Leadership Q&A: A multidisciplinary approach to learning and student wellbeing

‘We want to continue developing programs that enable our young women to succeed academically, socially, and personally, while also creating opportunities for them to contribute to and positively impact their communities.’ River Nile School in Melbourne supports refugee and asylum seeker students, many of whom have experienced trauma and prolonged disengagement from education. In this Leadership Q&A, Principal Charles Hertzog shares what makes his school community unique, how the context shapes his leadership priorities, and how he brings teachers, wellbeing staff, and external agencies into a shared vision.

To begin, can you tell readers a little about River Nile School and its context?

We are an independent senior secondary school in North Melbourne for young women from refugee backgrounds. We’re coming up to our 10th year and currently serve 140 students.

Young women come to our school if they’ve experienced a level of trauma that makes them unlikely to engage in mainstream education – whether they’re looking for a smaller setting, whether they’ve experienced trauma or persecution at the hands of men and are seeking a female-only environment, or whether they need really intensive supports.

We offer a Vocational Major and the Victorian Pathways Certificate. Our students have a wide range of experiences, backgrounds, and aspirations. Some students have never learned to read and write in their own language in their original country. Others were already speaking English elsewhere or may have even begun tertiary studies in their original language and are now looking to begin their educational pathway over in Australia.

Our students range from 15 through 24 and can be on a program of up to 4 years with us. Students who come with very little English do really intensive literacy supports as they begin their pathway with us.

We offer smaller class sizes with 3 adults to each of our 15 to 20 students: one teacher, one learning support officer (who offers adjustments, access to literacy interventions, and support for students with disabilities), and one wellbeing worker from a youth work or social work background. The wellbeing worker works to remove any barriers a student faces toward school and builds strategies for students to access education after school as well.

We’re located in North Melbourne, and our community travels from all over to get to us. Some students live close by, but many live in different growth corridors across Victoria and commute to reach us. Our cohort comes from an incredibly diverse range of countries, religions and backgrounds, fostering a unique student culture grounded in shared goals and experiences.

You’ve been principal of River Nile School for 2 years now. Can you tell us about your career and how you came to be in this role?

I’m an English teacher by trade. I taught in various high schools and sectors early in my career and, for the past 15 years, have worked in schools within underserved communities. 

I started doing work in the South Sudanese community in Melbourne’s west when a friend was running a literacy program on weekends, and it very quickly became the best part of my week. My wife and I became involved with these really engaging, fun, and resilient families and communities. We started our own chapter of a literacy organisation at Atherton Gardens – the public housing estate in Fitzroy, Melbourne. Through that process, I learned so much and got to know the community there really well. 

I also worked in Brooklyn, New York in the charter school system – independently run, publicly funded schools, most often in underserved communities looking to close the education gap and, in our case, provide college opportunities for students as they finished high school. I worked in a middle school there and deeply loved that experience, working with that community and learning so much from them. I was also working in a really well-organised organisation that was ambitious, evolving, and learning all the time. I worked as an assistant principal there after a couple of years of teaching and then moved to a director role across our network of K-12 schools working on academic programs and literacy programs.

When I returned to Australia, I ran a campus of Berry Street School in Narre Warren, Melbourne. I really loved their trauma-informed practices and felt deeply connected to the mission of River Nile School when I first heard about it. The fact that it is independent and able to work closely with the board to develop strategy was really exciting, and it serves such a unique cohort of young women.

Those experiences in the US gave me a strong belief that well-organised systems and processes can help combat inequity. I strongly believe that communities already have the ability and resilience to achieve what they want to achieve; it is the systemic barriers placed in front of them that make this challenging. I’m motivated by working to remove those barriers in sustainable ways, and I’ve been fortunate to do that in a few different roles.

River Nile School supports refugee and asylum seeker students, many of whom have experienced trauma and prolonged disengagement from education. How does this context shape your leadership priorities?

