EDUCATION
Effects of Traumatized Students on Teachers
It is an understood fact that teachers and students are connected with each other very deeply. It is supposed that students learn a lot from teachers assuming them as their mentors and role model. Any kind of trauma in a student’s life has an emotional and physical effect on the teacher also. Being very connected and close to students, each and everything happening in the student’s life makes an effect on the teacher also, doesn’t matter if it happens in the classroom or outside. Sometimes seeing the robust behavior of the teachers, students assume that they don’t feel anything but that’s not true. Teachers always keep an eye on the growth, weakness, development, needs, and emotional well-being of the students. They never forget their duties towards students and being robust towards students is also a part of their care for students to make them understand the value of discipline. Teachers always try to learn new things in order to facilitate the students such as they learned how to teach online and even when they didn’t know how to teach online, teachers always stood beside their students in their emotional needs. Students work very hard in their academic lives and they try their level best to perform well too in the classroom but sometimes due to some trauma their behavioral pattern and psychological state get interrupted and their performance also gets decreased. Such trauma can be of any type, it may be personal, professional, academic, sexual, or social. For example, a teenage girl can be seen running away from males, even from the male teacher which seems a little weird to everyone but after investigation, it is found that she is sexually abused by any close relative and that is why she was going through such weird state of mind and her academic performance got degraded.
When students face any kind of trauma teachers also get influenced by that trauma, this is called the cost of caring also. Under this influence, people or mentors who see people facing such trauma, also start to feel the same fear and pain as the victim. Teaching is already a very hectic job and it is now just about lesson plans and curriculum. Nowadays teachers are already handling a lot of things beyond teaching. After completing the school hours when teachers sit in an alone space, they go through the same mental state also as their students go through. They also feel the same pain being attached to their students. This brings their state of mind into an unbalanced state.
To take this kind of stress and trauma out of the mind it is necessary that professionals like teachers should talk to their colleagues and friends. This process vents out all the stress and anxiety filled in the heart and minds of the tutors so that he/she can come back in a normal state of mind and can start teaching back normally. In such situations whether in the matter of students or teachers a close friend also plays a deep role in bringing the suffering person out of trauma.
Sometimes a student suffering from such situations acts weirdly in an adverse manner which nobody likes and even such behavior upsets a lot of other students in the class as well as teachers also. Sometimes when such mischievous and notorious students do anything it is unbearable and this situation can challenge the patience of the teacher. At such time the teacher should understand the situation and should walk away for minutes from there or keep mum for a few minutes in order to control the situation and should ask the student very politely the reason behind his behavior and try to find out whether there is any trauma behind this kind of behavior which is compelling the student to behave like this.
Teachers should keep one thing in their mind while performing their job they should not forget that they also have a life and they can help the students only when they have a balanced and sound mind state so they will have to confirm their safe returning home which means they have to leave their professionals to the burden of work and traumas, at their workplace should enter the threshold of their home leaving such traumatic memories outside. Apart from this teachers should take assistance from music, meditation, and yoga to keep their psychological state fit and sound.