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Montessori Care Partner Collaborative

Possibility For Every Ability

Montessori, strength-based training for people caring for adults living with dementia, disability, and the changes that come with aging.

AMI Certification Pathway Available

SEE WHERE TO BEGIN

Montessori Care Partner Collaborative

Possibility For Every Ability

Montessori, strength-based training for people caring for adults living with dementia, disability, and the changes that come with aging.

AMI Certification Pathway Available

SEE WHERE TO BEGIN

The person in your care deserves to be seen as the whole person they are.

Capable, purposeful, and full of possibility, at every age and every ability.

The problem isn’t that you need better strategies

It’s eleven at night and you’re searching again: what to do when she won’t get in the shower, how to answer the same question for the ninth time without your voice changing, what to say when he asks for his mother, how to fill the day that used to be school.

And you find things. You always find things: a technique for the shower, a script for the question you’ve already answered eight times, something to say about his mother, a list of activities to fill the afternoon.

Some of it even helps, for a while, until the next hard moment, and the one after that.

What you actually want is harder to search for: to stop replaying the day on the drive home, wondering what you missed. To walk in without bracing first. To feel like what you’re doing matters. To look at the person in front of you and still see them, fully, not just what’s changed.

Tips and tricks don’t change how you see the person in your care. They don’t change the environment around them.

What changes is a shift in lens.

Without the Montessori lens With the Montessori lens What that makes possible
Managing behavior Understanding the person You stop dreading the hard moments and start knowing how to meet them
Fixing what is wrong Building on what is still there You stop feeling like you’re losing them and start finding them again
Tips for hard moments A framework for every moment You don’t have to figure it out fresh every time
Focused on deficits Focused on possibility You see who they still are, and they feel seen

This is the shift. Here is where it starts.

Where to begin


Every course is open to anyone caring for an adult living with dementia, disability, or the changes that come with aging. 

AMI certification courses

For care partners who value an internationally recognized credential. 

AMI Montessori for Disability, Dementia and Aging (MDDA) Introductory Course

Start here

The Why.

Why the same situations keep repeating. Why what you've tried hasn't held. Why the answer usually sits in the environment rather than in the person.

You leave seeing the person again.

Required before the MDDA Practitioners Certification Course.

AMI Certificate Pathway
Qualifies for 12 CEU credits

ENROLL HERE

AMI Montessori for Disability, Dementia and Aging (MDDA) Practitioners Certification Course

When you're ready to go deeper

The How.

You’re ready to move from understanding Montessori principles to practicing them, consistently, alongside others doing this work in different settings around the world.

AMI MDDA Introductory Course is a pre-requisite.

AMI Certificate Pathway
CEU credits aren’t available for this course at this time.

 

LEARN MORE
LEARN HOW AMI CERTIFICATION WORKS HERE

Possibility Care

Coming For Care Partners

We are building a second line of courses for care partners who want practical skills without the certification track. 

Tell us where to reach you and you will hear first.

How we support you

We guide you

Montessori, strength-based courses built for the people caring for adults living with dementia, disability, and aging, so you stop guessing and start seeing.

We credential you

AMI certification pathways are available, so the work you’ve done is recognized outside the room you did it in.

The AMI MDDA Introductory Course also carries 12 continuing education credits toward professional renewal.

We stay with you

The Collaborative, an ongoing community of support and collaboration, welcomes everyone who completes any MCPC course. It’s there whenever you need it. A place where connections are made and support is given, built around people who are in this work daily. Paige and Melissa are in there too.

The Collaborative
You deserve more than a strategy. You deserve a community that understands what you’re carrying and helps you see new possibilities on the other side of it.

Why Montessori Care Partner Collaborative (MCPC)

  • One approach, whoever is in front of you.
    The person you care for will keep growing and changing, and so will their needs. This approach doesn’t require you to start over each time. You learn it once and carry it with you: to a young adult aging out of the school system, a parent moving into memory care, and everyone in between.
  • You’ll understand why it works, not just what to do.
    Dr. Paige Krabill, a clinical psychologist and one of the two people who built MCPC, has that clinical grounding written into how these courses teach. When a moment doesn’t match anything you were taught, you’re not stuck searching for the right technique. You understand the person and the moment well enough to respond with confidence, on the spot.
  • Built to survive Tuesday.
    Melissa Crenshaw, MCPC’s other founder, has spent over 20 years inside Montessori environments, from toddler communities to elder care settings. As Founder of Community Casa Care Partner Services and Managing Member of MCPC, she brings the kind of grounded, cross-lifespan experience that only comes from having lived this work at every stage. The same approach works at a kitchen table. What you learn here is designed to hold up on a hard afternoon on your own, which is where most training falls apart.

Who is behind this

The curriculum at the center of these courses was built by Jennifer Brush, the first AMI-certified trainer in this field in the United States. The Montessori Care Partner Collaborative is expanding that work beyond dementia, into disability and aging.

Every live session of the AMI MDDA Practitioners Certification Course is taught by an AMI MDDA Trainer.

The Montessori Care Partner Collaborative (MCPC) is led by Dr. Paige Krabill, a clinical psychologist who has spent 25 years with people the system wasn’t built to serve, and Melissa Crenshaw, a Montessori practitioner with over 20 years of experience serving in environments across the full lifespan.

MEET THE PEOPLE BEHIND MCPC >>

This isn’t a new idea. It’s a proven one.

Grounded in research

The Montessori approach to dementia, disability, and aging care is backed by peer-reviewed research showing measurable improvements in well-being, engagement, and quality of life, and in the satisfaction of the care partners showing up every day.

RESOURCES

Partnerships

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The next time it’s eleven at night

You’ll have somewhere to start. Not another technique for the shower, but a way of seeing the person that tells you what the moment actually needs. And when something comes up you’ve never experienced before, there are people to ask who have.

That’s what the Montessori Care Partner Collaborative is for.

Enroll in the AMI MDDA Introductory Course
Learn More AMI MDDA Practitioners Course

Not sure which one, or have a question first? Write to us.

CONTACT US

Not looking for a credential?

We’re building a second line of courses for care partners, with no certification track attached. Leave your name and email and we’ll tell you when they open.