My leadership priorities are shaped by working backward from where we want our students to be – in terms of their skills and the opportunities they’ll be able to pursue – and then defining what we need to put in place to get them there.

We hear from our students that they really want to learn English and become proficient in it. Many of our students are highly aspirational. Some were on an academic pathway before they came here, while others were unable to pursue one due to civil unrest or turmoil in their country, or in some cases because of gender expectations placed on women. This can result in a strong desire to fast-track to where they’d like to be. That, in turn, informs our programs and the outcomes we’re working toward.

Over time, we’ve learned that our wellbeing program – which offers a lot of supports and scaffolds – needs to teach students how to navigate the barriers they encounter, rather than simply removing those barriers for them. Many of our leadership priorities over the past 2 years, and in the years ahead, focus on developing programs that foster sustainable independence for students and equip them to navigate the complex systems and structures they will encounter after leaving us.

Whatever a student wants to do, if they can leave us and enter that program, job, or lifestyle, our program needs to support that goal. As a leadership group, our priorities are to ensure we have the pathways in place, and that we are delivering them strategically. This means making sure our staff have the skills to deliver the programs effectively and that our organisation is robust enough to provide them in a recurring, sustainable way.

In a specialist setting like River Nile School, staff work is emotionally demanding. What leadership strategies have you found most effective in supporting staff wellbeing? Do you have any examples that you could share with readers?

This probably isn’t the most exciting answer in the whole sphere of staff wellbeing – which is a really important and growing space – but what we’ve found matters most when working with young people who have experienced trauma, or in emotionally demanding settings, is that everyone is really clear on their role and supported to do it. Ambiguity around who responds to what, who has the training to do what, or the suggestion that everyone needs the skills to respond to students in every way creates uncertainty, burnout, and a general sense of overwhelming burden. 

We’ve worked to really streamline who does what and who responds to what. We have a saying: ‘only people who have been trained in responding to trauma need to respond to trauma’. So, it isn’t the job of our teaching staff or learning support team to manage the social-emotional wellbeing of our students. 

We don’t think it’s achievable for a teacher to be training a young person to read (doing all of the necessary planning, pedagogy, learning, data review, and general human connection that it requires) and then also work on the social-emotional development of that student. They can’t be their touchpoint for all the challenges in their life and try to support them to remove those challenges as much as possible, while also addressing struggles that might come from their trauma, their experiences in Australia, their cultural upbringing, or other factors. 

We really limit that responsibility to our wellbeing team (people who are social workers or youth workers) and to our mental health team of psychologists, wellbeing practitioners, and mental health practitioners who have the training to deliver that support and share the learnings. 

We’re a smaller organisation, and it can sometimes be true in small organisations that work with vulnerable young people that everyone ends up doing everything. There’s an expectation, or sometimes even a desire, for everyone to be involved in everything. We really want everyone to have a personal relationship with our students, but we want to delineate responsibilities based on expertise, training, and professional development. 

For those who have the responsibility of responding to trauma, they all receive internal supervision every week or every 2 weeks. They also have the option of external supervision, and, of course, receive training in those areas. 

The ways we appreciate staff, celebrate achievements, recognise good work, and bond as a team over our values are all really important. But we’re also cognisant that those things don’t feel impactful if people’s day-to-day experience doesn’t leave them with a sense of achievement, satisfaction, and sustainability.

I’ve read that your wellbeing framework goes beyond the classroom – integrating mental health support, community connections, and practical life skills to empower students. Can you tell me about your school community hub and the role it plays in supporting student wellbeing?

There’s a growing body of work that suggests schools with community hubs (whether you call them access schools or full-service school models) really remove barriers for students and give them a very inclusive way to access support. There are schools in Victoria doing that incredibly well. When I worked at Berry Street, we would often connect with Doveton P-9 College, which have an incredible community hub program.

We’ve established ours over the last few years. Our Assistant Principal of Wellbeing comes from a medical background before she was a teacher and really understands the connection between physical health and social-emotional health as a core tenet of learning and a core aspect of success at school and in pathways.

