There’s a quiet truth in education that almost everyone feels. Very few people name it: schools are full of adults who are carrying trauma. We talk a lot about student trauma — and we should. Somewhere along the way, the trauma that teachers, paraprofessionals, and aides absorb gets treated like an afterthought. This includes counselors, behavior staff, and campus support personnel. Or worse, like it doesn’t exist at all.
You can walk down any hallway in any school. There, you will find someone who is still holding on to something. Their body hasn’t let go of it yet. Maybe there was a fight last week. Maybe a student shared something horrific. Maybe there was a lockdown that turned out to be nothing. For a moment, every adult believed it was real. The body remembers even when the school day moves on. The nervous system remembers even when the bell rings.
We tend to focus on trauma’s impact on students — rightfully so. However, ignoring the impact on adults creates consequences. These consequences ripple through everything schools try to accomplish. The culture changes. The climate shifts. The energy in the building tightens. And slowly, without even realizing it, a campus becomes a place where people work through fear and tension. They experience hypervigilance and emotional exhaustion. No amount of “three-day weekend” talk can touch this.
Trauma Is Not Burnout
One of the biggest problems we face in education right now is that people misuse the word “burnout.” They treat it as a catch-all for every kind of distress an educator experiences. Burnout is real, and it’s serious, but it’s not the same thing as trauma. Burnout grows over time. It’s the result of ongoing pressure, too many responsibilities, too little rest, and not nearly enough support. Burnout can be eased with boundaries, time off, better systems, and a reasonable workload.
Trauma is something very different.
Trauma is an injury. It happens when something overwhelms a person’s ability to cope. Their nervous system interprets the experience as a threat to safety — or even life (van der Kolk, 2014). Trauma is what shifts a person’s internal world, leaving their body sounding the alarm long after the crisis ends. It shows up in sleep patterns and in concentration. It appears in irritability and in emotional detachment. It also manifests in hypervigilance and in the way someone startles at a sound that never bothered them before.
Research makes this distinction very clear. Teachers who are exposed to student trauma or crisis situations aren’t simply “stressed out.” They show signs of secondary traumatic stress and compassion fatigue — conditions that closely mirror post-traumatic stress disorder (Ormiston et al., 2022). The symptoms aren’t personality flaws. They aren’t signs that someone is “too sensitive.” They are the body protecting itself after being pushed into survival mode.
Educators also experience direct trauma in ways the public often misses. Breaking up fights. Being hit, kicked, grabbed, or threatened. Witnessing medical emergencies. Hearing graphic student disclosures. Responding to real or perceived threats during lockdowns. When experiences like this happen — especially more than once — they don’t create burnout. They create trauma. And the body responds accordingly, even when the mind is trying to return to lesson plans and parent emails.
What Trauma, Including Teacher Trauma Looks Like Inside Schools
One thing trauma is exceptionally good at is hiding. People come to work. They smile at the right times and do their jobs. They hold everything together because that’s what educators do. But underneath the surface, their nervous system is still trying to make sense of what happened.
Someone who used to be warm and outgoing may seem distant. A teacher who used to jump in to help during crises may freeze. Someone who was once endlessly patient might have a shorter fuse. A staff member who once loved greeting students at the door may suddenly prefer staying behind their desk. None of these changes mean someone cares less. They mean they’re overwhelmed.
Children sense these shifts before anyone talks about them. Students are remarkably intuitive. They can feel when the adults around them are on edge or shut down. A classroom can shift from calm to chaotic. This happens just by the energy the teacher carries with them, even if they haven’t said a word. Trauma travels through the nervous system, and in a school, nervous systems are constantly interacting. When the adults in the building feel unsafe, students feel it too.
The U.S. Department of Education (2021) makes it clear that trauma-informed schools must include adults, not just students. If teachers are dysregulated, anxious, or emotionally depleted, the learning environment becomes unpredictable. And unpredictability — for any brain, but especially the developing brain — feels unsafe. Emotional regulation in adults is a foundational part of creating a predictable, stable learning environment. When adults aren’t supported, the entire system becomes reactive.
