Using research-practice-policy partnerships to mitigate the effects of childhood trauma on educator burnout

Abstract

Background

The effects of COVID-19 pandemic on children have been immense.

Objective

In this commentary, we argue for the need to utilize research-practice-policy partnerships to address the issue of educator burnout and Secondary Traumatic Stress.

Participants and setting

Education systems have the potential to be the site of public health interventions in helping to identify and address the needs of children and families.

Methods

In this commentary, we review the literature on child trauma and adversity, educator burnout, and research-practice-policy partnerships.

Results

With the return to in-person learning, educators, and the systems in which they work are overwhelmed by the magnitude of mental health challenges presenting in the classroom due to child trauma. As a result, many educators are reporting high levels of compassion fatigue, secondary trauma, and burnout, which are known predictors of leaving the workforce. Many of the strategies employed to address educator compassion fatigue, secondary trauma, and burnout focus directly on the individual level (e.g., deep breathing, yoga). Yet the compassion fatigue, secondary trauma, and burnout are rooted in larger system failures to address the growing needs of children and families.

Conclusions

By bringing together key community members, including educators, and utilizing local data to inform policy decisions, actionable, trauma-informed solutions can create the conditions for thriving educators and therefore, thriving children.

1. Introduction

Childhood trauma and adversity pre-date the COVID-19 crisis; however, the effects of the global pandemic have exacerbated pre-existing social inequities and magnified the fractured nature of our child and family serving systems (Herrenkohl, Scott, Higgins, Klika, & Lonne, 2020). Many experts shared concerns early in the pandemic as to the potential for skyrocketing cases of child abuse and neglect due to formal shelter-in-place orders and worried that children were having to shelter in unsafe places with unsafe people (Wulczyn, 2020). With children no longer under the close physical watch of educators who are legally mandated to report suspected cases of child abuse and neglect, reports of child abuse and neglect dropped precipitously in comparison to prior years (Jonson-Reid, Drake, Cobetto, & Ocampo, 2020). While there is debate as to whether child abuse and neglect actually rose during the COVID-19 pandemic, it is clear that many of the risk factors for maltreatment increased, exacting an enormous toll on the mental health of our nation's children (Agrawal, 2020; Roy, 2020).

By the fall of 2022 school districts had fully returned to in-person learning and discussions of achievement loss dominated public discourse. In spite of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (AACAP), and the Children's Hospital Association (CHA) declaring children's mental health a “national emergency” (AAP, AACAP, & CHA, 2021), meeting the mental and emotional needs of children was largely absent from school-related discussions. Prior to the pandemic, a critical mass of educators and education systems had begun to embrace trauma-informed practices in school settings (Herrenkohl et al., 2021). However, the onus of addressing the increases in childhood trauma and adversity had and have largely fallen into the laps of educators themselves. As a result, educators are reporting record rates of compassion fatigue, burnout, and secondary trauma (Bakuli & Levin, 2021; Cardoza, 2021; Streeter, 2021).

As we discuss in this commentary, the solutions to childhood trauma are complex and require coordination between multiple child and family serving systems, of which, the education system plays a central role. Trauma-informed practices and pedagogy are a critical component of a trauma-informed education system, especially considering learning losses experienced by children because of COVID-19, yet greater attention is warranted to ensure the health and wellness of educators themselves. The commentary begins with a discussion of the trauma and mental health needs of children and how the COVID-19 pandemic amplified these challenges. Next, we discuss the core components of trauma-informed systems and pedagogy and the ways in which education systems can begin to address childhood trauma. In doing so, we highlight the ways in which educators' secondary trauma, compassion fatigue, and burnout is often given short shrift and the ways in which mitigation strategies are aimed at individuals (i.e., personal self-care) instead of at system challenges. In closing, we introduce research-practice-policy partnerships as a strategy to identify, implement, and monitor solutions within the education system to address educator secondary trauma, compassion fatigue, and burnout.

