Introduction
Sand tray therapy offers a trauma-aware, strengths-based approach that supports children, families, and educators through symbolic, non-verbal expression and meaning-making. By creating visual scenes with miniature objects, participants can access implicit narratives, externalise experiences, and explore resilience in ways that feel safe and contained. Drawing on lived experience and professional practice, this workshop introduces sand tray as a relational tool for fostering connection, reflection, and healing.
Contribution to Trauma-Aware Education
This workshop demonstrates how sand tray approaches align with trauma-aware principles of safety, choice, agency, and relationship. Participants will learn how symbolic expression, non-verbal narrative, containment, and reparative experiences can support resilience and emotional processing. Practical guidance will be provided on school-friendly adaptations, neurodivergent inclusion, cultural sensitivity, ethics, animal-assisted connections, and quick de-escalation strategies, enabling participants to translate learning into educational and caregiving contexts.
Participant Engagement
Participants will engage in a guided sand tray micro-experience, creating a 2–4 item mini-scene in a tray (or substitute format) using the prompt: “Create a little scene that represents a current strength, a challenge, or a wish.” Emphasis will be placed on non-verbal noticing, with permission not to explain. Following a brief silent attunement activity, participants will reflect in pairs or triads using restorative prompts such as: “What is here that feels important?”, “Where do you notice safety in this scene?”, and “If this scene could shift toward what you want, what small change would help?” Participants will share key insights before exploring practical implementation strategies. The workshop concludes with resources, a printable prompt sheet, a one-word verbal check-out, and opportunities for feedback.

This interactive workshop develops educator capacity to implement trauma transformation through professional peer supervision, using the Reflective Circle Education Model (RCEM). While educators are expected to respond to the complex impacts of trauma, education systems offer limited formal structures for professional support. This absence leaves teachers carrying significant emotional and relational labour, undermining their capacity to remain regulated in complex environments. RCEM addresses this gap by reconceptualising supervision as a structured, relational, and critically reflective group process. Grounded in psychological safety and critical reflection, the model has been implemented across a diversity of settings including primary, secondary, specialist, and alternative education contexts, often working with young people experiencing complex adversity and marginalisation, demonstrating that trauma transformation is not simply an outcome of practice, but is enacted through structured, collective peer supervision.
This positions educator wellbeing, relational safety, and ethical responsibility as core conditions for sustaining teacher regulation and trauma-aware practice in trauma-impacted contexts, challenging individualised and strategy-based approaches. RCEM offers an evidence-based, scalable model for embedding trauma-aware professional supervision within educational systems. Drawing on mixed-methods research, findings demonstrate impacts on educator reflexivity, professional agency, and capacity for self-regulation, alongside sustained trauma-aware practice change.
In this workshop, participants will engage directly in a facilitated reflective circle, experiencing trauma-aware professional learning through guided reflection and collaborative dialogue, with opportunities to apply insights to their own contexts and consider implications for system-level change.