16 October 2025

Join us to explore Lenswood Primary School’s Resilient Lenswood Parents in Education project, an inspiring initiative born from the devastating 2019 Cudlee Creek bushfires. Sokhan Greenwood, Principal at Lenswood Primary School and Caroline Williamson, parent, volunteer and Project Lead share how their disaster-stricken community turned adversity into an empowering program for children and families. Hear about the strategies that have fostered student voice, parent collaboration, and curriculum innovation to build disaster resilience and agency in children. This episode is ideal for educators, parents, and community leaders seeking to transform challenges into growth opportunities in their schools and preschools.

Show Notes

• Resilient Lenswood news article
• Resilient Lenswood Project
• Bushfire season preparation advice for families

Transcript

Dale Atkinson: Hello and welcome to Teach a podcast about teaching and learning in South Australia. My name is Dale Atkinson from South Australia's Department for Education, and today we are joined by two very special guests to talk about the Resilient Lenswood Project, which is a Parents in Education funded project. So we're joined by Caroline Williamson, who's the parent and project lead of Resilient Lenswood. Thank you very much for coming in.

Caroline Williamson: It's a pleasure.

Dale Atkinson: And we're also joined by the principal of Lenswood Primary School, just 9 months into the role, Sokhan Greenwood. Thank you very much for coming.

Sokhan Greenwood: Thanks for inviting us.

Dale Atkinson: So, Caroline, can I come to you first? Let's go back to 2019. I mean, all South Australians, I think remember what happened at that time. But can you just tell us a little about what the experience was like for the Lenswood community and the Cudlee Creek bushfires?

Caroline Williamson: Yeah, I mean, the Lenswood the community and the Adelaide Hills community has faced significant challenges since the Cudlee Creek fires. There was extensive loss to properties and homes and the emotional toll as well of recovery and rebuilding.

It's been a really deep impact, including for my own family. I mean, this really sparked, motivated the project. So building from that experience of adversity, let's try and build agency in our kids and that sense of empowerment from, you know, a sense of loss of control to, being able to build the sort of future that they want and build that resilience in them, for future events.

But I think that the most meaningful impact is from the student voice, the voices themselves. Recently, a year 4 student mentioned that since the resilience program, I haven't felt too afraid to think about fires and what's going to happen. And I think that really speaks to the heart of what we've been trying to do to transform that sense of fear and uncertainty.

To know that they have the tools and the community behind them to support them. It's just yeah, it speaks volumes to us.

Dale Atkinson: What an incredibly nice piece of feedback for you to hear.

Caroline Williamson: Absolutely. It makes it all worth it.

Dale Atkinson: So what was it you were observing in your own children and children from the community that made you think that something needed to happen at a community level through the school?

Caroline Williamson: Yeah, absolutely. So for my own kids, after the fires, they carried a deep anxiety around fires, around safety, around the unpredictability of the world in general. So for us, building resilience was really much more than just preparedness, although that's a really big part. It was about wanting to foster those coping skills, the emotion regulation, to give them a sense of a stake in the future that they wanted to create, and to lead preparedness efforts so that they could really move from a place of fear and uncertainty towards agency and collaboration, and knowing that they had this community around them to support them to do that.

For my own kids, for example, the project has really helped them to reengage with the landscape around them again from a place of stewardship and care. And so whether it's been learning about First Nations understandings and relationships with fire, to the importance of listening to country, biodiversity and native species, even to monitoring weather patterns through our school weather station and our work with the Bureau of Meteorology.

All of this has really helped them to repair that relationship with the landscape around them that they love so much. And so to restore that sense of trust in themselves and in the community

Dale Atkinson: Now you've been able to go on a journey where you've essentially embedded some of these activities that build resilience into the curriculum.

Caroline Williamson: Yes.

Dale Atkinson: Now, that's a daunting challenge for any school – to completely reset some of the activities that you do during the school day. What was it that you identified out of all the multiple layers of impact that these traumas can have that you wanted to go after specifically?

