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The COVID-19 pandemic dramatically altered practices in the K-12 education system. Though several studies have documented impacts on students and staff, limited research has explored educators' experiences with these changes. This study addresses this gap using interview data to examine elementary school educators' perspectives. Results suggest that the pandemic facilitated a variety of adaptations in schools that led to outcomes that were primarily negative (student social development and educator stress), mixed (student well-being and academic achievement; educator support, time demands, and well-being), or positive (student resilience and flexibility; educator resilience, sense of community, autonomy, and flexibility). This study describes ways in which pandemic-related changes in schools produced a mix of unfavorable and favorable conditions. An important implication is that rather than aiming for a complete "return to normal," schools should identify what may have worked better during the pandemic, such as increased social-emotional learning and individualized instruction, and explore ways in which such changes could be maintained going forward.

Managing students' problem behaviors in the classroom is a difficult challenge for many teachers. A teacher's ability to empathize with students' perspectives and life experiences could impact their approach to the student's problem behaviors; however, few previous studies examine teacher empathy. This study adapted an existing empathy measure to assess educators' cognitive and affective empathy for students. Participants were elementary school teachers (N = 178) who reported on their levels of empathy and completed measures of teacher-student relationships, student behaviors, and approaches to handling behaviors for their self-reported most challenging student. Results indicated the adapted measure reliably assessed teachers' cognitive empathy and an affective form of empathy characterized as empathic distress (experiencing personal distress from others' distress). Teachers higher in cognitive empathy reported more positive mindsets about student behavior, greater competence in handling problem behaviors, increased use of effective problem-solving strategies, greater relationship closeness, and lower levels of job burnout. Teachers high in empathic distress showed largely opposite findings, with more negative misbehavior mindsets, greater relationship conflict, less competence, fewer problem-solving strategies, and higher job burnout. These findings have implications for supporting teachers to effectively intervene and build positive relationships with behaviorally challenging students.

Childhood exposure to traumatic experiences and subsequent psychological symptoms increase the risk for lifelong behavioral and mental health problems, including depression diagnoses, reduced adaptive coping strategies, substance abuse, and early death, with negative impacts on children's social development and academic achievement. Social-emotional competence (SEC) is a key component of resilience to trauma exposure, and early deficits predict increased problem behaviors include delinquency and substance use. SEC is a protective factor that moderates the relationship between risks associated with trauma and subsequent outcomes. The current study used a longitudinal experimental design (treatment vs. comparison) to examine outcomes from a trauma-informed initiative in a disadvantaged community with high trauma exposure rates for K-8th grade students (n = 245). The intervention focused on bolstering children's social-emotional skills and resilience while reducing trauma symptoms and improving academic performance through multimodal programming. Hierarchical Linear Modeling indicated significant improvements in SEC from the intervention group, in contrast to the comparison group (B = 3.42, t = 3.04, p < 0.01), with gender effects indicating females see the greatest benefit (B = 3.52, t = 4.27, p < 0.01). Results indicated the significance of addressing SEC for children in disadvantaged communities, particularly those indicating a trauma history and resulting symptomology, as well as boys, who indicated reduced treatment effects.

Educators' high levels of stress have been well documented in existing literature, though little research has directly looked at comparisons of stress experiences and needs for support based on school level. The present study included 33 teachers (19 elementary and 14 middle school) from one school district who participated in semistructured interviews. Responses to questions regarding their primary source(s) of stress and their ideal solution(s) to relieve that stress revealed distinctions between elementary and middle school teachers. Elementary teachers described stress related to a sense of responsibility or need to care for students and meet their social, emotional, behavioral, and academic needs. Their ideal solution primarily involved receiving more emotional support and more support staff in the classroom to help meet all students' needs. In contrast, middle school teachers reported the majority of their stress as stemming from external demands or pressures such as test scores, high or unattainable expectations from administrators or parents, and not having enough time. Middle school teachers' ideal solutions largely entailed a shift in the use of their time, specifically to remove tasks (e.g., unnecessary staff meetings) and be able to focus their time on what matters the most (e.g., teaching students). These findings indicate that although almost all of these teachers reported being highly stressed, their sources of stress and perceived needs for support varied based on school level. Efforts to promote teacher well-being must consider school level and teachers' own perspectives on what they need in order to provide the most beneficial supports. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).