An Overview of Research on Secondary Traumatic Stress in K-12 Teaching: What We Know and What We Still Need to Learn

Secondary traumatic stress (STS) has a significant adverse impact on many in the teaching profession. STS can be described as the symptoms of extreme stress experienced from direct exposure to traumatized individuals. In this essay, I present a synthesis of the scant existing research on STS in education and other caring professions to illustrate its significance as well as a brief discussion of possible positive and negative outcomes.