Once upon a time, I was a teacher. I was determined to be the kind of teacher that I needed when I was a teenager—an adult that created a safe place, listened and didn’t judge. But not long into my journey along that road, I realized that I was unable to “leave the job at the job”. I began to lose sleep and constantly worry about many of my students. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t shake some of the things that the young people told me in confidence. It was hard to focus and I started showing signs of depression. I wasn’t the same teacher I used to be when I set out on this road.
It wasn’t until much later that I began to learn about secondary traumatic stress in educators. It was an eye-opening experience. I began to see the effects of it– not only in myself but also my fellow teachers. I witnessed amazing teachers leaving the profession in droves, not because of lack of funding (as so many people think!) but from the pressures and stresses that aren’t being addressed. No one was speaking about it or doing anything to combat it. Thus, Sculpting Clay or How I Became Mother of Unicorns was born.
