Working Well: The Importance of Staff Wellbeing to Support School Success

• In Event: Competing Stressors: Examining Ways to Support K-12 Educators' Coping and Well-Being

Abstract

The US educational system continues to face unprecedented challenges in recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. Research by the CDC (2021) indicates that 27% of educators reported symptoms of clinical depression and 37% reported symptoms of anxiety. Moreover, twice as many educators, compared to the general population of working adults are likely to report experiencing job-related stress, burnout, and are feeling less able to cope with job-related stress (Steiner et al, 2022). These issues are likely exacerbated by the growing teacher shortage and mounting youth mental health crisis, which together have created a number of burdens for educators and school leaders. A system-wide focus on workforce well-being has emerged as a key strategy towards restoring stability and is a priority for school administrators. The U.S. Department of Education’s National Center on Safe Supportive Learning Environments has launched a Research to Practice Initiative in an effort to bridge this gap and address timely issues educators are facing. This session will highlight a number of themes which have emerged in a series of several roundtable discussions with a variety of researchers and educators in urban, suburban, and rural communities from across the United States. Their expressed interest was to better understand factors affecting the well-being and related practices currently being implemented in schools to determine how they may serve to improve conditions for educators, school staff, and other education support personnel.

With these goals in mind, the National Center on Safe Supportive Learning Environments (NCSSLE) has launched a new campaign, called Working Well, which aims to distribute resources and materials with the goal of improving the working conditions and wellbeing of educators, that in turn ultimately the social-, behavioral, and mental health outcomes of their students. This work is guided in part by the framework by Yoder, Hollingsworth, and Krohn (forthcoming) which addresses policies, practices, and culture of the environment in which staff work, in conjunction with individual factors (i.e., what staff bring to the classroom/schools that contribute to staff wellbeing). Over the course of this multi-year effort, we have convened groups of educators, mental health practitioners, and researchers and identified themes related to shared experiences of stress, burnout, demoralization in the face of staff shortages; post-COVID instructional and trauma recovery; and fears of violence and safety towards staff and students. Additional themes emerged related to: the importance of equity from both a student and staff perspective, the connection between staff wellbeing, recruitment, and retention among staff and school leaders, and the penetrating influence of divisive topics. While some geographic differences emerged by region and across urban, suburban and rural communities, there were more commonalities than differences across these settings. We will conclude by highlighting a number of resources that have been developed and are being broadly disseminated by NCSSLE and accessed by educators, researchers, and practitioners, including evidence-based program guides, briefs, tools, readings, podcasts, and recorded webinars. These materials may prove useful as “just-in-time” supports and more systemic assistance for those working on frontlines to improve educator wellbeing.

Authors

• Catherine P. Bradshaw, University of Virginia

• Greta Colombi, American Institutes for Research