When Montessori schools are tasked with parent education for their community, inevitably there are choices to be made regarding content.  Time is finite and precious when it comes to asking families to attend events at our schools.  With requisite parent conferences a few times a year, a “child shares their work” evening, a back-to-school night, and a myriad of performances or art shows or concerts, the calendar fills up with remarkable speed and density.  To which topics do we give priority?  The prepared environment? Essential.  Demonstrations of the materials? Very important!  Spotlights on Arithmetic or Cultural, or Geometry or Language?  Those topics will ground the parents in the curriculum.  But what about the Great Lessons?  It would be so very helpful if our parents were that well-informed, but short of requiring them to read articles and manuals, (perhaps we could quiz them later!), what do we present and what do we not present? While the examples above represent valuable concepts and information for parents to understand, there are less obvious but equally essential components of our classrooms, of our schools, that would benefit everyone if families could assimilate them into their knowledge of Montessori. One of which is the importance of the three-year cycle, academically, socially, and emotionally for the child.

Dr. Montessori’s understanding of the Planes of Development was predictive of so much science that we would come to understand years after her death.  It’s gratifying to be involved in Montessori in this time period as virtually every educational or even neurological study done in the last twenty-five years supports what she proposed well over a century ago.  We structure our environments around these planes of common characteristics, the rising and ebbing of sensitive periods and child development.  We understand that children move through these periods of their lives regardless of whether or not they are fortunate enough to be in a Montessori classroom; we can provide the very materials each child needs to fully engage with those developmental areas most appropriate. There is a rhythm to the three-year cycle, a scope and sequence that moves our students from concrete ideas to abstraction. It is an uninterrupted chain of presentations that engages the child seamlessly to understanding, and this is true for every area in the curriculum. In September, children moving up to the next level find themselves the youngest in the classroom. They adapt themselves to their new environment, new friends and teachers, new expectations, but they do so following a familiar path. These are not new kingdoms moving from Primary to Lower Elementary, LE to UE, and Upper Elementary to the Junior Class or outside our school. 

There is also an underlying rhythm that moves the community through three years together. My role as the youngest in the room is the proverbial “learning the ropes”, but three years later I am the wise elder at 6 years old, 9 years old, 12 years old, or a graduating Junior. Children are well-aware of these evolutions; at our school any self-respecting five-year old understands that they are now “Stended Day”, not quite able to wrap their tongue around the word, “extended”.

For Montessorians, I would posit that the three year cycle is akin to Dr. Montessori’s Three-Period Lesson.  From a teaching aspect, it forms the structure around any single lesson, the familiar “This is….”, “Show me….”, and “What is…….?” construct. This is a triangle, this is a square, this is a circle. Show me the square.  Show me the triangle.  Show me the circle. What is this?  And this? And this?  The Three Period Lesson, we would argue is of crucial importance to our lessons. But we can take this same form and extrapolate to something much larger.  The First Period is one of taking in information. In many ways, this serves as an apt description of the first year in any one program level. The Second Period, our Show Me stage, is one where the child engages with concepts in context, they are given information in a manner that references past knowledge, which is a fair understanding of the second year student’s experience. Finally, the child arrives at the Third Period, the Third Year, the culmination, the collecting and discrimination, the synthesizing and internalization that marks both the lesson in microcosm and their classroom experience in macro.

My work as an Admissions Director at this long-established (nearly 40 years old) Montessori school in the Seacoast area of New Hampshire, includes tours for applicant families that are more parent education about Montessori than anything specific regarding the Cornerstone School.  Among the many salient points regarding this  pedagogy, I always stress the importance of the three-year cycle while also stressing that each program builds upon the previous, and that the greatest benefit gained from a Montessori education is when a child can move from program to program.  The program levels are not islands, but one comprehensive curriculum.  I know I’m not alone in this effort and that our teachers are reinforcing the same message. And still there are parents who consider opting out after the second year of Primary or the second year,  (usually 5th grade) of Upper Elementary.  We can clearly understand the financial stresses of our constituent parents, and that a 12-plus year commitment to an independent school tuition is out of the question for many families, especially those with siblings. This should be fully acknowledged, and there are many families who commit to the three years of a Primary program, knowing that they will be elsewhere for first grade. This is appropriate, and such a gift to invest in the child at 3 – 6 years old, rather than just at 18.

The third year at any level in a Montessori school brings closure, academically, socially, and emotionally. Every curriculum area is written and presented knowing that the abstraction, the internalizing of concepts, awaits the child in that culminating third year. Further, to rob the child of being the wise elder, the responsibilities that come with that stature, will also diminish the child’s educational experience.  Ultimately, it is the responsibility of the heads of schools, admissions directors, guides, and experienced parents to educate families about the importance of “finishing a cycle”.  How else are they to know?  Trained Montessorians with years of experience can sometimes forget that what we take as evident is to most of our families a mystery, an unseen component in the great work that engages their children every day, including the power of that third year.  Let’s shine the light here, too.