We partner with different external organisations and providers ranging from doctors, dentists, and optometrists who are on-site incrementally (doctors are here once a week). We also partner with community connection organisations like Centrelink, financial literacy services, and housing support that have booking slots our students can attend.

Our Centrelink partnership actually came about because one of our wellbeing workers was taking students to Centrelink so frequently that the person there eventually just admitted it would be easier if they were at the school once a week. So now they’re stationed to do that. We’ve found with partnering organisations that there’s a real desire to do this – they understand that coming to the community can be really impactful.

The other need we have is that our school is a long way from where a lot of our students live, so it can be really difficult to fit in appointments with a primary care provider where they live while also travelling to school. Our students either need to miss school to do that or take their family to do that. Having a space where they can do that at school definitely increases attendance and removes some of those barriers.

I understand that your school employs trauma-informed practices to ensure your students have an individualised approach to their complex history and trauma. Can you share more about these practices? What do they look like in everyday teaching and learning at the school?

We have an individualised approach both to the pedagogical needs students have (their ability to access curriculum and what success looks like for them) and to their wellbeing needs (what they’re trying to achieve, what their barriers are, and what they’re going to grow and develop). 

The Independent Learning Plan – which is not a document unique to our school – really ties all of those together. Like schools that do this well, it’s very much a student-led process, while also drawing on the expertise of the people who work with those students. 

Because many of our students carry the primary load in their family regarding speaking English, being a carer, or being a mature minor, they’re very involved in that process, perhaps more so than in some other high schools. The family often has a lesser role in that space. At the start or end of each term, students identify their core goals with their teachers and learning support staff. Those goals are then reflected in the lessons. 

The teacher ensures that, at the start of the unit and throughout the lessons, those individual plans are in place for particular students, and sometimes they are clustered together. For example, a student might want to move from one progression point to another in their reading, and they will undertake some intensive literacy support with our speech pathologist or learning support staff. These sessions might happen in groups, or there might be individualised work based on the needs of students within those groups. Or a student may have an individualised plan that forms part of the teacher’s planning, and the learning support staff execute it. 

Our wellbeing team, in those same meetings, work on the goals that students are pursuing. We have a matrix that we are applying this year of goals and progression points that we believe are core skills students need to navigate the world successfully after school. These skills are varied – ranging from the ability to regulate and remain calm when upset, to the ability to verbalise thoughts and feelings, to practical skills such as booking medical appointments independently or accessing translation services when needed. 

I should also add that the trauma-informed space and the evolution over the last 10 years has provided tangible resources and frameworks. I mentioned Berry Street as a former employer, and they have very clear strategies around body, stamina, and relationships that are directly applicable in our organisation. 

While you don’t always develop or write specific plans for those elements, they become ingrained in how you operate – how you structure your day, how you respond to dysregulation, and how you ensure that you’re creating safety and space for students to learn and grow. The wellbeing team has one-on-one meetings with each person in their caseload. All students have a case manager, though we don’t use that term, we use ‘wellbeing worker’. 

Throughout the term, students work on those skills, and the wellbeing worker is the touchpoint to support that. Ideally, there is integration between those 2 skill sets, and as a team of 3 people (teacher, learning support, and wellbeing worker) we’re teaching independent skills to young people. They are clear on what they’re working towards, and it brings them to a place of autonomy and independence in how they approach learning.

River Nile School relies heavily on multidisciplinary collaboration. As the principal, how do you bring together teachers, wellbeing staff, and external agencies into your shared vision?

I don’t think the vision part is as difficult as the practical part. In the community we work with, people are generally very aligned. They believe in the rights of young people from refugee backgrounds, in the rights of women, and in education – and the power of all 3 working together. So, the mission part is something that both external bodies that work with us, refer to us, or collaborate with us generally feel aligned with. 

I think the work that the leadership team and I do is more about making sure that the flows of work and information are functioning across those organisations and bodies in a way that really works for the students. 