Caroline Williamson: I think absolutely key is that sense of agency and self-efficacy. A lot of kids felt a sense of loss of control of their environment. Perhaps they weren't included in conversations around what would happen in an emergency. I feel that when kids are equipped with the tools to face challenges head on, and when they're also given the chance to be part of solutions and preparedness efforts and real world, you know, solutions.

They have that, it builds that sense of confidence and, belonging and self-efficacy that really I think holds them in good stead, not just in full successful learning, but also for lifelong wellbeing – what it means to me to be thriving. So that's the key thing that I want. The kids would want the kids to get out of this project.

Dale Atkinson: Yeah, absolutely. What's been the interplay between, you know, your vision – you obviously identified something that you felt needed to be addressed - what was the interplay between your identification of an issue that you wanted to go after. How you kind of brought the school into that. How the Parents in Education project kind of worked, and how the kids were involved. How did you activate that initially?

Caroline Williamson: Yeah. So lots of conversations, lots of talking and lots of listening. I didn't want to, you know, ram this down people's throats! I was very careful to speak about it in a trauma informed way as well, because there is still trauma in our community.

I also really wanted this to be something the whole school could get behind. So I set out from the beginning with that – with a strategy to really embed disaster resilience into what we learn and how we learn as well as a school. So, multiple layers. We have the amazing parent group who have been absolutely extraordinary in their level of commitment.

We've had parents facilitating workshops, planning ideas, liaising with community subject matter experts and stakeholders. We've also very clear about wanting to highlight student voice precisely for the reasons that I mentioned earlier. So we're having students facilitate some disaster resilience workshops. We also are embedding disaster resilience into the curriculum learning as well. So we want that to be embedded that across all year levels.

So that resilience isn't just a one-off topic. It's something that we sort of change the way we approach our learning in many ways. And it's sort of, that part of our culture now.

Dale Atkinson: It's an incredible journey and a good point at which to bring you into the conversation, Sokhan, which is I guess my question is, how do you operationalise that vision at a site level? What are you doing to implement these things?

Sokhan Greenwood: Well, there's 3 factors at play. You've got your student cohort and what they can add to this project. Students leading the conversation with their parents at home. Because we know that if we can embed that understanding with children, they often will go home and talk about learning they have school they find is exciting or fun or interesting.

And then obviously involving parents into that conversation and making it in a way that is accessible for everyone. So looking at, you know, time slots of when workshops might run or when we might share information utilising all of our social media newsletters and that kind of stuff, to get the information out there so we can have as much voice as we can back into the school, and then obviously our staff being part of that.

So 3 really important plays. I think I'm really lucky in that in my school we've got very strong student voice. Before I even started the school, I had a group of year 6 girls who were quite passionate about leading change, and there was a group that were very passionate about me rejuvenating this secret garden project. And what I've discovered over the years is how much that connects to what we're already doing, which is a piece of landscape that we can actually apply all the learning that we're doing in the classroom, back into that landscape space and having that sense of control.

So it's been it's been a lot of work. I'm not going to deny that. And each time we've, you know, maybe have something in our, in our mind about what we might do, we get some feedback from the students or the parents or the teachers, and then we might have to pivot a little bit. So it's always kind of evolving.

And we've got some really decent suite of workshops now that we've got lined up and have been going for a couple of weeks. And I'm sure as we continue throughout the year and into next year, will just keep evolving. It won't stop just because the year's finished – I don’t envision that.

Dale Atkinson: Amazing. What sort of work have you had to do with your teaching staff around embedding this as a focus of their concentration and the work that they're doing?

Sokhan Greenwood: I'm very lucky to have Caroline. She is not just an amazing parent, but she's actually fantastic at research. And I've not met a parent like her. She's not allowed to leave me ever. So her children will be 25 and still at school! But she actually went away and curated a whole bunch of resources working with Hills Council. They provided some beautiful books for us to use in our library that were really targeted around natural environment, how to prepare, First Nations perspective.

So having those hands-on resources is really great for teachers to use straight away. She then curated a whole bunch of lessons and resources and put into one location. And if you know, education, that's always the hardest part is finding quality resources and then delivering that. So having all that ready to go meant that our teachers could hit the ground running.

