Like other developmental phenomena, children's experiences with frustration and persistence reflect their stage of development. For learners in the Third Plane, the frequency, intensity and cause of frustration can be almost impossible to predict. These young people are dancing among physical, social and intellectual chaos, with their bodies, their relationships and their identities changing rapidly and irregularly. The only thing predictable about what frustrates them and th

Except for the occasional glimpse of the backs of their heads emerging from the refrigerator, you might have stopped expecting to see your adolescent at all for mealtimes. Most teens are busy with friends and extracurriculars, and by this time, your family might have hit a pace of balancing work, school and social spaces that doesn't allow for a lot of time together around a table. Make time. While your third plane child may look like they're pulling away, this is not a time

We keep being told that this generation is different. "Kids today" care less. They're shallow. They're soft. They don't know how to deal with disappointment. They're mean. They're selfish. They have their heads in their phones all day and they don't know how to make friends. I don't know. Maybe this generation is different. But I think maybe every generation gets told that they're different than the ones who've come before. I think maybe every generation romanticizes its own

Oh, you dear, patient, lovely people, you teachers of adolescents, you bold adventurers blazing a new path for an ever widening generation of Montessori learners! What a courageous path you've chosen. Unlike Early Childhood Montessori teachers, you lack the public awareness of your practice. Unlike Elementary Montessori teachers, you lack the specific materials to lean back on. The Montessori guide at the Third Plane of development needs to rely on her understanding of adoles

The stereotypes about teenagers abound: the eye rolling, the cliques, talking-back, faces in their phones. If you only believed what you saw in the media, you might think teenagers were universally unruly, antisocial, disrespectful and surly. Yeah, sometimes. But they're just as often, and often more often, kind and compassionate, engaged and idealistic, hopeful to change the world and certain that they can be the ones to do so. They have enough knowledge of the world to noti

Montessori observed particular trends in children's development, which she called, "Planes of Development," and which guide our practice, from what we expect of children in particular age groups to how we organize classrooms. While her influence on Early Childhood classrooms is the most commonly lauded, Montessori's observations about the nature of adolescence was equally profound. Indeed, Montessori was far ahead of her time in understanding the unique motivations and needs

Montessori adolescent environments are strikingly distinct from traditional Middle Schools. While traditional classrooms may be doubling down on homework, desks in rows and fifty-minute classrooms, Montessori Middle Schools recognize that the rapid and diverse physical development of learners at this age is inconsistent with desk and book-based learning. That is not to say that Middle Schoolers are incapable of big thoughts and intellectual engagement. Quite the opposite... M

Montessori was deeply concerned with the nature of development in adolescence, and the disparity between the expectations of formal school settings and the needs of learners at this age. In this Third Plane of Development, from 12-18 years old, learners are moving through rapid changes in their physical bodies and equally chaotic changes in their sense of belonging and of identity. "If puberty is on the physical side a transition from an infantile to an adult state, there is

By the time learners reach adolescence, their ability to take on the perspective of another person is well-developed. When you add this to the emerging sense of their own identities and their strong commitment to social justice, the Third Plane is an ideal opportunity to see empathy at work. Except that we don't look for it all that often. Except that we are so fixated on teenagers' choice of dress or hair or music that we forget that, even these, can we evidence of their emp

While the intrinsic drive to socialize and the supports needed to regulate that drive were prominent in earlier planes of development, this motivation takes priority in the Third Plane, when learners are transitioning from their reliance on environments prepared for them by adults to ownership on the design of those environments themselves. Now, the preparation of the environment shifts from creating a space within which learners use social engagements to learn about or explo