The ARC of Self and Community Care for School Staff

To be effective and fully present to support and educate students, school staff need to understand taking care of themselves and their community as an ethical imperative and job requirement. Rising stressors are leading to significant burnout and compassion fatigue for school staff while student behavioral health concerns continue to rise. Increasing school staff capacity to understand, acknowledge, and mitigate the impacts of toxic stress on themselves and their community allows the work to be sustainable and for school staff to create environments where students are able to be present to learn. This workshop will cover the scope and impact of trauma and toxic stress. Advances in the concepts of trauma stewardship and toxic stress will be described. The ARC framework of Awareness, Regulation, and Connection will be introduced, and examples of safe and healthy coping strategies will be provided. Participants will be asked to reflect on their own understanding, history, and methods for coping, and to consider ways to address the barriers to engaging in self-care on personal, systemic, and societal levels, so that they may remain able to provide optimum levels of support for students. Objectives: 1. Participants will be able to describe the definitions and impacts of trauma, toxic stress, and vicarious trauma particularly during the current pandemic. 2. Participants will be able to oidentify factors that can contribute to susceptibility to burnout and vicarious trauma and how this can impact school staff’s ability to educate and support students if not addressed. 3. Participants will be able to describe the ARC framework of self-care and community and identify at least one strategy they can use personally for Awareness, Regulation, and Connection.

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