The story of Clare Healy's return to learning should give hope to anyone trying to mix studying and rearing a young family. She started training as a Montessori teacher by correspondence course shortly after her second baby was born and she had two more children before she graduated. But her perseverance paid off. As a result of her training she has built a varied career in education. She opened her own Montessori school in Cork, spent three years living in Norway training would-be Montessori teachers and since 1995 has been the co-ordinator of a project on early childhood care and education.

"I took a long time to finish studying - about five years in all. This indeed was flexible learning and I greatly appreciated it," she says. "The manner in which this method of learning opened up my working life while allowing me to continue raising my family greatly impressed me. I had my children in the early 1970s when there were few enough opportunities to work and rear a family at the same time. Yet I still had the urge to work. Montessori by distance learning allowed me do both," Healy says.

Healy subsequently opened her own Montessori school in Cork catering for children up to the age of 12. She had begun lecturing part-time to Irish students at St Nicholas' Montessori college in Dublin and had also been to Sweden a couple of times to teach outreach students there.

"Montessori training is not well developed in Europe and St Nicholas' had been doing some work in Sweden and I was asked to run some workshops there as part of the programme for correspondence students," she says. "The Montessori world is small and when a job opportunity came up in Norway in 1991, I was notified and I applied. I was offered the job and decided to take it. The timing was good for me as my marriage had recently broken up and I was happy enough to sell the house, take my younger children with me and to move to Norway. We packed things into a trailer, hitched it to the back of my Opel Corsa and drove across Europe."

Healy initially went on a one-year contract to train teachers for children in the 3-6 year old bracket. But she found that the interest in Montessori training for all ages was strong and that very little training was being provided. She ended up staying in Norway for three years returning to Cork in 1994.

"I enjoyed my time in Norway although the first year was difficult and I was quite lonely," she says. "But I missed the social side of life in Ireland and for various reasons decided it was time to come home. The only problem was that nobody had been found to replace me so I ended up going back and forth to continue the training programmes."

Before taking off for Norway Healy had begun studying again. She had signed up with the Open University for a post graduate qualification in educational management and completed the course while in Norway.

`I found the Open University really excellent both from an academic and practical point of view," she says. "They recognised both my Montessori qualifications and my life and work experience and allowed me on to a post-graduate programme even though I didn't have a primary degree. They also facilitated my change of country of residence and went to the trouble of finding someone to supervise my exams while I was in Norway."

On her return to Ireland, Healy got a job with the Dublin Institute of Technology co-ordinating a New Opportunities for Women-funded project on early childhood care and education. "The project has developed a range of models in flexible learning and a training standard by which people's experience in this area can be measured," Healy says.

"We could foresee a situation where the demand for child care places was going to increase and that qualifications would become an issue. The project's aim was to set up a means by which people's training and experience could be measured and recognised."

Healy commuted to Dublin three days a week to co-ordinate the project while also keeping her training business in Norway on the go. She continues to travel to Norway to run workshops and weekend courses and keeps in contact with her students by e-mail. "The students send their assignments by e-mail and I return them the same way so I don't have to carry loads of paper back and forth any more which is great. My travelling bags are much lighter as a result," she says.

Having seen how well the electronic media could deliver distance learning Healy began to think about developing a full Internet-based Montessori training course. She spent over a year writing material and setting up a team to support the course and a pilot group of 23 students (all living in Norway) have recently begun the course. Healy is waiting to see how things go, but she has plans to open up and expand the training on offer and to run workshops in different countries to support students.

"There is a lot of interest in Montessori around Europe and not very many training opportunities," she says. "I am convinced by the Montessori method because it's such a natural way of learning. It encourages the child to be independent and to make its own decisions, it doesn't force them. This can be difficult for adults used to helping and doing things for children to understand. It takes a lot of training to be able to stand back and have a respect for the child's right to do things for themselves," Healy says.

Contact point: for further information on Clare Healy's Montessori training programmes contact e-mail address clare@nmcollege.com