Frontline work without frontline supports: Rethinking educator well-being

Frontline workers encompass a diverse group of professionals who engage directly with individuals in crisis or distress. This includes healthcare providers, educators, social workers, emergency responders, and law enforcement officers. In recent years, the challenges faced by these professionals have intensified, necessitating urgent attention to their mental health and wellbeing. From healthcare professionals battling the COVID-19 pandemic to educators managing increased class sizes and classroom disruptions, the strain is evident.

Educators, like other frontline workers, frequently encounter individuals experiencing trauma. This exposure can contribute to burnout, emotional exhaustion, and a diminished capacity to empathize and be productive, all of which compromise the quality of care and support provided by workers and the institutions they represent. Addressing the wellbeing of frontline education workers is important for ensuring stability and effectiveness of education systems (EdCan Network, 2025).

 

When the Bell Rings, The Trauma Walks In

When a teenager arrives at school after witnessing a violent incident in their neighbourhood or at home, educators do not get to call “time out.” They do what they are trained to do: greet the student, create calm, and begin the day based on planned activities while supporting individual student needs. Across Canada and international settings, frontline workers including educators are facing a surge in behavioural, emotional, and mental-health needs among students at all levels (Canadian Union of Public Employees [CUPE], 2025).

While the psychological toll on emergency service workers is widely recognized (Eschenbacher, 2023), the parallel reality for educators remains largely invisible. Educators are frontline workers in every sense of the term, and the emotional labour they absorb is profound. Yet unlike emergency service professionals, educators return to work the next morning- in many cases the same day- without critical incident supports, clinical debriefing, or institutional recovery procedures. This absence has created a silent crisis in schools affecting educator wellbeing, teacher burnout, and increased violence in schools. Overall, many frontline workers are experiencing greater rates of violence than previous years(CUPE, 2025).

 

Classroom as a Frontline Environment

Classrooms have absorbed the cumulative effects of greater exposure to community violence, housing instability, immigration-related stress, pandemic aftershocks, and economic hardship for students and their families. Research shows rising levels of classroom violence, increased student dysregulation, and more complex behavioural issues (CUPE, 2025; Canadian Teachers’ Federation [CTF], 2023). Educators routinely hear disclosures about abuse, witness distressing emotional breakdowns, intervene in fights, and support students grappling with grief, instability, or a crisis at home.

These dynamics have repositioned educators as emotional first responders who manage the immediate aftermath of trauma. Educators are managing these traumatic situations while continuing to be responsible for student’s learning. While the expectations placed on educators have evolved dramatically, the systemic structures designed to support them have not.

 

The Hidden Toll of Vicarious Trauma in Schools

In a national survey, more than half of Canadian educators reported moderate to severe burnout, with many linking this strain to escalating violence, trauma, and behavioural crises (CTF, 2024). Repeated exposure to others’ trauma can lead to vicarious trauma, compassion fatigue, and burnout (Miller, 2018). These conditions, well documented in emergency response frontline professions, alter how individuals think, feel, and cope.

Educators are no exception. Educators frequently describe feeling emotionally depleted after supporting students through distressing experiences. Some internalize worry about their students’ safety outside school hours. Others experience hypervigilance, irritability, or emotional numbness which are symptoms similar to what paramedics (Eschenbacher, 2023) or police officers experience after exposure to traumatic events. Furthermore, some report feeling unsafe or scared to show up to work due to toxic environments and work conditions.

Emergency service organizations offer protocols to support frontline workers following exposure to trauma. Police and paramedics are provided options for debriefing after critical incidents. Firefighters have the choice to be placed on short-immediate leave after responding to traumatic events such as aiding someone who has been shot. Officers involved in shootings are offered counselling or potentially removed from duty until psychologically cleared to return to work. These processes exist because trauma affects cognition, performance, and long-term mental health. What is important is that diverse supports are made available to provide coping choices to the individual so it can be tailored to their needs and circumstances, as trauma impacts everyone differently.

The significant gap between the reality of educators’ frontline experiences and the limited access to support systems is rooted in outdated assumptions about teaching. Historically, teaching has been viewed as predictable, nurturing work. While still profoundly meaningful, today’s classrooms reflect intensified social, economic, and emotional challenges (Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario, 2024). Schools have become hubs for mental-health support, crisis response, and community stabilization (Eizadirad et al., 2024).

Yet education systems have been slow to acknowledge teacher wellbeing as a workplace health and safety issue. This systemic lag contributes to rising absenteeism, teacher attrition, and strained school climates, particularly within communities that face greater systemic barriers. As a result, there are higher turnover rates for teachers due to higher levels of stress and lack of access to systemic supports. As well, many educators are leaving the profession after a few years due to not feeling supported.

 

Toward a More Compassionate and Trauma-Informed School Systems

Trauma-informed school systems must incorporate structural supports similar to strategies offered within emergency service professions, adapted for educational contexts (Marris, 2025). This includes providing structured opportunities to debrief after traumatic incidents, access to clinical mental-health professionals that offer culturally responsive supports, leadership training in trauma-informed supervision, and protected recovery time when needed. Expecting educators to manage increasingly complex student needs, without addressing its emotional toll, carries serious consequences. Unchecked stress can accelerate burnout, increase absenteeism, shrink the teacher pipeline, and reduce educators’ capacity to build meaningful relationships with students. It can also compromise classroom safety and contribute to higher incidents of violence in schools. Ultimately, the mental health of students and staff are deeply intertwined. Healthy classrooms and thriving schools depend on healthy, caring adults who are supported to be able to engage in their work comprehensively.

