How This Chicago Special Ed Teacher Combats Compassion Fatigue

Giving Compass’ Take:

• Chalkbeat interviews Chicago special education teacher Lisa Caputo Love on the joys of her job and how she’s able to avoid burnout.

• Self care is essential for those that work with special needs children, and many nonprofit professionals can learn from the lessons Love delivers in this Q&A.

• Here’s more on how we can best serve students with special needs.

Lisa Caputo Love began her Chicago Public Schools career as a classroom teacher in 2005. But two years in, she realized that her most challenging assignment was reaching the learners who struggled the most. So she went back to school, earning a master’s degree in special education from Loyola University Chicago. And this past February, she was named the Chicago Foundation for Education’s 2018 Teacher of the Year.

Today she’s a learning behavior specialist at Hawthorne Scholastic Academy, a magnet school on the city’s North Side. She describes the moment she decided to become a teacher; the tightrope act that is supporting, yet challenging, students with special needs; and how she’s combatting “compassion fatigue” with more self-care and fun.

“Teachers, especially special education teachers, are constantly exposed to the emotional and physical trauma of all their students. This makes teachers more likely to suffer from secondary trauma and/or compassion fatigue, which leads to great teachers burning out and leaving the field,” says Love.

“My favorite professor gave me an important piece of advice to live by: ‘If you don’t take care of yourself, you cannot take care of others.'”

Read the full article about “compassion fatigue” and more insight from a special ed teacher by Cassie Walker Burke at Chalkbeat.