1.1. Child trauma and adversity

Within weeks of the initial March 2020 COVID-19 shelter-in-place orders, survey data began documenting an increase in many of the risk factors for child abuse and neglect including social isolation, parental stress, and mental health challenges (Lee, Ward, Chang, & Downing, 2021; Lee, Ward, Lee, & Rodriguez, 2020; Rodriguez, Lee, Ward, & Pu, 2020). At the same time, reports to official child welfare agencies across US jurisdictions plummeted (Jonson-Reid et al., 2020). Much of the decrease in reports appeared due to school closures, and not necessarily a decline in abuse or neglect (Baron, Goldstein, & Wallace, 2020). While there was also an initial precipitous decrease in calls and text messages to a large national child abuse hotline in March 2020, by May 2020 calls and text messages to the hotline surpassed levels from the prior year (Ortiz et al., 2021). Although we lack sufficient data to confirm that child abuse and neglect got worse during the COVID-19 pandemic, the data do signal that children and families had increased needs because of the pandemic.

It is important to note that child abuse and neglect are not the only forms of trauma and adversity that children experience. Data from the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) studies document the highly prevalent and overlapping nature of various traumas and adversities (Merrick, Ford, Ports, & Guinn, 2018). In addition to the traditional ACE's, children experience other challenges, such as poverty, which can ultimately affect their readiness to learn. Data from the U.S. Census Bureau (2021) found that in 2020, approximately 16.1 % of children were living in poverty, an increase from prior years. In 2022, Child Trends (Thomson et al., 2022) reported 29.2 % of Black children, 27.3 % of Latino children and 17.5 % of all children to be living in poverty in 2020. This represented an increase from 2019 poverty rates for Black and Latino children by 2.8 % and 4.3 % respectively.

Many children are also dealing with the loss of a caregiver or loved one due to COVID-19. Hillis et al. (2021) found that nearly 140,000 children in the US lost a parent or grandparent because of COVID-19. This is of particular importance due to the number of children in the US living in single-parent households or being raised by grandparents. Of those US children who lost a primary caregiver, nearly 65 % were from a racial or ethnic minority group providing further evidence of the disproportionate toll that COVID-19 has had on communities of color (Hillis et al., 2021).

Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, children and youth mental health was of significant concern (Perou et al., 2013). As noted in a recent US surgeon general report (2021), estimates of youth mental health challenges range between 13 and 20 %. Surveillance data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2020) show that reports of mental health symptoms increased by approximately 40 % between 2009 and 2019. Examining data from the National Survey of Children's Health, Whitney and Peterson (2019) found that half of youth diagnosed with a mental health problem were not receiving treatment from a mental health provider.

The COVID-19 pandemic intensified the youth mental health crisis (AAP, AACAP, & CHA, 2021). Data show that while emergency department (ED) visits generally declined during COVID-19, ED visits for mental health reasons increased for children and youth (24 % and 31 %, respectively) (Leeb et al., 2020). ED visits related to concerns of suicide increased nearly 50 % for girls compared to pre-pandemic estimates (Yard, Radhakrishnan, Ballesteros, et al., 2021).

1.2. Supporting children who experience trauma

Considering the compounding and persistent trauma and adversity experienced by children and exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, there is reason for continued concern about children's ability to arrive in the classroom ready to learn. Consequently, educators are often left with the responsibility of not only teaching children but also dealing with the outward manifestation of trauma and adversity, which can present as child externalizing behavior in the classroom.

Positive teacher-child relationships are of critical importance to young children as they co-occur with rapid social, emotional, cognitive, and physical development (Ansari, Hofkens, & Pianta, 2020) and because, next to their families, children spend most of their waking hours with educators. Supportive teacher-student relationships allow children to feel safe, develop peer relationships, and take appropriate risks (Hamre & Pianta, 2006; Lippard, La Paro, Rouse, & Crosby, 2018). These relationships are also strong predictors of a student's academic success (Hamre & Pianta, 2001) with individual teacher-child relationships in early childhood identified as critical to children's school readiness and academic trajectories (Blair, McKinnon, & The Family Life Project investigators, 2016; Rudasill, Niehaus, Buhs, & White, 2013). Therefore, the classroom becomes an important microsystem where educators must be supported in order to promote a positive trajectory in these students' development and learning. Furthermore, educators can offer safe spaces for children away from neighborhood/domestic violence and where children feel valued and respected (Cole, Eisner, Gregory, & Ristuccia, 2013). Educators are also able to teach children self-regulation strategies and mindfulness, which reduce stress and, therefore, promote learning.

