Three free streams at the National Education Summit Melbourne offer practical insights for educators, from early career support to wellbeing culture and future-focused thinking in classrooms.
Now in his sixth year at St Patrick’s College in Launceston, Mr Luc Norton-Smith has moved from classroom teaching into leadership, recently stepping into a Director of Curriculum role after three years as Head of Department.
His experience spans both a rural Department of Education setting and middle years classrooms, where he taught maths and science – areas he says are often staffed by early career teachers, or out-of-field teachers.
That context informs his session at the National Education Summit Melbourne in the newly introduced Early Stages stream, where the focus is on supporting teachers in their first years through clear structures and shared approaches.
This is one of three free streams at the Summit taking place 3-4 September 2026 at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre. The Knowledge Centre and Classroom of the Future streams will run concurrently.
“What I found really supported early career maths and science teachers at St Patrick’s was making sure that we had a well-resourced, low variance curriculum, and making sure that the resourcing was collaboratively designed,” he says.
“We also ensured that we had resources well embedded to help support teachers in what they were delivering and how to deliver it, and the standard at which to deliver it.”
He describes “low variance” as a way of aligning teaching across multiple classes and teachers.
“It’s about making sure that the language and terminology, the level of the content, what’s being taught, the sequence of it being taught, is the same across all the classes. We’re trying to make sure that every kid in every class is getting the same opportunities and the same exposure, to the same content standard.”
For early career teachers, that consistency reduces uncertainty. Mr Norton-Smith’s session will also address the balance between explicit and inquiry approaches. Practical strategies, including daily reviews, underpin that balance.
“At the start of each math lesson, you don’t need to dive straight into the next content; you review what you’ve done the last few lessons, maybe you return to something you did a couple of weeks ago or a month ago,” he says.
“Daily reviews are a really good way to be able to check the students’ understanding. You don’t want to go straight into more content if the kids aren’t confident on what they’ve had the lesson before.”
Thinking in the age of AI
With 17 years in education and more than a decade in leadership roles, Ms Alice Vigors brings both classroom and system-level experience to her sessions at the summit. She began her career as a graduate teacher at Tumut Public School in 2009, later working in the Catholic system in curriculum and instructional leadership roles before returning in 2020 as assistant principal and progressing to principal.
Her presentation in the Classroom of the Future stream centres on critical and creative thinking.
“It’s a passion of mine… it began with creating cultures of thinking and embedding thinking routines in classrooms, and has grown from there,” Ms Vigors says, whose work in this area is also reflected in her books The Thinking Classroom and The Learning Classroom, exploring how educators can embed critical and creative thinking and make learning visible.
She will explore how these skills remain essential alongside emerging technologies.
“There’s a real risk that students, if they’re not taught how to use their own thinking processes alongside AI, will enter a question or prompt into ChatGPT and don’t really critically analyse the results,” she says.
“My focus is on maintaining student agency in learning, really looking at how do we keep that human element of the way that we think… and help students to see why that is really important, even with tools like AI.”
Ms Vigors will also present in the Early Stages stream, drawing on her leadership experience to support new teachers.
“We can’t learn unless we have a relationship with the people we are learning from. As teachers, this means taking the time to get to know the students; it can be as simple as saying hello at the door to every child. It helps to make them feel seen and valued,” she says.
“I could be the first person that said hello to them and actually said their name for the day… it helps to foster those positive relationships.”
Establishing routines is equally central and sustaining them requires ongoing attention, Ms Vigors says.
“As a new teacher, it’s worth making sure you establish your expectations and routine from the beginning and not feel pressure to jump straight into the lesson. The learning will come, but you have to have structures and frameworks in place first,” she says.
“Doing it once on day one doesn’t make it a routine. You have to consistently practice and foster those expectations and regularly revisit them each term.”
Ms Vigors’ session will also address workload and wellbeing for early career teachers, including building support networks.
“I want to reassure early career teachers that we don’t expect them to come in knowing absolutely everything. My message is be kind to yourself – here are some tools and some tips that help you to get started.
“Find people that you can lean on, who you can confide in. It’s really important to have those people in your corner.”
Culture, clarity and collective wellbeing
With seven years as principal of Trinity College North, Mr David Kolpak brings a leadership perspective shaped by wellbeing and positive psychology, as well as experience across a large multi-school system.
Trinity College in Adelaide operates as one college across six schools, each led by its own principal (Mr Kolpak being one of six) and feeding into a senior school, all under a single Head of College. While each school responds to its own context, they are aligned through shared principles across teaching, learning and wellbeing.
Mr Kolpak says his session in the Knowledge Centre stream at the National Education Summit is grounded in how schools build conditions that support both individual and collective wellbeing.
“We teach individual wellbeing skills, but then as a collective, we will look at what do we have to do to make sure people can utilise the tools we’ve given them in an environment that supports that, to foster conditions of wellbeing, such as clarity and trust and empowerment,” he says.
He says the focus is not on choosing between individual and collective wellbeing, but on how both are supported together.
“Individual wellbeing doesn’t take precedence over what is best for the group, but what we need to look at is the conditions that we can provide people to make our environments the best places,” he says.
At Trinity College, that approach is embedded through shared frameworks rather than standalone programs.
“We don’t have a wellbeing program as such. We have the Australian Student Wellbeing Framework that overarches all of our wellbeing, including how we teach about our strengths, emotional management, self-awareness, and what do healthy relationships look like?”.
That same approach extends to staff, with a focus on enabling people to work effectively within supportive conditions.
“We want the staff to be the best version of themselves in their environment, because that’s when the students are going to get the best from them as well,” he says.
Mr Kolpak’s leadership thinking is also captured in his book Thriving Together, which explores how school communities can build trust, clarity and collective efficacy to support wellbeing and growth. He says trust is central to that work.
“Relationships and trust form the foundation of that environment,” he adds. “When you’ve got professional and personal trust, respect comes through and it makes challenging conversations easier, because there’s an understanding of them coming from a place of care.”
Speaker Profiles
Alice Vigors
Stream: Classroom of the Future
When: Thursday 3 September 2026, 9.15 – 9.45am
Session: Critical and Creative Thinking: still essential in the age of AI
Developing critical and creative thinking as complementary, uniquely human skills in the age of AI, and equipping educators with
practical strategies to foster these capabilities in learning.
Alice Vigors
Stream: Early Stages Theatre
When: Thursday 3 September 2026, 11.45 – 12.15pm
Session: Learning the ropes as an early career teacher
This will share practical lessons and strategies from early career teaching, including classroom routines, learning environments, student agency and behaviour management, to support those starting out.
David Kolpak
Stream: Knowledge Centre
When: Thursday 3 September 2026, 3.15 – 3.45pm
Session: Building Culture, Clarity, Collective Efficacy
Exploring how embedding wellbeing into everyday practices builds alignment, trust and shared purpose, with clear expectations and consistent approaches enabling stronger collaboration and performance.
Luc Norton-Smith
Stream: Early Stages Theatre
When: Friday 4 September 2026, 12.45 – 1.15pm
Session: From Surviving to Thriving: Building Pedagogical Confidence with Explicit Teaching and Daily Reviews
Helping early career teachers build pedagogical confidence through explicit teaching, daily review practices and practical, research-informed strategies that support student outcomes and teacher wellbeing.
Key details
National Education Summit – Melbourne
When: 3-4 September 2026
Where: Melbourne Convention & Exhibition Centre
To register, visit nationaleducationsummit.com.au and secure your place in the Melbourne program. Early registration is recommended due to high demand across streams.