We have a really interesting mix of external organisations that support our students: settlement bodies that touch large areas of our students’ lives, health services, Department schools, community and religious organisations, and other refugee support organisations. All of these have referred students to us and often continue to collaborate with us beyond the student’s enrolment. 

As a school, it’s pretty clear that our purpose is to support young women to achieve their high school accreditation. We talk about that internally and with our stakeholders as giving students independence and the ability to have choice once they leave us. Generally, our stakeholders are very supportive of that. So, the work we do is really about creating clarity in who does what – both internally and externally – to ensure that we can share information in a way that is respectful, collaborative, and private when appropriate, that the voice of the student is always at the forefront of what we’re doing and where they want to go, and also that we’re organised. 

One of the things that really struck me when working with Doveton College earlier was how well the information they had about a student was organised when they handed someone over to you. They had such care in how they collected that information – who had it, what they were recommending, what the family had said, and what the student had said – that it was really clear what you were going to do with that information. 

We’d like to hold ourselves to that standard and make sure that, as we work across departments internally and with external organisations, what we have is organised in a way that minimises unnecessary work, eliminates the need to recreate the wheel, and places a strong emphasis on the student and what we need to do to support them in getting to where they’d like to be.

What does success look like for students at River Nile School, and how do you communicate that to staff, families, and system leaders?

Success for us is really simple: can a young woman do what they would like to do when they leave our organisation, and can they do that for a sustained amount of time? That means having the agency to do the job they’d like to do, live the life they’d like to live, study what they’d like to study, and earn what they’d like to earn – in the same way that myself and other people who grew up with that level of privilege are able to do.

Within that framework, our students and families normally let us know what their goals are, and those can change and evolve over time. Sometimes it starts with emotional safety and regular school attendance, or sometimes it starts with literacy. 

Once people have gotten into a routine with that or have been exposed to different types of things – whether that’s careers, work placements, courses, or what their peers are doing – those goals can evolve and change. We’re receptive to that change, and within those goals, our job is really to make sure that there’s the possibility of those things happening and that we’re in a position to allow that to happen. The job for us is to make sure that we understand how each of our roles fits into that overall vision. 

Whether we’re working on our accounts, organising events, representing the school externally, developing a literacy program, or working on the mental health of a student, we know that we’re doing that for that individual student (for their long-term agency and choice) and then creating a school environment where that can happen for everyone.

In 2025, your school was recognised with several awards, including being named winners of the Melbourne Awards 2025 in the Community category. As a school leader, what does it mean to you to have your school recognised in this way?

While it’s nice to know as an organisation that you’re doing good work, I spoke with some of our student leaders about this, and what clearly meant the most was the endorsement of the community itself. When you’re a young woman who’s been displaced, you don’t always know where you feel valued. You don’t always know how being legally allowed in the country relates to how that community views and sees you. You’ve been involved in moments where you’ve likely been part of a minority or persecuted group, whether that’s related to gender, race, ethnicity, or religion. 

Those feelings exist and are contained within you and your narrative, even if you don’t personally view yourself that way. There is different rhetoric about women and refugees that you can see and access now – social media provides it. Our students would have seen that there was an anti-immigration rally in Melbourne last year. They’ll see certain things that politicians say. They’ll see extremist groups in the same city where they’re going to school. And they feel a really deep connection to Melbourne. It’s a unifying part of our school. 

People travel from all over to be in this centralised location, and it means a lot to some of our students to be able to do that – to come out of the environment they live in, enter this different environment, and learn from and experience it. So, to know that the City of Melbourne sees them, values them, and celebrates their goal of education, is just really fulfilling. 

Looking ahead, what are your leadership priorities for 2026?

We want to continue developing programs that enable our young women to succeed academically, socially, and personally, while also creating opportunities for them to contribute to and positively impact their communities. Our focus is on reaching as many students as possible and ensuring that the support we provide is sustainable, meaningful, and tailored to the unique needs of each young woman we work with.