Transforming Empathy-Based Stress to Compassion: Skillful Means to Preventing Teacher Burnout

OBJECTIVES: Teachers play a critical role in preparing our children and adolescents for a successful future. However, despite the large number of students impacted by trauma and adversity, teachers are often not well prepared to provide trauma-sensitive support. Furthermore, while working to support students exposed to trauma and adversity, teachers may experience empathy-based stress exacerbating already high levels of stress among them. This narrative review explores the issue of empathy-based stress within the context of the prosocial classroom model which proposes that teachers’ social and emotional competence and well-being are key to their ability to create and maintain supportive learning environments critical to student academic and behavioral outcomes. METHODS: Recent findings in neuroscience and education research are applied to support teachers’ development of these competencies. RESULTS: We propose that shifting from empathy-based stress to compassionate responding may be one such competency to help teachers’ respond effectively to their students’ needs while protecting their own wellbeing. CONCLUSION: We review research that supports this proposition and explore implications for teacher professional learning, educational policy, and further research.