Primer Leader Cohort Application

No problem! From September 2024 until June 2025, our program is set up to work like an evening MBA, allowing you to balance a full-time job. Once your microschool launches in fall 2025, you’ll transition into a full-time Primer leader.

Most of your work during the cohort will be in your community, like talking to potential campus locations and recruiting students. The regular cohort programming each week will happen on Zoom, but you can also expect occasional in-person events with other Primer Leaders and team members.

As a part of the Cohort, you’ll receive a monthly stipend of $500. After the cohort concludes and your microschool is ready to launch, you’ll earn a competitive full-time salary (between $60k/yr and $75k/yr depending on your geography) with great benefits, economic upside in your microschool, and additional earning opportunities (10k-25k/yr).

You should have previous experience working with kids, but you do not need to be an active teacher.

These are the two main asks we make of you as a prospective Primer Leader, so they are required in order to successfully launch your Primer. That said, don’t stress — we’ll be working together every step of the way, from sourcing potential locations to helping with marketing efforts to recruit students.

Of course! We’ll be running ads on Facebook, Instagram, Google (and other online channels) and supplementing with marketing efforts like direct mail and radio ads, depending on your geography.

Yes - your Primer will be co-located with two other leaders launching their own Primers in different grade bands, making it easy for families to drop off multiple students in different grade levels at the same location.

Each Primer serves a maximum of three grades in a single classroom. Our typical campus is three Primer Leaders serving one grade-band each: one for K-2, one for 3-5 and one for 6-8. We’re strong believers in the large body of research suggesting that mixed-age classrooms are more supportive of student growth, so we’re intentional about creating these spaces at each Primer.

We take the trust that parents put in us to educate their children very seriously, and we focus on the basics: core academics and true passion projects. We believe parents have the ultimate authority and responsibility for the ideological formation of their children — so we welcome families of all religions and political backgrounds, but set the expectation that it won’t be part of the classroom experience.