What Is It?
MicroSociety is a national educational model that provides compelling real-life learning opportunities for K-8 students through the creation and operation of miniature societies. These societies, held during part of the school day, enhance academic lessons and provide platforms for young people to develop into leaders, entrepreneurs, creative forces and confident citizens. They also generate intrinsic motivation to do well academically because students understand school is key to their success.
Proven Model
MSI has a 30-year track record and supports 120 educational sites across the United States and in five countries. It has proven successful with every segment of the population — disadvantaged and advantaged, minority and majority — and has impacted the lives of of 450,000 students in 5 countries and 100 MicroSociety sites.
The MicroSociety ModelStudent & School Diversity
We work with students of diverse backgrounds…
- 33% Hispanic, 31% African American, 29% Caucasian, 7% other
- 85% elementary grades, 15% middle grades
…in all kinds of schools, in all kinds of settings.
- 64% public, 18% charter, 15% magnet, 3% private
- 66% urban, 19% rural, 15% suburban
- 90% implement the whole school model and 10% the after-school curriculum
Impact
MicroSociety lifts student academic achievement, improves attitudes and engagement, and reduces discipline problems. It has a long record of success with at-risk populations, English language learners, and children with special needs. All MicroSociety students develop vital career and social emotional skills as they start and manage their own business ventures, nonprofits, and government agencies. We prepare them to navigate the future workplace, become active citizens, and take on our global challenges.
See the ResultsMicroSociety's Story
The story of MicroSociety began in a Brooklyn classroom in 1967, where George H. Richmond, a young teacher, struggled to get his 5th grade students to pay attention in class. Fearing they would be consigned to lives of poverty without an education, he devised a creative plan to fire up their desire to learn and create lives of possibility.
His new way of teaching ultimately became a movement that has reached hundreds of schools and changed hundreds of thousands of lives. Watch our story to learn more.
Belief Statement
We believe in the power of kids and in their potential to do extraordinary things so much so that we challenge the status quo about who they are, what they can do, and how and from whom they learn. We help young people create their own world inside school and turn over the reins for them to manage it. We encourage them to design and manufacture products, sell them in their own marketplace of ideas, write and enforce their own laws, and along the way to grapple with the moral and ethical challenges that arise. Through the MicroSociety system, students learn the value and utility of their curriculum while making sense of their world.