Coping with the opioid crisis: Teachers need support, right now 

As the opioid crisis continues to expand, affecting more and more schools across the United States, educators everywhere are struggling to cope. As I found in my own recent research — a case study of schools located in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Maine — the impact has been nothing short of devastating for teachers and school staff. Educators are desperately in need of resources, leadership, and guidance on how best to support students while, at the same time, attending to their own needs as they confront the immense suffering that opioids have wrought. 

My study focused on 76 kindergarten through 2nd-grade educators — including teachers, counselors, and administrators — from three schools in three states. All are located in cities or towns in the northeastern U.S. that have at least three times the national average of opioid overdoses, according to community databases and data available through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2017). I spent several months in and around the schools, collecting information through interviews, surveys, and reviews of professional development plans, schoolwide special education trends, and improvement plans. The results (Welby, 2019) indicate that the nation’s educators urgently require substantial levels of support to help them face the implications of this epidemic.