Nonetheless, teacher-child relationships occur in the context of the classroom and the greater school community, all of which are influenced by the lived experiences of those who interact with the students each day. The Trauma Sensitive Pedagogy (TSP) school model put forth by Panlilio and Tirrell-Corbin (2021b) illustrates the complexity of and influences on that relationship. Their TSP model is guided by the Bioecological model of development (Bronfenbrenner & Morris, 2007) to specify multiple levels of development and learning that occur in a classroom/school. As seen in Fig. 1 , the focus is on the teacher-student dyad within the classroom (i.e., microsystem of interest) with contextual factors inside (e.g., other students) and outside (e.g., teacher support, administration, school norms, and policies) the classroom that influence the quality of teacher-student relationships. Within the dyad, teachers' socioemotional competence (SEC) and well-being (personal experiences and secondary traumatic stress) are important in developing a supportive relationship (Jennings & Greenberg, 2009). Teachers who exhibit higher socioemotional competence demonstrate more effective classroom management and model emotional expressions and verbal support to promote engaged learning. Such quality interactions are important in strengthening children's resilience during daily interactions, particularly for children with histories of trauma. However, as illustrated in the model, the interactions between teacher and student are also heavily influenced by the school staff (administrators, specialists, nurses, counselors and paraeducators), families and community members associated with that school. For example, schools in low-resourced communities with high rates of violence are more likely to have children who have experienced trauma and teachers who report symptoms of secondary traumatic stress (Panlilio & Tirrell-Corbin, 2021b).

Fig. 1.

Trauma sensitive pedagogy model.

2. Personal risks of supporting children through trauma

There has been a growing awareness that schools should be “trauma-informed” in order to meet the needs of all learners (Lawson, Caringi, Gottfried, Bride, & Hydon, 2019). In fact, the National Child Traumatic Stress Network (NCTSN), Schools Committee (2017) published a framework with 10 Core Areas of a Trauma-informed School system. Broadly, the framework lays the foundation for understanding and responding to the various childhood traumas and adversities presented in the classroom. Among those core elements is “Trauma Education and Awareness,” to include professional development on the impact of trauma and building student coping and protective skills.

While the framework was an important step forward, the US has few evidence-based, trauma-informed schools to serve as models (Lawson et al., 2019). Moreover, few educators have had formal preparation on assessing or addressing their students' traumatic experiences. This is at least in part because the faculty that taught them in educator preparation programs had no training themselves (Farrell & Walsh, 2010; Goldman & Grimbeek, 2014; Lawson et al., 2019). The lack of education leaves educators to support their students in the best ways they know how, which evidence suggests puts their students at risk (Lawson et al., 2019).

Evidence also suggests that responding to children's trauma has taken a personal toll on educators across the US (Hydon, Wong, Langley, Stein, & Kataoka, 2015; Kerig, 2019; Lawson et al., 2019). More specifically, educators report experiencing Secondary Traumatic Stress (STS), which is the vicarious trauma resulting from learning about and responding to another's traumatic experiences (Borntrager et al., 2012). STS presents itself in a number of ways, including sadness, insomnia, guilt, inadequacy, substance abuse, and disengagement from one's students and one's family members (Borntrager et al., 2012; Kerig, 2019; Rankin, 2020). Figley (1995) coined these responses as the “cost of caring,” which results in burnout, compassion fatigue, and exiting the profession (Holme, Jabbar, Germain, & Dinning, 2018; Snodgrass Rangel, 2018). While some researchers use the terms as equivalents, Kerig (2019) defined the unique characteristics of burnout and compassion fatigue. More specifically, burnout has been equated with exhaustion (mental and physical) resulting from a perceived lack of control, appreciation, or support, as well as administrative burdens. Compassion fatigue results from active engagement with those who have experienced trauma resulting in emotional exhaustion to the point of decreased compassion.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, educators took on a greater role in supporting children and families, notably those residing in low resourced communities and/or those who recently immigrated to the US (Panlilio & Tirrell-Corbin, 2021a; Tirrell-Corbin, Panlilio, & Klika, 2021a; Tirrell-Corbin, Panlilio, & Klika, 2021b). Disparities in service availability and access often placed the burden of care solely on educators, requiring them to go beyond addressing curricular standards in classrooms and, for most, well beyond the preparation they received to become a teacher (Lawson et al., 2019). Educators collected donations for grocery store gift cards for families in need, organized holiday toy drives, contacted state legislators to advocate for the reopening of school-based health clinics to ensure children had access to medical care, facilitated access to virtual mental health screenings, dropped off school supplies to children's homes, and attended virtual funerals (Panlilio & Tirrell-Corbin, 2021a). This suggests that educators are increasingly tasked with responsibilities beyond instructional planning and delivery and more appropriate for other members of the community, such as counselors, social workers, nurses, and community organizers.