A system that expects educators to absorb the emotional weight of traumatic events must also provide them with structural supports to facilitate their coping, healing, and wellbeing maintenance. The following recommendations offer a practical roadmap to enhance systemic improvements:

• • School districts can establish pathways for formal debriefing procedures following exposure to traumatic incidents to support educators (e.g. after exposure to suicide, death of a student or colleague, or shooting in the school or surrounding community). Support sessions or debriefing procedures should be facilitated by trained mental health professionals and embedded into workplace health and safety policies, ensuring educators are supported before returning fully to instructional duties.
  • Schools can create facilitated peer support groups and mentorship models where educators process shared experiences as a collective to reduce isolation and exchange coping strategies as a community or family of schools within similar geographical spaces. These networks or debriefing procedures, following exposure to traumatic events, should ideally be scheduled within work hours rather than added as extra responsibilities.
  • On-going training on vicarious trauma, compassion fatigue, and trauma-informed boundaries can be integrated into teacher education programs as well as part  educator induction and leadership development opportunities in schools. Administrators must be trained to recognize symptoms of trauma exposure in staff and respond with supportive measures. Recognizing signs of trauma and normalizing asking for help facilitates disrupting toxic work cultures that views expression of emotions as weakness.
  • School boards can establish policies for protected time for recovery after high-stress incidents. This may involve flexible scheduling, relief coverage, and temporary duty modifications that acknowledge trauma exposure as a legitimate occupational health concern.
  • As schools and by extension educators are asked to do more, they would benefit from additional support and resources from provincial governments and partnerships with other health, social service, and justice organizations.

In conclusion, caring for educators is not a luxury but a prerequisite for safe, inclusive, and thriving learning environments. When educators are supported, students flourish, school cultures stabilize, and communities grow stronger. We cannot cultivate safe schools on the backs of exhausted educators.

 

Reflection prompts:

In what ways does your school or district unintentionally rely on educators to absorb trauma without providing the systemic structures needed to support their wellbeing?

What trauma-informed protocols could be adapted from emergency professions and integrated into educational settings to support teachers and students?

 

Dr. Ardavan Eizadirad is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Education at Wilfrid Laurier University. He is the author of Decolonizing Educational Assessment: Ontario Elementary Students and the EQAO (2019) and co-editor of 6 books including Enacting Anti-racism and Activist Pedagogies in Teacher Education: Canadian Perspectives (2023 with Drs. Zuhra Abawi & Andrew Campbell), Activist Leadership for Inclusive Schools: Canadian Insights (2025 with Drs. Zuhra Abawi, Stephanie Tuters, and Andrew Campbell) and The International Handbook of Anti-Discriminatory Education (2025 with Dr. Peter Trifonas). Dr. Eizadirad is also the founder and Director of EDIcation Consulting (www.EDIcation.org) offering equity, diversity, and inclusion training, audits, and capacity-building sessions to organizations, corporations, and schools to thrive and achieve to their full potential.

Dr. Saskia Eschenbacher is Professor of Adult Learning and Counselling in Berlin, Germany. In 2015 and 2018, she was a Visiting Researcher at New York University’s Steinhardt School of Education and in 2019, 2020, 2022 and 2023 at Teachers College, Columbia University. As part of her research, and also as a practicing Systemic Therapist and Consultant with a degree in trauma therapy, Dr. Eschenbacher is interested in how to promote and catalyze processes of personal change and transformation. Her research includes significant work with frontline workers particularly examining transformative learning among paramedics and firefighters. She has also investigated transformative conversations for processing traumatic experiences. She is the co-editor of The Palgrave Handbook of Learning for Transformation (2022).

 

References:

Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE). (2025). New data confirms alarming rise in violence in Ontario schools: OSBCU demands urgent action from Ford government. https://cupe.ca/new-data-confirms-alarming-rise-violence-ontario-schools-osbcu-demands-urgent-action-ford-government

Canadian Teachers’ Federation (CTF). (2024). Educator wellbeing and pandemic recovery: Supporting the mental health of educators and education workers. https://www.ctf-fce.ca/blog-perspectives/educator-wellbeing-and-pandemic-recovery-supporting-the-mental-health-of-educators-and-education-workers/

EdCan Network. (2025). Pan-Canadian trends in K-12 workplace wellbeing. https://www.edcan.ca/wp-content/uploads/2025-Pan-Canadian-Trends-Report.pdf

Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario (ETFO). (2024). Let’s make our schools safe: Addressing violence in elementary schools. https://www.etfo.ca/getmedia/e4984b20-b878-4872-a5b1-6342aeee75ac/240508-Factsheet-Violence-in-Schools.pdf

Eizadirad, A, Jones, D., Leslie, G., & Grant, T. (2024). Remembering lost lives and healing from trauma: Homicides, incarceration, and pain-driven advocacy in the Jane and Finch community. Journal of Culture and Values in Education. 7(3). 1-26. https://doi.org/10.46303/jcve.2024.25

Eschenbacher, S. (2023). Saving lives: An unsustainable profession—A study of transformative learning at work. Studies in Continuing Education, 46(2), 266–281. https://doi.org/10.1080/0158037X.2023.2222068

Marris, W. (2025). Trauma-informed workplaces. Campaign for Trauma-Informed Policy & Practice.  https://82c52c1d-5714-4985-a563-676a79dcf952.usrfiles.com/ugd/82c52c_80774cecab18446ca383da216d077a4a.pdf

Miller, J. P. (2018). Love and compassion: Exploring their role in education. University of Toronto Press.

 

Republished with permission and thanks from Edcan Network

All images – Adobe Stock