When a Presentation Becomes a Conversation

Reflections from the National Education Summit Melbourne 2026

Last week, I returned to the National Education Summit in Melbourne, my fourth time presenting at the Summit, having now had the privilege of speaking twice in Brisbane and twice in Melbourne.

There is something quite special about returning to an event like this. Each time, the presentation has reflected a slightly different part of my work, my experience and the things I am continuing to learn.

This time, I was speaking about something that has become increasingly central to the way I think about education: belonging.

My session, Cultivating Belonging: Trauma-Informed Pathways to Connection and Growth, explored what happens when we stop seeing belonging as the nice thing that happens around learning, and begin recognising it as one of the conditions that can make learning possible.

But this particular presentation landed in a week that held a much more personal significance for me.

Ten years ago, almost to the day, three little people aged three, four and five walked into our lives.

I couldn't have known then that so much of what I would one day stand in a room of educators and speak about would first be taught to me by them.

I've sat on both sides of the table

Throughout my career, I've had the unusual privilege of seeing education through two very different lenses.

I've been the educator sitting around the table discussing the student who isn't engaging, isn't completing work, isn't following instructions or isn't coping within the classroom.

And I've been the parent sitting on the other side.

The parent who knows what happened before school that morning.

Who knows how much effort it took just to get through the gate.

Who knows what happens when a child gets home after spending six hours holding themselves together.

Who knows that the child being described through behaviour reports, attendance data, incomplete work and adjustments is also funny, creative, observant, loving, fiercely passionate and capable of so much.

I've seen and loved and raised children impacted by early trauma. I've watched them flourish when they feel safe and known, and I've watched incredibly capable children lose access to skills I know they have when their nervous system becomes overwhelmed.

Those experiences have changed the questions I ask about children.

Instead of simply: How do we change this behaviour?

I've become much more interested in: What is this behaviour helping us understand about this child?

And increasingly: What does this child have available to them right now?

What if capacity isn't fixed?

This became one of the central ideas of my presentation.

We often talk about whether a child is capable of something.

Can they write the paragraph?

Can they complete the maths task?

Can they enter the classroom independently?

Can they cope with the transition?

But ability and capacity aren't quite the same thing.

A child can have the ability to do something without having the same capacity available to access that ability in every moment.

We know this as adults.

There are days when answering one more email feels completely manageable and days when it feels like one decision too many and can almost tip us right over the edge. We haven't suddenly lost the ability to write an email. Our available capacity has changed.

Children are no different.

Sensory load, uncertainty, executive-function demands, relationships, poor sleep, fear of failure, masking, hunger, changes in routine, stress at home and the work of regulating big emotions can all consume capacity.

This isn't about assuming children impacted by trauma or neurodivergence inherently have less capacity.

It's about recognising that capacity fluctuates for all of us... and context matters.

Which led me to the pathway that sat underneath the whole presentation:

Sometimes the pathway to learning begins before the lesson

We spend a lot of time in education thinking about the learning end of that pathway.

How do I get them to engage?

How do I get them to start the work?

How do I get them back into the classroom?

How do I get them to have a go?

But sometimes we're trying to solve an engagement problem when a child is experiencing a regulation problem.

Sometimes we're trying to solve a regulation problem when underneath it is a felt-safety problem.

And sometimes we're trying to create felt safety for a child who isn't yet convinced they truly belong.

For me, that changes where we begin.

Belonging isn't the reward for successful learning. It is one of the conditions that can make learning possible.

It might mean making something more predictable.

Explaining what is about to happen.

Giving a child a little more processing time.

Making the invisible visible.

Holding a boundary without withdrawing the relationship.

Coming back after a difficult moment and communicating: Yesterday was hard. Today is a new day. I'm glad you're here.

It isn't about removing expectations.

We're not lowering the bar. We're widening the doorway.

And then the presentation ended…

Except, in some ways, it didn't.

This has probably been my favourite part to reflect on since returning home.

People stayed afterwards. Educators came up and told me about the students they had been thinking about while I spoke.

We talked about children who were struggling.

About families who felt misunderstood.

About the complexity of supporting diverse learners within very real classrooms, with very real constraints.

Several people asked whether I could come and continue the conversation through professional learning and workshops within their schools.

One educator visiting internationally asked whether I could run an online session for parents in their school community to help families better understand and support their children.

And somewhere amongst those conversations, I had one of those quiet moments of realisation.

Maybe this is what The Learning Support Hub is becoming.

Not simply a website.

Not simply a collection of resources.

But a place for conversations.

A place where educators, learning support staff, parents and carers can explore trauma, neurodivergence, behaviour and learning without reducing children to a diagnosis or pretending there are simple answers.

A place where lived experience and professional practice can sit alongside one another.

A place where we can remain curious.

Where we can hold high expectations while widening the doorway.

Where we can remember that capacity is not character.

And where we can keep asking better questions about the children in front of us.

Ten years later

Perhaps that's why the timing of this particular Summit has stayed with me so much.

Ten years ago, I wasn't thinking about felt safety, available capacity or professional learning workshops.

I was learning how to parent three very little people whose experiences of the world had already been far more complicated than they should have been.

I certainly didn't know that a decade later I would stand in a room full of educators and share some of the things those children had taught me.

There is something quite beautiful about that.

I went to the National Education Summit hoping that something I shared might cause an educator to think differently about a child.

I came home having heard about some of those children.

And perhaps with a clearer sense of where this work might be heading next.

I'm incredibly grateful to the National Education Summit for giving me the opportunity to share this work, and to every person who listened, reflected, asked a question, told me a story or stayed behind for a conversation.

Because behind every behaviour is a child longing to be seen.

And sometimes, changing the way we see them is where everything else begins.