Addressing Secondary Traumatic Stress and Burnout of Teachers Who Work with Students Who Have Trauma Backgrounds

Being an educator can be a very rewarding profession. Many choose this profession because they are passionate and dedicated about influencing and impacting the lives of others. Unfortunately, an increased number of students are being affected by trauma, which directly correlates to an increased number of teachers being at risk for developing compassion fatigue (National Child Traumatic Stress Network [NCTSN], 2011). More children are coming to school unprepared, yet our teachers are expected to provide emotional support, create a nurturing classroom environment, model emotion regulation, coach students through conflict resolution, manage challenging behaviors, while juggling the growing demands brought on by standardized testing (Cohan & Honigsfeld, 2011)