In addition to fulfilling their instructional duties, educators juggled many intersecting issues that included supporting their students' families, managing their own families' pandemic-driven needs (sometimes a source of primary trauma), and being caught in the middle of the politicization of the pandemic. A Virginia school superintendent wrote that even though teachers are indispensable members of society they were the recipients of “revolting comments at school board meetings, floggings via social media and even being called losers by national leaders” (Jeck, 2021). Taken together, such a balancing act took a toll on educators' mental health and well-being (Bennett, 2022; Hsu, 2021).

On the surface, teacher burnout and STS appear to be mental health issues. However, a closer examination of the issue reveals that this is also a serious workforce issue (Diliberti, Schwartz, & Grant, 2021) occurring in the context of a national teacher shortage (García & Weiss, 2019; Jeck, 2021; Sutcher, Carver-Thomas, & Darling-Hammond, 2016). Prior to the pandemic, Goldring, Taie, and Riddles (2014) found that approximately 8 % of educators left the profession each year. In October of 2020, seven months into the pandemic, approximately one-quarter of educators, in a national sample, indicated that they were likely to leave their jobs before the completion of the current academic year (Diliberti & Kaufman, 2020). It is also important to note that women, who continue to dominate the field of education (U.S. Department of Labor, 2019), left the workforce in record numbers in 2020 and 2021 (Bateman & Ross, 2020; Gogoi, 2020; Hsu, 2021).

Both before and during the pandemic, stress was cited as the main reason educators were choosing to leave the education profession (Diliberti et al., 2021). In 2021, the stress and burnout percolating in the education community made it to local and national news publications (Baitinger & Travis, 2021; Brown, 2021; Doherty, 2021; Jeck, 2021). By the fall of 2022, the teacher shortage was a crisis across the United States (Bennett, 2022; Cohen, 2022).

Teacher attrition is a costly and chronic issue in American education. Costs come in two forms: resources and student achievement (Diliberti & Kaufman, 2020). The costs of replacing a teacher have been estimated to range from $10,000 to $17,000 in the US (Barnes, Crowe, & Schaefer, 2007; DeFeo, Tran, Hirshberg, Cope, & Cravez, 2017). The cost to student learning is immeasurable as instruction is disrupted and often of poor quality in the aftermath of teacher resignations. The situation is worse for students in low-resourced communities where teacher turnover is higher and where school administrators find it difficult to staff classrooms with highly effective, experienced educators (Boyd et al., 2011; Ronfeldt, Loeb, & Wyckoff, 2013). Combined with the protective role that educators can play in the lives of children, teacher burnout and attrition can have significant effects on children's well-being. Historically, many of the strategies employed to address educator compassion fatigue, secondary trauma, and burnout focus directly on the individual level (e.g., deep breathing, taking walks, yoga), in spite of these issues being rooted in larger systemic failures.

2.1. Research-practice-policy partnerships

The desire for evidence-based policy and practice is “nearly ubiquitous... across the fields of education, child welfare, mental health, juvenile justice, youth programs and health care” however it is not always realized (Tseng, 2012, p. 1). It is well understood that a significant gap exists between the point of a scientific discovery and the ensuing uptake in practice and policy. Morris, Wooding, and Grant (2011) estimate that it takes nearly 17 years for research findings to take root in real-world settings. This means there is significant “research waste” where the significant financial investments in research to address social problems are not translating to practice and policy (Oliver & Boaz, 2019). It is important to make sure that the billions of dollars spent on research benefit society and to determine how best to ensure this happens (Rosenblatt & Tseng, 2010). The current educator burnout crisis needs immediate solutions and cannot wait decades for scientific discovery to guide practice change.

