Montessori Makers Institute
Leadership for the part they didn't prepare you for.
Not a program you complete. Real situations, real constraints, real communities—using Montessori as the reasoning framework.
Why It Exists
Montessori trains leaders in pedagogy. Almost nothing prepares them for the complexity of leading adults.
Most leadership training prepares people forleadership. This builds capacity while you're already in it.
No simulated scenarios. No theory to implement later. We work with your actual situation—your team, your constraints, your community—using Montessori as the framework for real decisions.
“Usually I leave with ideas. This time I left with next steps.”
— Montessori school leader
Who It's For
For leaders already in the work.
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.
00 — Foundational Coursework
The course that prepares the adult before the leader.
Montessori training is largely a training in child development. The AMI, AMS, and other MACTE-accredited programs are rigorous, serious, and deeply formative — and they leave almost entirely unaddressed the question of how adults function in community.
The leadership crises in Montessori schools are rarely failures of pedagogy. They are failures of adult culture: avoidance, misaligned authority, feedback that never gets given, conflict that cycles without resolution. Before any live Institute program can do its work, this interior and structural foundation has to exist.
This course draws on the same research tradition that informs leadership development at Harvard Kennedy School and Harvard Business School — Kegan and Lahey on immunity to change, Argyris and Schön on double-loop learning, Heifetz and Linsky on adaptive leadership, Edmondson on psychological safety, Schein on organizational culture — and brings it into direct, uncomfortable conversation with Montessori's own writing on the prepared adult.
“The teacher's first duty is to watch over the environment.”
— Maria Montessori
Recommended before or alongside your first seminar or intensive. Not a prerequisite — a foundation. The live programs assume you are doing this interior work. This course is where it begins.
Adult Culture & Montessori Practice
What Montessori requires of the adults in the building — not just the children.
Montessori's philosophical commitments — observation without judgment, respect for the individual's developmental process, non-interference, genuine collaboration — are applied with fidelity to children and routinely abandoned when adults are in the room. This course is a rigorous, evidence-based examination of why that happens and what it structurally takes to change it. It is uncomfortable at moments. It is practical throughout.
What you'll learn
- —Apply Kegan and Lahey's constructive-developmental framework to examine how immunity to change operates in adult professional communities — and why well-intentioned educators consistently fail to become the colleagues and leaders they intend to be.
- —Use Argyris and Schön's theory of action to surface the gap between your espoused values and your theory-in-use — and develop the double-loop learning practices that close it in real professional contexts.
- —Apply Schein's three-level model of organizational culture — artifacts, espoused values, and underlying assumptions — to diagnose alignment gaps in your school's adult community and design targeted, structural interventions.
- —Draw on Heifetz and Linsky's adaptive leadership framework to distinguish technical from adaptive challenges in your school's interpersonal and cultural conflicts — and hold those conflicts without collapsing them into easier but unhelpful responses.
- —Use Edmondson's research on psychological safety and Garvey Berger's adult development work to build professional learning structures that change how adults think, not just what they know.
Designed for: Heads of school, executive directors, academic directors, and anyone in a Montessori school responsible for adult culture — who understand the pedagogy and are ready to examine what they actually do with and to one another.
Price
$250
Format
Async, self-paced
Time
6.5–7 hours (equivalent to one full-day professional development experience)
Access
90-day access from first login
Secure checkout via Stripe. 90-day access begins on your first login.
Programs
Five live programs.
Each format represents a different depth of engagement—from a single session to a full-year residency. All built for people actively in leadership, not preparing for it.
Applied Seminars
Half-day & full-day sessions
Focused sessions on specific leadership challenges—difficult conversations, strategic communication, adult culture, decision-making under pressure. Immediately applicable. No prerequisites.
Leadership Intensive
Multi-day, cohort-based
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.
Leadership Studio
Monthly, ongoing cohort
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.
Leadership Alignment Retreat
Team-based, on-site or residential
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.
Leadership Residency
1:1, sustained, application-based
The Institute's highest-commitment 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.
What Makes This Different
Montessori leadership training built for people already leading.
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.
Your situation, not a curriculum
We don’t teach leadership in the abstract. The material is what you’re actually navigating — your team, your constraints, your community.
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 a full-year residency, 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
What changes when you do this work.
Not a credential. Not a model to roll out. A different way of seeing the work—and the people you lead.
In the Montessori Makers Ecosystem
The Institute works alongside Advisory and Toolbox.
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 →Learning
Curriculum, materials, and professional learning grounded in Montessori philosophy. The Institute's foundational coursework is built in partnership with Montessori Makers Learning.
Explore Learning →About Montessori Makers Group
Montessori Makers Group is the organization behind the Institute, Advisory, Toolbox, and Learning. Learn about the mission, the founder, and the thinking behind the work.
About Montessori Makers Group →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
A weekly email for Montessori leaders and practitioners.
The Makers Network is a free weekly email on leadership, organizational design, adult culture, and what it actually takes to run a Montessori school well.
New tools, ecosystem updates, and thinking that doesn't fit anywhere else. No noise. Just what matters to people doing this work.