Stress Management Programs for Special Education Teachers

Stress management programs have been developed to improve teacher coping and prevent burnout. While many of these programs have promise, few have included special educators in intervention studies. Intervention programs may be beneficial for teachers in special education to increase their awareness of stress and use of coping skills, which in turn can be modeled for students in their classrooms. Encouraging individual stress management can improve well-being and student outcomes, but may be insufficient without additional classroom management and contextual support. The purpose of this paper is to use the Garwood paper as a springboard to identify potential stress management programs that might be helpful for special educators.