Education Week - September 18, 2019 - 12

| BUILDING A TRAUMA-SENSITIVE SCHOOL
Veronica Lyon, a math
teacher at Lincoln
Middle School in
Clarkston, Wash.,
comforts one of her 7th
graders after a lesson in
fractions. Lyon
interweaves
social-emotional lessons
and mathematics to
support distressed

Pete Caster for Education Week

Getty

students.

Recognizing
Signs of Teacher
Burnout
The Professional Quality of
Life Scale, by researcher Beth
Hudnall Stamm, is a common
tool to gauge burnout and
compassion fatigue among
teachers. It asks educators and
other people in "helping" jobs
to reflect on how frequently
they experienced the different
reactions in the last 30 days
(on a scale of 1 to 5, meaning
"never" to "very often") and
includes several questions
related to the ways in which
working with students who
have experienced trauma can
affect teachers. The test asks
teachers to consider, among
other items, whether:
* I am preoccupied with
more than one person
I teach.
* I jump or am startled
by unexpected sounds.
* I find it difficult to separate
my personal life from my
life as a teacher.
* I am not as productive at
work because I am losing
sleep over the traumatic
experiences of a person
I teach.
* I feel depressed because
of the traumatic
experiences of the people
I teach.
* I feel as though I am
experiencing the trauma
of someone I have taught.
* I feel worn out because
of my work as a teacher.
* I avoid certain activities or
situations because they
remind me of frightening
experiences of the people
I taught.
* I can't recall important parts
of my work with trauma
victims.
For the full test and scoring, see

https://proqol.org/
ProQol_Test.html.

Fending Off 'Compassion Fatigue' Among Teachers
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

timate the support teachers themselves need to
cope with the emotional weight of helping students in distress.
"Teachers are so good at caring about others, who
is thought of last? Themselves," said Mona Johnson,
the director of student support for Washington's
state education agency, who helps train district staff
implementing trauma-sensitive education.
"Our first thought is to focus on what do the
kids need-and that is critically important-but
often we don't even think about what we need to
do to support the teachers" in how to set personal
boundaries and monitor their own stress levels,
Johnson said.
Just like paramedics or therapists, teachers are
often the first responders for children coping with
horrible experiences, including poverty, homelessness, abuse, or the death of a parent. An Education
Week Research Center survey this summer found
43 percent of teachers polled said they had difficulty "finding ways to help students who appear
to be struggling with problems outside of school,"
and nearly 1 in 4 teachers considered "finding
ways to help students who appear to be experiencing emotional or psychological distress" the most
challenging task in their work.
"You have to be prepared for what you are going
to hear from these students," said Allison Culver,
a special education teacher at Bethlehem Elementary School in New Hampshire, who works with
students with a history of trauma. "You need to
be able to hear something awful and not react in a
way that further traumatizes the student."
And the long-term effects of post-traumatic
stress on a student can show up in ways that add a
lot more to their teacher's plate.
"The behaviors we see in students escalate,
whether it's just apathy ... or the outward behaviors of talking back or the constant barrage of not
doing what they're supposed to do and being disrespectful. That's very frustrating for a teacher,"
said Heather Lang, who has led student support
services in the Clarkston district since it launched
districtwide trauma-sensitive schooling in 2013.
"And when it's daily and you have a class [of] anywhere from 24 to 35 kids, ... it's extremely taxing.
We were seeing that stress on our teachers."
In the mental health world, this is called "compassion fatigue"-and Johnson noted that anyone

12 | EDUCATION WEEK | September 18, 2019 | www.edweek.org

working with children is at a higher than average
risk for it. Strong empathy for others, less sense of
one's own feelings and needs, or personal trauma
can all leave a teacher more vulnerable to this
"weariness that comes with caring." Among educators, those who are new or who work with many
high-need students are especially susceptible.
Teachers who are developing secondary stress
may feel mentally or physically exhausted, ill, impatient, irritable, or even burnt out and apathetic.
"A lot of that you can see in body language, you
can see if they get emotional, angry, if they're
starting to send students out [to the principal's office] a little more often than they normally would,"
said Lang, who became an assistant principal at
Clarkston High School this year. "Those are signs
that the teachers are getting a little stressed and
need a breather and need some support."

I get burnt out pretty easily
because, you know, the
more you're around people,
the more they tap you out."
VERONICA LYON
Middle school math teacher, Clarkston, Wash.

If teachers don't get that support, this can create a vicious cycle. Studies find stress and burnout among teachers linked to physical markers of
stress in students, which in turn, make them more
likely to act out.
A 2016 study of 400 elementary schools found
teachers who reported higher levels of burnout
had students with higher levels of the stress hormone cortisol each morning, suggesting classroom tensions could be "contagious." A separate
study found that the more emotionally drained
teachers became during a school year, the more
disruptive their students grew.
At Lee Hill Elementary in Spotsylvania, Va.,
staff members say they are helping each other "put
on their oxygen masks."

The Title I school has students with a history of
trauma "in every class," said Aimee Cox-Gibbs,
a social worker on Lee Hill's trauma planning
team. "Teachers are definitely on the front lines. ...
Teaching when you have so many complex needs in
your classroom is definitely a struggle every day."
The school started training educators to implement trauma-sensitive schooling two years ago,
and it made a point to pair new policies to support
students with those to support their teachers.
Teachers dedicate 30 minutes a day to building
relationships with students through social-emotional activities, but part of each month's staff
meeting is for lessons in self-care and wellness for
educators. Teachers teamed up for after-school
yoga last year, echoing the poses and breathing
exercises taught to students during the school day.
The school expanded from one counselor to two
and added a full-time social worker to support students with trauma-related needs. But Cox-Gibbs
said teachers also get classroom management
coaching to help divert students who are melting down without having to send them out of the
room.
And just as every classroom has a quiet corner
for students to retreat for a few minutes to avoid
a meltdown, teachers have their own version of a
time out. Those feeling particularly stressed can
tag out to another staff member or administrator.
"We will go in and we'll stay with the class for
five or 10 minutes, so that the teacher can just
take a step out and, you know, calm down," CoxGibbs said.
Likewise, Washington's Clarkston district realized a few years after it launched trauma-sensitive
schooling that it needed more teacher-focused
training and support. It added professional development on trauma-sensitive classroom-management strategies, and introduced monthly "wellness activities" like yoga, socials, and workshops
from mental-health professionals who talk about
ways for teachers to monitor and relieve their own
stress. The district pays for counseling for staff
members who need it.
Sometimes rethinking the structure of classes
can help, too. Lyon pointed to the class she developed, which involves teaching both social-emotional skills and math. But its original structure
wore her down.
"These are kids that have been identified that
their social-emotional issues have really im-

https://www.proqol.org/ProQol_Test.html https://www.proqol.org/ProQol_Test.html http://www.edweek.org

Education Week - September 18, 2019

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