Session 3D
Tracks
Track 4
| Friday, October 30, 2026 |
| 2:00 PM - 3:35 PM |
| Meeting room P7, Plaza Level |
Overview
Meeting room P7
Speaker
Miss Karen Iversen
Wellbeing Leader
Memorial Oval Primary
Shifting from knowing to doing: A First Nation’s Wellbeing Leader’s reflections of trauma informed implementation
2:00 PM - 2:45 PMAbstract
Aim
To share a whole school approach to moving from trauma aware training to embedded trauma informed practice, with a focus on what shifted staff from knowing to doing.
Background/Context
Situated within a primary school on Bangarla Country on the Eyre Peninsula, 400 km west of Adelaide, serving a low socioeconomic community with high levels of trauma exposure. As a First Nations Wiradjuri woman and Wellbeing Leader, this work is grounded in relational and culturally responsive practices that prioritises connection, safety and belonging.
All staff completed Berry Street Education Model training in 2024; however, implementation remained inconsistent, highlighting the need for a structured whole school approach.
Relevance and Contribution
This presentation highlights the role of leadership, structure and culturally responsive practice in sustaining implementation.
Description
Staff feedback identified challenges for Junior Primary learners, which led to an implementation team in 2025 to adapt and refine lessons, strengthening quality and staff ownership.
A whole school approach was established with Tier 1 BSEM lessons in 2025, ensuring all students accessed explicit teaching to recognise and respond to stress. These shared resources support consistency across all tiers.
Consistent routines, including circle time with Acknowledgement of Country and ready to learn strategies, are now embedded across the site.
This approach increased consistency, staff confidence and collective ownership. Outcomes include a 57% reduction in wellbeing center access from 2025 to 2026. Wellbeing data showed significant improved in belonging and wellbeing literacy amongst students.
Engagement
Sharing real classroom and school examples for their own school contexts.
To share a whole school approach to moving from trauma aware training to embedded trauma informed practice, with a focus on what shifted staff from knowing to doing.
Background/Context
Situated within a primary school on Bangarla Country on the Eyre Peninsula, 400 km west of Adelaide, serving a low socioeconomic community with high levels of trauma exposure. As a First Nations Wiradjuri woman and Wellbeing Leader, this work is grounded in relational and culturally responsive practices that prioritises connection, safety and belonging.
All staff completed Berry Street Education Model training in 2024; however, implementation remained inconsistent, highlighting the need for a structured whole school approach.
Relevance and Contribution
This presentation highlights the role of leadership, structure and culturally responsive practice in sustaining implementation.
Description
Staff feedback identified challenges for Junior Primary learners, which led to an implementation team in 2025 to adapt and refine lessons, strengthening quality and staff ownership.
A whole school approach was established with Tier 1 BSEM lessons in 2025, ensuring all students accessed explicit teaching to recognise and respond to stress. These shared resources support consistency across all tiers.
Consistent routines, including circle time with Acknowledgement of Country and ready to learn strategies, are now embedded across the site.
This approach increased consistency, staff confidence and collective ownership. Outcomes include a 57% reduction in wellbeing center access from 2025 to 2026. Wellbeing data showed significant improved in belonging and wellbeing literacy amongst students.
Engagement
Sharing real classroom and school examples for their own school contexts.
Biography
Karen is a First Nations Wellbeing Leader who won a scholarship with the Department for Education for a Graduate Certificate in Wellbeing and Positive Mental Health in her first year as a Wellbeing Leader. She recently completed her Master's Degree and has driven the implementation of trauma informed practice at her site with support from the Trauma Informed Practice team within the department.
Ms Caroline McGlinchy
Pld Facilitator
He Whānau Manaaki Kindergartens
"You can't teach regulation that you don't practice yourself"
2:50 PM - 3:35 PMAbstract
You can’t teach regulation that you don’t practice yourself: Lessons from a Trauma-Aware Pilot
Last conference, we shared the development of Feeling to Learn a co-designed, trauma aware social and emotional programme grounded in relational neuroscience and mātauranga Māori. This time, we return with what happened when we put it into practice.
