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Harvard Educational Review Vol. 89 No. 3 Fall 2019
Copyright © by the President and Fellows of Harvard College
Educators’ Secondary Traumatic
Stress, Children’s Trauma, and the
Need for Trauma Literacy
HAL A. LAWSON
University at Albany, State University of New York
JAMES C. CARINGI
University of Montana
RUTH GOTTFRIED
David Yellen Academic College of Education
BRIAN E. BRIDE
Georgia State University
STEPHEN P. HYDON
University of Southern California
In this essay, authors Lawson, Caringi, Gottfried, Bride, and Hydon introduce the
concept of trauma literacy, connecting it to students’ trauma and educators’ sec-
ondary traumatic stress (STS). Interactions with traumatized students is one cause
of STS; others derive from other traumatic encounters in schools and communities.
Undesirable effects of STS start with professional disengagement and declining per-
formance, include spill-over effects into educators’ personal lives, and, ultimately,
may cause them to leave the profession. The authors contend that alongside trauma-
informed pedagogies and mental health services for students, mechanisms are needed
for STS prevention, early identification, and rapid response. To benefit from and
advance this dual framework, educators need a trauma-informed literacy that enables
self-care, facilitates and safeguards interactions with trauma-impacted students and
colleagues, and paves the way for expanded school improvement models.
Keywords: trauma, adverse childhood experience, secondary traumatic stress, school
mental health, trauma-informed schools, interprofessional collaboration