1906 Graduates Anniversary Brestbadge

The main motto of the school was a phrase spoken by Yan Amos Komensky, the founder of modern pedagogics: "First to love - then to teach." Based on this principle, a team of teachers was created consisting only of people with high moral and professional virtues. Lev Uspensky, a 1918 school graduate, noted in his memoirs (paraphrased): "May can neither have nor employ obscurantists, members of the 'Black Hundred' (an armed anti-revolutionary group active in 1905-1907), or bureaucrats working in the capacity as teachers. All teachers, generation after generation, were selected for May's school judged by their scientific and educational talents only."

The system of upbringing and education created by K.I. May envisaged many things including: mutual respect and trust between teachers and students, continuous interaction with the family and teachers to develop individual student talents, as well as to teach students to think. All of this, combined with a high quality of education, helped prepare young graduates with high moral qualities, knowledge, and a readiness for society-oriented labor. Owing to a specific atmosphere created hi the school known as "May Spirits," May's school was described by one of its graduates, D.V. Filosofov, as: "A state within a state, separated by an endless ocean from governmental conventionalism." Although the students' social statuses and nationalities were different, there was no discrimination. Children of a doorkeeper studied here along with sons of Prince Gagarin and those of Count Stenbock-Fermor Entrepreneurial families such as Yeliseyevs, Durdins, and the Torntons also sent their children here. Descendants of intellectual families attended as well, such as the Benois, Grimm, Roerich, Rimsky-Korsakov, and Semyonov-Tyanshansky families. In many cases, the school provided education for several generations of a family. The record is held by the Benois family, of which 25 members studied at May's.

Students and teachers called themselves "May Bugs." This odd nickname combined the last name of the school founder and the season in which they graduated - when children, like May bugs, leave the school nest.