Teacher Wellbeing: Identifying Supports and Implications for Children’s Development during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has created unprecedented challenges for teachers in both early education and K-12 settings leading to significant increases in career-related stress, burnout, and teachers leaving the profession. Teacher stress not only has implications for their own health and wellbeing, but cascading effects on their abilities to engage in effective teaching practices and support children’s development and learning. This symposium explores aspects of supports and wellbeing as potential intervention targets for pre-service teachers and those in the classroom, as well as the implications of teacher emotional wellbeing for young children’s development.

The first study examines intervention targets to improve pre-service teachers’ wellbeing. Results highlight mindfulness and self-compassion skills as key predictors of pre-service teachers’ depression and anxiety symptoms. The second study builds on this research by exploring how access to social-emotional learning supports for teachers can help decrease teachers’ stress and burnout. They find that direct teacher supports (consultation from mental health professionals and classroom assistance) and social-emotional learning training each helped decrease teachers’ rates of burnout, anxiety, and depression. The third study demonstrates how these intervention levers have implications for the development of children’s self-regulation skills. Findings show that teacher emotional dysregulation is significantly associated with lower self-regulation skills for their preschool students.

Together this symposium provides a compelling picture of potential ways to support teachers and increase their well-being in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic and the important implications for the development of young children’s self-regulation skills.

Sub Unit

• Education, Schooling

Chair

• Jenna Elizabeth Finch, University of Nebraska - Lincoln

Discussant

• Anna D. Johnson, Georgetown University

Individual Presentations

• Predicting Anxiety and Depression in Pre-Service Teachers: Identifying Potentially Malleable Points of Intervention - Presenting Author: Summer S Braun, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa; Alison Hooper, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa

• The Impact of Social-Emotional Supports on Educator Mental Health and Wellbeing - Presenting Author: Elizabeth Demeusy, MedStar Georgetown University Hospital; Hillary A. Robertson, Georgetown University Medical Center; Sabrina F. Zuskov, Georgetown University; Celene Elizabeth Domitrovich, Georgetown University School of Medicine

• Teacher Emotion Dysregulation and Job Stress: Predictors of Preschooler’s Executive Functions - Presenting Author: Kimia Akhavein, University of Nebraska - Lincoln; Qingyu Jiang, University of Nebraska - Lincoln; Pearl Avari, University of Nebraska-Lincoln; Jenna Elizabeth Finch, University of Nebraska - Lincoln; Gilbert Parra; Carrie Clark, University of Nebraska-Lincoln; Holly Hatton-Bowers, University of Nebraska - Lincoln