We also had Caroline coming in for a staff meeting, a couple of staff meetings just to share some of her progress and the lessons suite that she had developed, including fire scenarios that the children had to kind of work their way through in an animated setting. But some of the realities were there for them to navigate their way through and then having access to some great resources online that really incorporates Aboriginal perspective as well.

So we could just do the learning. And I found that the staff didn't really take much convincing because they knew it was important. We either live in the community or work in there or knows what’s impacted by the fires. So it was easy to convince them, and they were quite keen and having everything ready to go made it so much easier.

Dale Atkinson: What's it been like bringing the parents on the journey, and has that had to be a deliberate thing, or have they kind of leaned in on the work?

Caroline Williamson: I think that every community is very different, and they all have their shared history and their culture, and you have to be very mindful of that. I would say from my work on the Governing Council, I have had the opportunity to build some really strong relationships with parents and families.

Just picking our kids up from school, having a chat here and there. And also, it’s the kind of school it is. The kids will just chat with you, you know, say, “Hi. How's your day going?” It's that kind of family, small community vibe, so that our parents also have a really strong culture of showing up and helping out as well.

Our volunteers are incredible, so we’re very fortunate. I would say, to have that parent involvement from the beginning.

Sokhan Greenwood: And I think strategically, we make sure we use things like Facebook as a way to share quick information, and I always think more information is better than not enough. So it's things like having posters on our gates. Often families will sit around tables under the verandah.

So we had little posters and QR codes so they could register for things or get their feedback. So as much as we could, we made information really easy to access and also sharing back information – really simple. And sometimes it is me stalking them in the in the playground while they're picking up their children to have conversations.

But one thing they always say is how much they appreciate that and when they can’t attend because of work, that having that information there. And just a recent suggestion was maybe we could record and put onto Teams for families who are busy with sports and that stuff right now in the Hills, but down the track, when things settle, they might be able to come back and watch it again.

So that was really good feedback recently too.

Caroline Williamson: Absolutely. It's very much about meeting parents where they are with everyone so busy. And yeah, taking that feedback and being able to adapt. I think parents really appreciate that.

Dale Atkinson: Obviously, you've been able to coalesce around a common trauma, fit for your community or a common area of interest. What's the way in for other schools where perhaps they don't have that as the trigger point for this type of activity? What should they be thinking about if they're looking to embed the things that you've embedded, which is incredible student voice, parent involvement in the delivery of something, the coalescing around a really strong common interest. But what should they be looking for?

Caroline Williamson: Well, I think it goes back to what we mentioned earlier about having that conversation. You know, if you're a parent, for example, thinking about starting a Parents in Education funded program, I would say start by talking to your principal. Start by talking to the teachers and to the families. You know, have a chat with your kids and their friends and sort of try to understand, you know, what the school's doing well, you know, what's missing. And also the things that they really deeply care about. And I think from there, you know, a really meaningful project always starts with that listening so that you can really build something inclusive and meaningful to your school because every community is different, and every culture is different.

Dale Atkinson: How do you create an environment where parents feel comfortable to bring ideas to you and to have these conversations?

Sokhan Greenwood: I think it’s about not shutting down ideas. And the more you talk and listen, the more you can really get a sense of the place they're coming from, you know? Is that a place of empowering their children? Is it a place of, there's something lacking in my knowledge set that I'd like to be able to utilise and then going from there.

But what I've always found with our families, is they're just really open and honest. And it might be a private conversation that we have in my office. It might be a casual conversation in the yard. It might be through Governing council or PNF. I think listening is really important. And then from there you can decide what actions you take based on that.

And the children are really very good at sharing information from home as well. They’re very honest. So listening to them, I think it's really important having their voice. And I guess the great thing is with our Public Education Strategy, it really is about your community and how you deliver education that's purposeful for your context, which I think has been very liberating, that you're not comparing yourself to another school down the road, and that your parents and children are unique to your site.

So my biggest thing is about listening. Because if you don't listen, you don't know what to do next.
Dale Atkinson: That is such a good way to leave this conversation. Thank you very much for your time and all the best with the project going forward.

Caroline Williamson: Thank you so much for your time.

Sokhan Greenwood: Thank you, Dale.