An efficient and viable way to create evidence-based policy and practice is to create partnerships across the sectors of research, policy, and practice (Schelbe, Wilson, Fickler, Williams-Mbengue, & Klika, 2020). These partnerships help bridge the gaps between “what is known” and “what is done” (Leslie, Maciolek, Biebel, Debordes-Jackson, & Nicholson, 2014) by placing an explicit focus on “problems of practice” (Coburn & Penuel, 2016). Schelbe et al. (2020) advanced the idea of research-practice-policy partnerships (RPPPs) as a strategy for cross-sector collaboration to strengthen child welfare practice and the array of child maltreatment prevention strategies. As conceptualized, researchers, state policymakers, and practitioners (e.g., child welfare, maltreatment prevention, home visiting) would utilize principles of design thinking to organize efforts in problem definition, exploration of solutions, implementation, and ongoing evaluation. To facilitate this work, the Design Thinking Framework (Empathize, Design, Ideate, Prototype and Test) provides a vehicle to engage researchers, policymakers and practitioners in breaking down barriers and testing solutions that focus on meeting the needs of children and families early enough to prevent childhood trauma/abuse (Schelbe et al., 2020). The utility of design thinking for policymaking processes has been recognized as it assists with defining problems, identifying solutions, and implementing new ideas (Mintrom & Luetjens, 2016). It is relevant in educational settings to assist educators in addressing various problems (Henriksen, Richardson, & Mehta, 2017) and is promising for addressing the issues of educator burnout and childhood trauma within education systems.

In prior work, there has been an emphasis with RPPPs to engage state-level policy makers (Schelbe et al., 2020). However, within education systems, a great deal of power and decision-making authority can be relegated to local jurisdictions suggesting that mid-level administrators (e.g., superintendent, principal) should be involved in the RPPP. Tseng (2012) notes that agency:

mid-level administrators and program managers shape the frontline practices—teaching, social work, counseling, policing—of concern to many researchers. They play a critical role in designing staff development systems and adopting new programs and reforms, shaping the process and conditions for their implementation, and allocating resources in support of them. These mid-level decision makers straddle policy and practice and are well-poised to put research to work to benefit youth. In addition, they can be a more stable presence than agency leaders, who have short tenures in many places. (p. 5)

While policy at the state and federal level may be helpful in some regards, as local communities have unique needs and resources, the issue can be best addressed by considering the local context with school and district administrators.

2.2. RPPP in practice

In creating a RPPP to address childhood trauma within education systems and its demands and impact on educators, there must be great commitment as developing these partnerships requires considerable time and resources (Penuel & Hill, 2019). The process is not always linear but can follow these steps: 1) identify a team, 2) secure funding, 3) build team relationships and a shared vision, 4) engage in a design thinking process to address the problem(s).

The first step is to pull together a team across the sectors of research, policy, and practice and to incorporate community members with lived experience. There is an abundance of researchers at universities and colleges that could be part of a RPPP. Potential places to find researchers are at institutions committed to serving the community. Researchers should value community partnerships and understand the realistic time demands of community-based research, especially RPPPs. Policymakers involved in the process should be the administrators in schools and the school districts or those with the capacity to make practice/policy decisions for the school or district. Ideally, schools and school districts can learn from one another and explore adopting or modifying strategies proven to be effective at a different school. The practice sector should include educators and school staff as well as mental health professionals and other professionals who work with children who have experienced traumas. Community members as a category should be broad and integrate parents and students as well as others who are interested in education and reducing the impact of child trauma. Fig. 2 illustrates how researchers, policymakers, practitioners, and community members can work within Panlilio and Tirrell-Corbin's (2021b) Trauma Sensitive Pedagogy framework to address childhood trauma and its impact on educators.

Fig. 2.

Trauma-informed RPPP.

Funding can be secured as the team is being formed. An important consideration for RPPPs is funding. The amount of work that needs to be done is significant, and it cannot rest solely on volunteers. Ensuring there are resources to support the RPPP efforts means that people have dedicated time to do the work and do not have to spend their own resources to be part of the RPPP. Ideally, there is funding to support those who are doing the administrative work (e.g., scheduling, writing, reviewing). Considering one goal is to reduce the demands on educators, it would be especially inappropriate to simply pile more tasks upon educators and expect them to donate their time. Compensation of RPPP members must also be prioritized. At a bare minimum reducing costs of participation, such as providing childcare for parents with children and transportation for those who need it or offering reimbursements for childcare, transportation, and other expenses related to being part of the RPPP. Ideally, there would also be stipends for those who actively participate in the RPPP to compensate them for their time. Funding to support RPPP may be available through foundations that have supported similar work (e.g., Spencer Foundation, W.T. Grant Foundation). Additionally, school districts or schools may wish to budget resources to support the efforts to develop a RPPP. Considering that this work may reduce teacher attrition and improve student outcomes, it can be justified as a sound financial decision.

