveness, the mentorship adapts to your needs and honors the values at the heart of your work.
Applications typically open in December, with the mentorship cohort beginning in January and monthly topic-based meetings running January through September, followed by a recap and reflection in October.
View the current mentorship calendar.
Priority consideration is given to new and aspiring founders who seek to serve underserved communities, especially those located in Ohio, Kentucky, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Indiana, where proximity may support occasional in-person connection and optional observation within Meridian’s lab schools.
The investment for participation is $2,000 for nine months. Flexible payment plans and limited scholarships are available to help ensure access.
Each mentorship includes:
🌱 Meridian Learning community membership
Connection to a network of values-aligned grassroots microschool leaders.
🏡 Optional internship
Observation or hands-on experience inside one of Meridian’s lab school programs if this supports your growth.
💻 Online community access
Stay connected with mentors and peers between sessions.
📅 Monthly cohort mentoring
Reflective, experience-based conversations that explore refinement of practice, leadership, daily rhythms, boundaries, policies, and mission-aligned decision-making.
✉️ Personalized email support
Thoughtful guidance and perspective between meetings as questions or complexities arise.
📘 Professional learning courses
Enrollment in Teacherpreneurship 101 and How to Start a Microschool, available if additional structure is helpful alongside mentoring.
How We’re Exceptional
Our commitment to advancing the grassroots microschool movement led us to create a mentorship experience centered on relationship, reflection, and integrity. This offering supports founders who want to build schools that honor children, communities, and the long-term sustainability of their work.
As the first organization to build a national, community-based ecosystem for grassroots microschools, our experience is both deep and unmatched. Through our work with aspiring, new, and veteran microschool leaders, and by starting and sustaining our own grassroots micro lab schools for more than fifteen years, we’ve learned what it takes to build a microschool rooted in meaningful learning and built to stand the test of time.
We look forward to guiding you on your grassroots microschool journey.
Questions? Contact us at info@meridian-learning.org.
Each mentorship begins with an application grounded in reflection. If this opportunity speaks to you, we invite you to begin below.