One powerful reality in our schools is that teachers face the difficulties of dealing with students that have a trauma narrative.
About 50% of children have some kind of trauma in their lives and it has a significant impact on teachers every day.
In this case it has been labelled secondary traumatic stress and it is prominent in the experience of our educational professionals.
In this article by a high school teacher Jessica Lander we find the following quote, “Teachers, counselors and administrators may recognize the cumulative stressors that they face, but they don’t always realize that their symptoms are a common reaction to working with traumatized children — and that these symptoms have a name.”
Here is the article on STS as recently published in Mindshift:
Lakeside is pleased to be one of those organizations that provides support and training to teachers in schools with our Neurologic Initiative. This is a trauma-informed training that helps teachers understand the needs of dysregulated students. Within our training is the concept that teachers face the same dysregulation as students and that they need permission to regulate themselves with the same techniques that they would use for their students.
Our teachers have a huge responsibility as they manage, navigate and negotiate their students in a classroom environment. They are working diligently to provide a positive educational experience for students while facing their own secondary traumatic stress. I appreciate this article as it articulates both the challenges and the awareness that we need in order to better understand and support our educational professionals.
Gerry Vassar, President/CEO
