Roughly half of American school children have experienced at least some form of trauma — from neglect, to abuse, to violence. In response, educators often find themselves having to take on the role of counselors, supporting the emotional healing of their students, not just their academic growth.
With this evolving role comes an increasing need to understand and address the ways in which student trauma affects our education professionals.
In a growing number of professions, including firefighters, law enforcement, trauma doctors and nurses, child welfare workers, and therapists and case managers, it is now understood that working with people in trauma — hearing their stories of hardship and supporting their recovery — has far-reaching emotional effect on the provider.
The condition has numerous names: secondary traumatic stress (STS), vicarious trauma, compassion fatigue. The symptoms are similar in some ways to post-traumatic stress disorder: withdrawing from friends and family; feeling unexplainably irritable or angry or numb; inability to focus; blaming others; feeling hopeless or isolated or guilty about not doing enough; struggling to concentrate; being unable to sleep; overeating or not eating enough; and continually and persistently worrying about students, at when they’re at home and even in their sleep.
But while STS is now well understood in many helping professions, there is a dearth of research, understanding, or acknowledgement of how it affects educators, according to Stephen P. Hydon, a clinical professor at the University of Southern California. One of the handful of studies of STS in schools found that more than 200 staff surveyed from across six schools reported very high levels of STS.