After the RPPP team is assembled, time must be spent developing relationships and building trust (Coburn & Penuel, 2016). Throughout this process it is important to remember that members of the team bring different perspectives and expertise. Incorporating these differences and leveraging the strengths of the team members to develop a shared vision and goal is central. RPPP's successes are connected to the communication and connection among the team members.

To address the issues of childhood trauma and educator burnout, the RPPP team can engage in the design thinking process. (See Schelbe et al., 2020 for details about RPPs using design thinking.) The implementation of design thinking is an iterative process where the RPPP moves swiftly among the steps. The process begins with the RPPP seeking to understand the issue. Getting information from many sources helps the RPPP to empathize with the various constituents and grasp the gravity of the issue. The RPPP team can collect information from educators, students, mental health professionals, and others, which provides a holistic understanding of the issue. With an agreed upon understanding of the issue, the RPPP enters the design phase of the project where the team starts framing the policy issue and identifies research to inform policy and practice (Schelbe et al., 2020).

With the gathered information and shared understanding, the RPPP team begins the process of generating ideas about how to address child trauma and educator burnout in schools. The ideas can be at multiple levels including in the classroom, the school, the district, or community. During this process, the RPPP team also identifies research questions and potential data sources. The team then begins to build a plan to pilot some of the ideas and conduct research or evaluation to answer their research questions using local data. The ideas are tested, and the findings can be used to refine ideas which can be further piloted. Multiple ideas can be examined and implemented simultaneously with the goal of finding what can best address the issue. From there, the RPPP continues to identify challenges, create, and test solutions using local data, and using the immediate feedback from research/evaluation to inform practice and/or policy changes. In doing so, the issues of childhood trauma and educator burnout are addressed immediately and do not fall victim to the 17 year “research-to-practice gap.”

2.3. Challenges of RPPP

While the need and utility for RPPPs is clear, there are challenges and barriers in place which make cross-sector partnerships challenging to implement. With pressure to publish academic articles, researchers can be disincentivized to spend time building community-based collaborations, especially if these collaborations do not result in numerous, high-impact peer-reviewed research publications. Policymakers, including school administrators, must juggle many competing priorities during and in-between legislative sessions making consistent participation in RPPPs challenging. Finally, those representing the practice community often have job responsibilities that create challenges for and disincentivize participation in RPPPs. For example, educators may not be able to meet with partners of a RPPP during the educators' working hours because of the classroom responsibilities. If they meet after school hours educators are volunteering their time as the work is outside of their job responsibilities, a potential contributor to burnout.

2.4. Setting a research agenda

As noted by Coburn and Penuel (2016), there are critical research questions that must be answered prior to the widespread adoption of RPPPs. Central to this research agenda is a better understanding of the critical components of RPPPs that drive positive outcomes across initiatives. What factors, under what conditions, lead to which outcomes? Do RPPPs lead to increased trust among participants? Do RPPPs lead to better use of data in decision making? Do RPPPs facilitate more rapid and/or efficient scale-up of interventions? In addition, it is imperative to understand the costs associated with participation in RPPPs; these can include monetary costs as well as opportunity costs to the involved parties. Having educators participate in an RPPP not only costs money but also diverts attention away from other tasks that educators may need to do (e.g., lesson planning).

3. Conclusion

Prior to, and exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, children experience a host of traumas and adverse conditions that place their well-being and learning in the classroom at risk. Educators play a key role for children by providing safety, stability, and nurturing care and environments for children; however, the effects of trauma can wreak havoc on educator well-being. Unfortunately, educators experience STS and burnout, likely the result of the unrelenting responsibilities placed on their plate, including having to address the external manifestations of childhood traumas in the classroom. Few educators have adequate training on how to address the complicated behaviors associated with childhood trauma, leaving many feeling helpless and ineffective. Trauma-informed pedagogical approaches are helpful in the classroom however are rendered useless unless educators are physically, mentally, and emotionally available to implement the practices. By addressing educator STS and burnout using RPPP, the hope is to create the context where educators have the support they need to implement trauma-informed practices therefore, addressing issues of childhood trauma.

Declaration of competing interest

None.

Data availability

No data was used for the research described in the article.