The Organizational Cost Nobody Wants to Talk About
Ignoring staff and teacher trauma doesn’t save time. It doesn’t build resilience. It doesn’t help anyone “get back to normal.” What it does is slowly dismantle the heart of a school. Staff trauma shows up in absenteeism, turnover, and the number of people quietly job searching during their lunch break. It shows up in the teachers who would’ve stayed another 10 years but decide they can’t do it anymore. It is evident in campus climate surveys. These surveys talk about trust, communication, and emotional safety. However, they never name the deeper issue.
Trauma also shows up in the body — headaches, stomach issues, muscle tension, exhaustion, insomnia. These symptoms lead to sick days. Last-minute substitutes are needed. This creates more instability for students and more stress for the people still present. It becomes a cycle that no amount of inspirational posters or Friday jeans passes can fix.
Research from the UMass Center on Child Wellbeing and Trauma (2023) found that schools implementing trauma-responsive practices saw stronger retention. They experienced better morale. There were fewer stress-related absences. In other words: supporting staff trauma isn’t optional. It is strategic. It is necessary. And it directly impacts a school’s ability to function.
Why Some Leaders Miss the Signs
It’s easy to blame leaders when staff trauma goes unaddressed, but the problem is more complicated than that. Most administrators were never trained to recognize trauma or support trauma recovery. Leadership programs focus heavily on academics, operations, discipline models, and legal requirements. They rarely — if ever — include training on nervous systems, trauma theory, or how to respond to emotional injury.
When a crisis happens, leaders do what they were trained to do. They manage the situation. They restore order and get everyone back to instruction as quickly as possible. They aren’t trying to be dismissive. They’re trying to be efficient. But efficiency is not the language of a dysregulated nervous system.
This disconnect is where harmful phrases often emerge — phrases that administrators may not realize carry weight. Statements like “We need to get back to teaching” may feel encouraging. Phrases like “We all had a tough day” can also seem supportive. Similarly, “Let’s move forward” might be viewed as helpful. They appear so from a managerial perspective. However, they can feel dismissive from a trauma perspective. Trauma needs acknowledgment, not acceleration. And when adults feel their trauma is being minimized, trust erodes.
Trauma researchers stress that psychological safety is important. This means a person can express concerns or emotions without fear of judgment (Edmondson & Lei, 2014). When staff don’t feel safe enough to speak honestly, they internalize their distress. And internalized distress eventually becomes withdrawal, resentment, or resignation.
Differentiating Trauma from Burnout in Real Life
Educators often try to make sense of their own emotional changes by naming everything “stress.” Burnout and trauma are vastly different. Naming that difference helps people find the support they need.
Burnout builds slowly over time. It often shows up as fatigue, cynicism, and a sense of not making meaningful progress (Maslach & Leiter, 2016).
Trauma feels different. It often follows a specific incident or a series of overwhelming events. It manifests in the body. Symptoms include hypervigilance, intrusive thoughts, emotional numbness, and a racing heart. Difficulty concentrating or a sense of disconnection from reality can also occur (Porges, 2011). Someone may feel like they’re physically present but emotionally absent, or like they’re watching themselves from the outside.
These distinctions matter because the care people need is different. Burnout might improve with rest or workload changes. Trauma needs safety, validation, and systems of support. Trauma needs space. Trauma needs acknowledgment. Trauma needs time.
What Schools Can Actually Do About It
The good news is that schools can implement strategies. These strategies significantly reduce the impact of staff trauma. And none of them require hiring an army of clinicians. They require intention, predictability, communication, and basic human understanding.
Structured debriefs after crises help staff process emotions. Research consistently shows this benefit. These sessions help staff regain a sense of safety (National Child Traumatic Stress Network, 2017). These debriefs should happen within forty-eight hours. They should be led by someone trained in trauma-informed facilitation. Time should be included to review both what happened and how people felt during and after the event.
