Educators today confront challenges ranging from academic pressures to the complex traumas students bring to school. In a Harvard EdCast episode, Mathew Portell and Tyisha Noise, co-authors of Reducing Stress in Schools: Restoring Connection and Community, emphasise a crucial truth: the well-being of school staff is essential for building genuinely supportive, trauma-informed environments.
Portell and Noise stress that adults must be supported and valued for students to thrive. As Noise observes, “draining people of everything good inside of them, and then asking them to pour from empty cups every day is not only unfair, it’s inhumane”. They urge schools to adopt trauma-informed practices that centre healing, compassion, love, and support for all members of the school community.
Key Insights from the Podcast
- Staff Well-Being is Central: Creating a healthy, resilient school environment starts by caring for educators’ mental and emotional health.
- Trauma-Informed Leadership: Leaders should model practices that prioritise connection, healing, and compassion throughout the school.
- Culture of Care: Building a culture that values all relationships strengthens engagement, resilience, and overall effectiveness.
How Educators Can Incorporate into Schools
- Provide Professional Learning: Offer opportunities to build trauma-informed knowledge, manage stress, and cultivate emotional resilience.
- Encourage Peer Support: Foster peer mentoring and create spaces for collaboration, feedback, and shared problem-solving among staff.
- Lead by Example: Demonstrate empathy, transparency, and prioritisation of well-being in daily leadership practices.
By prioritising staff well-being at the leadership level, school leaders create conditions in which both educators and students can thrive, resulting in a resilient, compassionate, and high-performing school environment.
For details, listen to the EdCast from Harvard Graduate School of Education: Reducing Stress in Schools.
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