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U of MO International Center for Psychosocial Trauma Mission Teachers as Therapists Seminars Summer Institute Children Case One Case Two Case Three Case Four Case Five Palestine Summer Institute 2003 Summer Institute 2004  Photographs by Jeff Hoelscher

Teachers as Therapists

The teachers

We chose teachers to train as therapists because of their close contact with the children, their training in recognizing normal and abnormal behaviors, and their expertise in shaping children's behavior.

Of course, the children aren't the only ones caught in the horrors of war. Even as teachers are struggling to help the young, they must wrestle with their own demons in the form of memories and pain.

Most teachers have suffered severe personal loss. One schoolteacher lost her husband shortly before one of our seminars. Still, with determination, she led the way for Bosnian participants to learn and share during our session.

A stairway in Sarajevo was the site of this impromptu class.

Before we arrived, teachers had pressed on with educational activities, teaching children in basements or safe houses. They had improvised play activities to keep children busy. Intuitively, they had developed therapeutic techniques to help children deal with their loss, fear and trauma. We believe that when the history of this horrible era in Bosnia is recorded, the role the teachers played in protecting the children will be written in golden words.

Our job was to combine the teachers' intuitive wisdom with modern therapeutic techniques to treat PTSD, depression and related disorders. Until our arrival, teachers believed in distracting children from their trauma, and they hesitated to share their grief with children, worrying that adult fears would upset them.

Through our seminars, we were able to show teachers that sharing honest emotion benefits a traumatized child. In the end, our techniques were able to help both the children and the teachers themselves. In follow-up trips to the region, teachers reported success in dealing with children and a new-found confidence in handling difficult situations.