Training administrators in how trauma shows up in adults is another high-impact strategy. When leaders understand the signs, they can respond with calmness, clarity, and compassion instead of frustration or dismissal. Leaders who speak the language of safety help staff return to stability faster.
Some schools create designated regulation rooms. These are quiet and comfortable spaces. In these spaces, staff can decompress for a few minutes after a difficult situation. This is not indulgent. It is protective. Studies show that brief opportunities to regulate reduce physiological stress responses and improve emotional recovery (Rossen & Cowan, 2013).
Schools can also strengthen peer-support networks. Collegial connection is one of the strongest buffers against secondary traumatic stress (Simbayi et al., 2020). When educators feel supported by each other, the load becomes more bearable.
Policies matter too. A trauma-responsive school reviews its procedures through the lens of adult wellbeing. Does the campus expect staff to immediately return to supervision duty right after a fight? Do they push teachers back into classrooms minutes after a crisis? Do they communicate clearly about what occurred and what steps are being taken to prevent recurrence? Policy decisions create emotional outcomes.
The Role of Parents and the Community
Educators don’t heal in isolation. They heal within communities that acknowledge their experiences. Research shows that social acknowledgment is a crucial factor in recovery. It is the sense that others recognize and validate trauma (Maercker & Müller, 2004). Parents and community partners play a substantial role here.
Families can advocate for trauma-informed training, realistic staffing ratios, and safety measures that protect both students and adults. Community organizations can provide crisis support partnerships, mental health resources, and wraparound services that extend beyond the school walls. School boards can prioritize adult wellbeing alongside student wellbeing, sending a message that staff safety is not optional.
When the community stands with educators, healing accelerates.
What We Stand to Lose — and What We Stand to Gain
The cost of ignoring staff and teacher trauma is not just burnout. It’s not just turnover. It’s not just absenteeism. The real cost is what happens to the heart of a school. This occurs when adults carry wounds they’re not allowed to acknowledge. A school is only as healthy as the people who keep it running. If they are hurting, the system hurts.
But when staff / teacher trauma is recognized, named, and supported, everything changes. Schools become more stable. Classrooms become calmer. Relationships deepen. Teams communicate more openly. Students sense the safety and respond to it. People stay longer. People collaborate more freely. People breathe easier.
Trauma doesn’t disappear just because a crisis ends. But healing begins the moment someone says, “What you experienced matters — and so do you.”
And in schools — where human connection is the work — that acknowledgment is everything.
References
Edmondson, A. C., & Lei, Z. (2014). Psychological safety: The history, renaissance, and future of an interpersonal construct. Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior, 1(1), 23–43. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-orgpsych-031413-091305
Maercker, A., & Müller, J. (2004). Social acknowledgment as a victim or survivor: A scale to measure a recovery factor of post-traumatic stress disorder. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 17(4), 345–351. https://doi.org/10.1023/B:JOTS.0000038484.15488.3d
Maslach, C., & Leiter, M. P. (2016). Burnout: A multidimensional perspective. In C. L. Cooper & P. L. Perrewé (Eds.), The handbook of stress and health (pp. 349–366). Wiley-Blackwell. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118993811.ch21
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Rossen, E., & Cowan, K. C. (2013). Creating safe and supportive schools and fostering students’ mental health. National Association of School Psychologists. https://www.nasponline.org/Documents/Research%20and%20Policy/Advocacy/School_Safety_Fostering_MH.pdf
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Simbayi, L., Rehle, T., & Zuma, K. (2020). The role of social support in mitigating secondary traumatic stress among frontline workers: A review. Journal of Community Psychology, 48(7), 2259–2272. https://doi.org/10.1002/jcop.22429
UMass Center on Child Wellbeing & Trauma. (2023). Becoming more trauma-informed and responsive: Valuing and retaining staff. https://childwellbeingandtrauma.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/UMASS_Document_CCWT_IssueBrief_ValuingRetainStaff_v3_03012023.pdf
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