Building Resilience among Educators: A Continuation High School Shares Strategies with Its District to Address Compassion Fatigue and Secondary Traumatic Stress among Teachers and Staff. Profiles in California Alternative Education

Resumen de los autores

Teachers and administrators support students to thrive as learners in their classrooms. But when students experience trauma or stress in their lives, educators may be faced with the additional challenge of supporting students to address extremely difficult social and emotional situations. This can lead to secondary traumatic stress--indirect exposure to their student's traumatic experience--and/or compassion fatigue. The latter is the exhaustion that builds over time from attempting to help those who are undergoing trauma. Both terms refer to the "experience of being affected by others' pain" (Van Dernoot Lipsky, 2009, p. 6). Either can contribute to educator burnout, "characterized by emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and a reduced feeling of personal accomplishment" (National Child Traumatic Stress Network, 2011). While the COVID-19 pandemic has heightened awareness of this dynamic, it is not new, especially not in alternative schools, where many students find themselves precisely because they and/or their families experience significant trauma or stress that affects their academic progress. This brief begins with a review of compassion fatigue and secondary trauma in the literature. Next, it offers an overview for addressing compassion fatigue in education settings. Finally, it shares the story of one continuation high school's efforts to support its teachers, and to leverage this journey in support of its district's efforts to address mental health issues more broadly. [Written with Joseph Antonelli.]

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Cómo citar (APA 7)

Newman, L. (2022). Building Resilience among Educators: A Continuation High School Shares Strategies with Its District to Address Compassion Fatigue and Secondary Traumatic Stress among Teachers and Staff. Profiles in California Alternative Education. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED618203