Our Educators
Qualified educators and staff work together at Chelmer-Graceville Kindergarten to provide your child with a high quality, play-based early education program. All of our Teacher educators hold appropriate qualifications and licences for their positions. We also work to build a pool of regular relief educators for times when our educators are out of the classroom for professional learning opportunities or leave.
Alison Cashman
Director & Teacher
Alison graduated with a Bachelor of Education (Early Childhood) in September 1994 from Macquarie University in Sydney, after completing a Diploma of Teaching in Early Childhood in 1992. Alison is registered with the Queensland College of Teachers.
Since graduating from University Alison has worked in a variety of Early Childhood settings, both in Australia and overseas. She worked in long day care initially, before moving to kindergarten and lower primary in the International School system. Upon her return to Australia Alison relocated to Noosa where she worked as a kindergarten teacher for many years. Alison and her family moved to Brisbane in January 2019, and she joined our kindy at the start of the 2019 Kindy year as the teacher and Director.
Alison strives to provide a stimulating, caring and challenging educational environment for the children in her care. She is an enthusiastic about play based learning, and believes that play based learning environments help develop key skills such as inquiry, expression, negotiation, experimentation, socialisation and teamwork.
Trudy Burge
Assistant Educator
After completing a Bachelor of Science (Hons) in Parasitology from the University of Queensland (UQ), Trudy worked as a Research Assistant to a Lecturer/Researcher within UQ’s Department of Microbiology and Parasitology. After 11 years at UQ, Trudy chose to leave her research position to have and raise her two children.
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Trudy has always loved interacting with children and her enthusiasm to work in this field was rekindled when her children attended Chelmer-Graceville Kindergarten. Prior to joining our staff team, Trudy was a Management Committee member and has been involved with the Kindergarten since 2008.
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Trudy’s unique skill set allows science to be naturally integrated into our play-based curriculum, which allows time to be devoted to areas of study set by the children’s interests. We find, more often than not, our child-led learning is based on scientific inquiry and exploration. Trudy introduces the children to the formative stages of building a scientific vocabulary and understanding
scientific concepts.
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Deb Brennan
Teaching Assistant
Deb has over 12 years' experience working with Prep students at St. Joseph's Catholic College. Her experience in the school setting assists the children of our kindergarten with a confident and successful transition into their early school years.
Deb is a creative and enthusiastic person who engages with our students in an interactive, friendly manner. Her interest in arts, crafts and creative areas of the program provides the children with a variety of exciting learning experiences in a play based setting.
Over the years Deb has worked with a diverse range of students and is very respectful of the different needs, strengths and learning abilities of each student. She builds quality relationships with the children to ensure positive learning outcomes. She is very respectful of the different needs, strengths, and learning abilities of each student. Her focus is to build quality relationships with the children to ensure positive learning outcomes.
Deb is a registered Blue Card holder and holds a current First Aid and CPR certificate.