“We Shouldn’t Have to Go to School Worried We’re Going to Get Shot”: Novice Teachers, Trauma, and Healing-Centered Collective Practice

Trauma-Responsive initiatives in education often center students while overlooking teachers’ experiences of harm. This qualitative study examines how novice teachers made sense of fear and ongoing threat through participation in an alumni Care Circle. Findings show that collective dialogue and ethical witnessing supported shared interpretations of trauma as structurally produced rather than individual failure. Care Circles functioned as a healing-centered, non-clinical infrastructure, offering a collective alternative to individualized trauma-responsive supports for teachers.