Research and practice work to support educator mental health during violence and other emergencies at school.
Where This Work Began
Designing Safer Schools grew out of Phase I, a partnership with Cherry Creek School District’s Safety and Security Team. Together we co-created, implemented, and evaluated a psychological preparedness training that built shared leadership and peer support into existing emergency plans and drills, reaching about 300 staff across six schools (published in the Journal of School Violence, 2025). The team received the Centers for Health, Work & Environment’s 2023 Community Impact Award for this work.
Phase I revealed something important: educators face violence not only in rare emergencies but as part of their everyday work. Designing Safer Schools responds by adapting that training and Built to Last, a leadership and well-being toolkit we developed and tested with construction companies, into a leadership-based model for preventing violence and supporting staff well-being.
How It Shaped Designing Safer Schools
That partnership showed us the need to look beyond emergency preparedness and address the everyday violence educators face. Designing Safer Schools: Building School Capacity to Prevent and Mitigate Violence now carries that work forward by adapting our training, along with the Built to Last leadership toolkit, into a leadership-based violence prevention model that supports staff well-being.
Violence and aggression against K–12 educators are widespread and contribute to stress, burnout, and turnover. Most school safety systems focus on students and on rare, severe incidents, leaving few supports for the adults who experience violence at work.
This pilot study explored how to adapt Built to Last: A Leadership & Well-being Toolkit, a leadership and well-being intervention originally developed for the construction industry, to support educator mental health in schools. DSS pairs leadership training with a collaborative design sprint, a structured process for solving complex challenges, to build leaders’ capacity to support workforce health and to elevate workers’ voices in identifying and addressing hazards.Aim 1: Understand the Problem
Explore how school personnel experience violence at work and whether an approach centered on leadership support and workforce engagement would be welcome in schools.
Aim 2: Adapt the Intervention
Identify the changes needed to make the intervention relevant and feasible in education settings.
A pilot project from the Centers for Health, Work & Environment explores how school violence affects educators and adapts proven tools into a leadership-based violence prevention model that supports staff physical and mental health.
Aim 1: Adapt and implement an integrated workforce mental health intervention into Pre-K-8 school emergency preparedness via shared leadership and peer support.
Aim 2: Evaluate the impact of a half-day mental health integrated emergency preparedness intervention in Pre-K-12 schools via shared leadership and peer support.
This project has resulted in the following publications:
Welton-Mitchell, C., Schwatka, N. V., Dally, M., Levine, S., & Lopez, I. (2025). Mental health integrated emergency preparedness for the public school workforce. Journal of School Violence, 1–13.
This project stems from lessons learned from the Small+Safe+Well study and draws on the following research:
James, L., Welton-Mitchell, C., Noel, J. R., & James, A. (2019). Integrating mental health and disaster preparedness in intervention: RCT with earthquake and flood-affected communities in Haiti. Psychological Medicine, 1–11.
Welton-Mitchell, C., James, L., Khanal, S. N., & James, A. (2018). An integrated approach to mental health and disaster preparedness: A cluster comparison with earthquake-affected communities in Nepal. BMC Psychiatry, 18(1), 296.
In this 1.5-hour webinar, presenters discuss improving systems around emergency drills through tailored training, gathering staff feedback, and identifying local resources. Participants will learn to customize training for their districts, lead effective feedback sessions, and implement changes based on staff input.
Natalie Schwatka, PhD, MS, Assistant Professor
Sarah Levine, MPH, Principal Program Coordinator
This webinar is offered for an NCSS certificate of completion.
This webinar occurred on September 12, 2024, and is available on-demand.
ColoradoSPH News
New Training Offered to Support Teacher Mental Health During Emergency Drills
Researchers Courtney Welton-Mitchell, PhD, and Natalie Schwatka, PhD, from the Centers for Health, Work & Environment at ColoradoSPH have developed, tested and launched a new training manual to help school districts enhance their emergency preparedness. The training emphasizes an integrated approach to support teacher and staff mental and physical health.
Education Week
How a New Training Eases Teachers' Anxiety About Emergency Drills
Two researchers from the Centers for Health, Work & Environment at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus recently completed a two-year research project on emergency preparedness plans and drills in schools.
CHWE Newsroom
Supporting Teacher and Staff Emergency Preparedness and Well-being
Courtney Welton-Mitchell and Natalie Schwatka from the Centers for Health, Work & Environment recently completed a two-year research project on psychological preparedness training for the public school workforce, complementing current emergency preparedness plans and drills.
This training will make employees feel more psychologically prepared for an emergency, and will increase peer support related to emergency preparedness.
— Courtney Welton-Mitchell PhD, MA Clinical Assistant Professor