Over several months, kaiako across early childhood settings engaged in three relational strands: Mana of the Adult, Mana of the Child, and Belonging. Rather than delivering strategies to manage behaviour, the pilot invited educators to examine adult regulation, bias, cultural identity, and collective responsibility for emotional safety.
What unfolded was not a simple story of improvement. As awareness deepened, confidence sometimes dipped. Conversations about bias and ableism were uncomfortable. Long held behaviour habits surfaced. And yet, within that discomfort, something shifted.
Kaiako began describing behaviour less as defiance and more as communication. Values became visible and shared with tamariki and whānau. Routines were co-constructed. Adult responses slowed. Belonging became intentional rather than assumed.
This presentation explores what it means to move trauma awareness from theory into lived practice. It reflects on the relational conditions required for sustainable change including leadership alignment, time for reflection, and collective care for the adults themselves.
We will share not only what shifted, but what resisted change, and what this suggests about embedding trauma-aware practice at a systems level.
If trauma-aware education is to be more than a programme, it must transform how adults understand themselves.
Last conference, we shared the development of Feeling to Learn a co-designed, trauma aware social and emotional programme grounded in relational neuroscience and mātauranga Māori. This time, we return with what happened when we put it into practice.
Over several months, kaiako across early childhood settings engaged in three relational strands: Mana of the Adult, Mana of the Child, and Belonging. Rather than delivering strategies to manage behaviour, the pilot invited educators to examine adult regulation, bias, cultural identity, and collective responsibility for emotional safety.
What unfolded was not a simple story of improvement. As awareness deepened, confidence sometimes dipped. Conversations about bias and ableism were uncomfortable. Long held behaviour habits surfaced. And yet, within that discomfort, something shifted.
Kaiako began describing behaviour less as defiance and more as communication. Values became visible and shared with tamariki and whānau. Routines were co-constructed. Adult responses slowed. Belonging became intentional rather than assumed.
This presentation explores what it means to move trauma awareness from theory into lived practice. It reflects on the relational conditions required for sustainable change including leadership alignment, time for reflection, and collective care for the adults themselves.
We will share not only what shifted, but what resisted change, and what this suggests about embedding trauma-aware practice at a systems level.
If trauma-aware education is to be more than a programme, it must transform how adults understand themselves.
Biography
Caroline McGlinchy is an educator based in Aotearoa New Zealand, specialising in social and emotional learning through relational and co-design approaches. She holds a Master’s in Change and Organisational Resilience and was one of the developers of Feeling to Learn, a research-informed initiative grounded in collective practice, which has contributed to the development of Manawa Ora ki te Pae Tawhiti. Caroline now works with Whānau Manaaki Kindergartens as a Professional Learning and Development (PLD) facilitator, supporting kaiako (educators) to implement this co-designed programme shaped through the voices and experiences of kaiako, tamariki, and whānau. Her work reflects a commitment to Te Tiriti o Waitangi and the bicultural context of Aotearoa, with a focus on strengthening adult regulation and the mana of the educator. She is particularly interested in disrupting the often unseen and deeply embedded influence of behaviourist approaches within education, and in supporting more relational, responsive ways of being.
Donna Eden is an experienced educator based in Aotearoa New Zealand, with over 20 years as a kindergarten teacher and a strong focus on relational approaches to learning and wellbeing. She was one of the developers of Feeling to Learn, a co-designed, research-informed initiative that has contributed to the development of Manawa Ora ki te Pae Tawhiti. Donna works with Whānau Manaaki Kindergartens as a Professional Learning and Development (PLD) facilitator. She brings both lived and professional experience of neurodivergence to her work, challenging the tendency within education to reshape neurodivergent tamariki through a neurotypical lens. Donna has a particular strength in unpacking and “detangling” complex ideas, supporting others to recognise bias and reconsider taken-for-granted approaches to behaviour. She has a strong interest in brain development, particularly in understanding and responding to the diverse ways neurodivergent tamariki experience and engage with the world, and is committed to more relational, inclusive ways of working.
Ms Donna Eden
Pld Facilitator
Whanau Manaaki Kindergartens
Co-presenter
Biography
