The first time I realized I was running on empty wasn’t during a crisis; it was during a staff meeting. My eyes blurred as the principal went over data points and pacing calendars. I remember nodding along while my body screamed for rest. Around me, teachers stared at their laptops, shoulders slumped and coffee cups half-empty. No one spoke unless prompted. A mix of apathy and survival. We were educators trying to stay upright in a system that had forgotten we were human.
After the pandemic, exhaustion had become our baseline. Classrooms buzzed with anxiety as students returned with new layers of trauma, families struggled with loss and instability and educators absorbed it all. Professional development continued, rubrics still mattered and the phrase “self-care” was tossed around like a sticky note. But what I saw and felt went deeper than burnout. It was grief, disconnection and a desperate need for community.
So I did something small, maybe even radical: I asked each staff member in my community what they really needed. Not another training, not another policy, but something that reminded us who we were beyond the classroom. It started with a Google form and a simple question: What brings you joy?
Within a week, my inbox was filled with ideas, and from these ideas blossomed a new initiative I called “Staff Community Moments.” Twice a week, we opened our classroom doors to each other during the last part of the day, not as teachers or evaluators, but as people.
One Wednesday, our Spanish teacher transformed her classroom into a mini dance studio, leading a salsa class that pulsed with laughter and courage. A few days later, I found myself teaching basic ASL phrases; our voices were replaced by laughter echoing through the halls as we signed to one another in a new language. In the gym, another colleague guided us through yoga poses, her calm voice reminding us to breathe as we worked to release tension from our bodies. The art teacher opened his room as a sanctuary for creative freedom, letting us paint while soft music played in the background. The French teacher turned her classroom into a Parisian café, complete with snacks, Eiffel Tower keychains and a warm invitation to learn simple phrases. There was no attendance sheet and no mandate. Just presence, the ability to enter and leave a space as you please and join the “moments” that actually intrigue you.
One afternoon, after one of our events, a colleague turned to me and said, “I didn’t realize how much I needed this until now.” Neither did I. Because care, when practiced collectively, has the ability to reignite the flame, create community and prevent burnout. These moments didn’t “fix” our system, but they reminded us that our worth wasn’t tied to our lesson plans or data points. We were reclaiming something schools rarely make room for … our humanity.
That reclamation made even more sense when I co-led a professional development session with a school counselor in trauma-informed classrooms. We started with Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs), which is a framework that measures childhood exposure to trauma such as abuse, neglect and household dysfunction.
The CDC defines ACEs as potentially traumatic events that can have lasting effects on health, behavior and learning. The higher your ACE score, the greater your risk for chronic health issues, depression, autoimmune diseases and even early death. Yet, as I read through the studies, one statistic stopped me cold: educators themselves carry high ACE scores, too.During the training, we invited our staff to reflect and share their own ACE histories, and many scored four or higher. Several colleagues shared how these patterns mirrored their current struggles as educators — sleepless nights, migraines, panic attacks, the sense that teaching sometimes triggered their childhood survival instincts.
That training exposed a truth we rarely name: educators carry trauma silently, professionally and perpetually. And if we don’t acknowledge it, the system will keep demanding we give from an empty well.
The Weight We Absorb: Secondhand Trauma in Schools
Teachers don’t just carry their own pain; they absorb their students’. The term “secondary traumatic stress” (STS) describes the emotional duress that results when an individual hears about another’s firsthand trauma. In education, it’s unavoidable.
Our students’ trauma shows up in behavior, attendance, conversations and silence. It shows up in eyes that dart toward the door when someone raises their voice, in a slammed Chromebook, a refusal to work, a meltdown that feels personal but isn’t. I wrote about this in another article where I reflect on how students often enter our classrooms carrying invisible burdens like grief, instability and fear that shape how they learn, listen and show up in our classrooms. Each behavior is an attempt to communicate with us, and when we fail to see the story beneath the reaction, we risk misinterpretation, and the result is disconnection.
The publication “Preventing Secondary Traumatic Stress in Educators” reported that nearly half of educators experience some level of secondary traumatic stress, with symptoms ranging from insomnia to emotional numbness. Another study found that over 90 percent of school personnel reported some degree of STS, and nearly half experienced it at severe levels.
I saw this play out in my school community: a teacher stepping out of class to breathe after de-escalating a student’s behavior, another quietly crying in her classroom after hearing a child disclose abuse, one educator running out to buy food and new clothes for a student who became homeless, and another colleague going with a student to the hospital for suicidal ideation.
For educators like me, this means working with students who’ve faced repeated trauma, resulting in us living in constant exposure. We listen, absorb and respond, all while managing IEPs, lesson planning and the unspoken expectation to “keep it together.” The truth is, trauma, just like joy, is contagious, and teachers are on the frontlines without protective gear.
What Building a Culture of Care Looks Like
Rebuilding school culture doesn’t require grand gestures. It requires intentionality, humility and design that honors people’s wholeness.
Here’s what I’ve learned works:
- Wellness That Comes From Within: Invite staff to lead wellness sessions around their passions. Protect that time and don’t schedule over it, and don’t turn it into a mandate. Real care can’t be forced. When educators have agency in their healing, participation becomes joy, not obligation.
- Trauma-Informed Professional Development That Starts With Adults: Incorporate ACE reflection in professional development, not to diagnose but to raise awareness. Pair it with education about the biological impact of trauma and the concept of secondary stress. Offer resources, counseling referrals, EAP information and mindfulness sessions that are ongoing.
- Peer Support Circles: Establish small, voluntary groups that meet monthly for listening and reflection. Normalize vulnerability by including leaders and teachers. Healing grows in shared language and mutual trust.
- Compassionate Leadership: Administrators should lead with empathy and create structures that honor humanity: flexible scheduling, wellness breaks, realistic workloads. Check in with staff, not about lesson plans, but about how they’re doing.
The Ripple Effect
The year after we started this initiative and began prioritizing connection, something shifted. New relationships formed between people who rarely spoke. Colleagues began checking in on one another, not just about curriculum, but about life. Even students noticed the shift in the energy of the school community. They saw their teachers smiling more, collaborating more, hugging more and modeling what community care looks like.
We’re in a profession that often demands superhuman resilience. But we can’t pour from empty cups. Educator well-being isn’t a luxury; it’s a necessity. If we continue to ignore the toll of trauma, burnout will remain inevitable, and schools will continue to have high turnover rates.
Building a culture of care is an act of resistance against a system that measures an educator’s worth by their output. It’s a declaration that teaching is not just intellectual effort, it’s emotional labor, community work and deeply human work.
