Fawning Through Trauma: Is Educators’ Well-being at Risk?
On Sunday, April 12, 2015, my older brother passed away. I had just spent time with him the day prior. Exhausted from an international flight, I rushed our visit, promising to spend time with him again the following day, Sunday. That Sunday, he did not call. Still jetlagged, I was content to laze around my house. Monday, at the end of lunch, I looked at my phone to see 12 missed calls — 10 from my Dad, and two from a number I didn’t recognize. I pushed play and heard the haltered voice relay the news.
I called my Dad and cried with him. I cancelled a pre-work meeting that was scheduled for after lunch. Then I called my youngest brother, asking him to be the one to inform the family. He agreed. I then went back to work. In 2015, I was the director of a teacher education program and that evening was the English methods course, of which I was the instructor. My oldest brother was so distraught that I had to pick up my two nieces and take them with me to work.
To teach.
You may be thinking, really?
In retrospect, I often ask myself the same question.
Why did the responsibility of teaching outweigh my grief?
How did my brain make sense of the options and decide teaching was the right decision?
Luckily for me, I cherish teaching with colleagues. Two of the field supervisors were present. We had planned to co-teach that evening. I do not remember the topic. I do remember my two colleagues allowing me to fumble for just a little while before they asked the candidates to engage a task, pulled me to the side, and helped me realize that teaching was not what I needed.
I needed time and space to grieve, cry, and experience shock.
However in that moment I followed my professional instinct — I fawned.
Jill Thomas, the director of curriculum and instruction at The Teaching Well, a national organization based in Oakland that focuses on teacher wellness, explained to me the common responses to trauma — flight, fight, or fawn.
“When you are in a professional setting — it is not necessarily appropriate to flee or fight. So instead, we fawn — bypass the need to have a trauma response — we soothe the situation by using all the tools to ensure students get what they need. We institutionalize this idea of bypassing our own needs for the sake of our students.”
The strategy of fawning can be quite effective, yet it distorts the well-being of the educator. Jill explains the consequences of fawning. “When the educator just moves on, they are left without the complete experience. The educator needs to understand how to take care of their trauma later. Maybe they need to go run or have an animated conversation with a friend.” Jill further explains that the need to have the full experience, to name the trauma and respond to it, increases the potential for the teacher to “slow down enough to recognize their particular signs of stress and trauma.”
The practice of not bypassing trauma is not just good practice for the wellness of educators, but is also key to building effective relationships with students. “A dysregulated adult and a dysregulated student will just respond to each other. A teacher who has had the time and practice of wellness can slow down and make sense of what is happening for the student and not escalate the situation. The ability to forge relationships between the teacher and student is more possible if the teacher is aware.”
Destiny Shantell Woodbury, former middle school science teacher and educational leader in Houston agrees with Jill. “I didn’t learn about wellness and mental health until I was 30 years old and already teaching,” she shared.
“We need the tools to do the work so when students are upset and angry, our first response is not anger as well. If a student triggers me, then I write them a referral — an act that starts the school to prison pipeline for that student — all because I haven’t unpacked my own trauma. Instead, if I have processed my own trauma and understand my triggers, I can calmly ask questions to understand the root of the issue.”
Destiny learned to place her wellness at the core of her teaching practice when Teach For America offered its alumni the opportunity to attend FuelEd’s multi-session professional development on wellness.
FuelEd is a national organization based in Houston, whose mission is to develop emotionally intelligent educators. One aspect of their programming is offering free counseling to educators who participate. Destiny believes the counseling was life changing for her professional and personal life. “That was a game changer. You could use the counselor as much as you wanted — even every day.”
The counseling allowed Destiny to make connections between the trauma she experienced losing both her parents before adulthood, to her responses to students in her classroom and colleagues at the various sites she worked.
“In the past, I just expressed my anger, and that didn’t help me advocate effectively for students. I also had students come to me describing their trauma. I was overwhelmed because I had my own trauma that I hadn’t really explored.”
Destiny now utilizes the tools she learned in FuelEd, and as an educational leader, has brought FuelEd’s trainings, including access to counseling, to her staff. “I know in schools this is not the priority — the priority is test preparation. We have to understand the landscape — understand who we are partnering with. We also have to understand our identity and how it impacts who we are serving.”
Understanding the landscape is vital now, as schooling is drastically different as a result of Covid-19. Destiny acknowledges that, “before Covid-19, students were experiencing trauma and now we are being invited to ‘see’ it and thus, empathy is even more important. Not just for our students, but for our teachers as well.”
Accounting for the needs of teachers beyond the logistics of teaching has been a minor, but not completely ignored factor of union negotiations. Jill considered the recent language in the Oakland Unified School District’s initial contract draft to be a breakthrough. “In the spring, when OUSD and OEA came into agreement — it was the first time I saw explicit language about teacher well-being.”
However, much of teacher well-being is framed around sick leave and medical support for a teacher or family member who contracts the virus. The Federal Families First Coronavirus Response Act is the policy districts are using to determine support for educators. None of the conditions applicable under the act include mental health, which leaves wellness up to the individual educator.
Wellness as an individualistic endeavor goes against the principles of The Teaching Well. “Wellness has become a proxy for the individual ethos in society — wellness as an individual responsibility. If you can’t create your own wellness, then it is your issue — you have to find a way to be well.”
Jill sees this framing as the greatest challenge to systemic wellness for educators. “Through our work, we talk a lot about collective well-being. We need teachers and educational leaders to look at the environment, structures and policies in place. We are never going to create sustainability if we ask teachers to work on their wellness on their own.”
Destiny is adamant that wellness must occur at the systemic level. “Whether you are a teacher or cafeteria worker, whoever works in the schools — you need to learn about wellness; to learn how the brain works, your childhood experiences, and your triggers.”
Dr. Lanette Jimerson is a writer, scholar, and educators. She founded The Literate Self to help equity-minded leaders expand their impact. Learn more at www.theliterateself.com
