Montessori Training for Nurse Midwives

In January 2018 I will launch a Montessori training for Nurse Midwives, Pediatricians and Pediatric Nurses in Italy. We will also be designing a study to measure the outcomes of offering this innovative approach in public heath care practices.

practical experiences

guided observations

"A practical lesson in the ward for premature babies: placing the feeding tube  (the "Maria Montessori" Assistants to Infancy School, Rome)"

Vita dell'Infanzia November 1967

monthly classes

discussion groups

material making workshops

"A theoretical lesson at the "Maria Montessori" Assistants to Infancy School, Rome)"

We will have one year together to learn to study the newborn and the mother/child relationship that develops and how to best assist this new life and this new relationship.

And I will be working alongside each professional one-on-one in their own environment (the clinics and hospitals) so they can gain practical experience in looking at their work through a different lens.

I'll have the opportunity to work with professionals who touch women and families from pregnancy (third trimester birth preparation classes) through six months of life.

My vision is to develop this experience as a prototype for a Montessori training for heath care professionals who work with babies and their families. And then I hope to follow this experience with a training for Montessorians who want to develop such courses to offer professionals.

In this way we can begin to sensitize the people who work with newborns as “patients” but who do not yet see a psycho-somatic unity, who do not yet recognize the vital importance of treating newborns as people who feel, who communicate and who deserve to be listened to, just as anyone deserves to be heard when they scream out in pain or in fear. 

We must begin to engage in and publish research that demonstrates the validity of 0-3 Montessori principles if we are to bring them to center stage. In my opinion there is much in the 0-3 camp that is righteous for the newborn and the youngest children but none that holds a candle to the work of Adele Costa Gnocchi, Emmi Pikler and Elinor Goldschmied. 

Karin

  

The multi colored text is inspired by and dedicated to Adele Diamond of UBC who runs a developmental cognitive neuroscience lab. Check out her website  http://www.devcogneuro.com/ where you can watch her TEDx talk on cognitive development and educational practices - where she brings Montessori education into the equation. Adele Diamond presented her work at the 2013 International Montessori Congress in Portland, Oregon